The meaning of life is thus a bit like playing with a live hand grenade. Once you pass it on to somebody else, you are safe. - Yuval Noah Harari
The good life
Ecological sustainability, self-sufficiency, community building, everyday wisdom
Lyrics: Andrew Bird
We often overlook how important poetry is in our society. Our identities are nearly unthinkable without the poetic, artful language that we share. We just don't call it poetry. We call it slogans. We call it sayings. And above all, we call it lyrics. Take the pop violinist and singer Andrew Bird. Here is a ...
Shopping alone when you are five
The world must be so exciting for her. I try to imagine how she experiences the shops, the distance to the riverside park or the large playground, the roads full of traffic, the market. Buying a snack in the corner store is something trivial for us, a relatively meaningless act we won't remember. It's no ...
Te only thing more important than health, is a sense of purpose.
Objet trouvé: modesty
A great man is always willing to be little. - Ralph Waldo Emerson A modest little person, with much to be modest about. - Winston Churchill I want to stretch out my tentacles to tackle the idea of modesty. Sound the clarions, hoist the flags, this self-proclaimed writer marches in to lecture about a virtue ...
Professor Trompsky #1
Professor Trompsky, welcome to our studio. At 87, do you have any plans for retirement? Listen, the burden of the world rests on my shoulders. I can't just give up because the fragility that is slowly but certainly shutting down my body. My responsibilities are grand, and with grandure I shall go to the grave. Can ...
Meditation on Value
What do we mean when we say of something that it has value? And isn't all our speaking inherently evaluating? Isn't every utterance we make freely, an assignment of value? Isn't it much more elegant if we consider ourselves living in a 'soup' of value, rather than in a generally valueless world, in which we ...
Experiment
It is not because I have conclusive evidence of it, but because I enjoy teaching new things to my daughter Miru, that I believe we should introduce the most basic concepts of science to our children as early as possible. When Miru and I were wondering if the sea could freeze over, I suggested that ...
Reminder: Orwell’s Advice
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Never use a ...
Laughing with Miru
There is nothing like humor to discover the signature of a human mind. Tell me what you find funny, and I will tell you who you are. Okay, I may not be able to fathom the trenches of your soul, but I'm pretty sure I'll have some sense of your political leaning, your raw intelligence ...
Music as a universal language
We often hear people say that language is a universal language, and we like to uncritically accept such assessment. I thought today of polishing up that metaphor a little. Why don't we consider music as a language family, like the Niger-Congo, Austranesian, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic or Indo-European language families. Communication between speakers of different languages of ...
Online Poem Generator
As someone who loves the belief that poetry is a form of communication, I am inclined to see its authenticity threatened by the emergence of automated poem generators. I am aware that strong AI will be among us within a few decades from now, if we believe the predictions of researchers in the field, but ...
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Meditation on Thinking
We sit and breathe calmly. We observe that we are thinking and in a first, gentle, move, admit that it is a concept that will always evade our definition. We just think. The ability to distinguish it from not-thinking requires a precise definition, hence in other words we are always-already caught in the realm of ...
Evolutionary consolation
[Mommy puts son to bed] Mommy, I'm so afraid. - Why, darling? Do you think I have bad genes? - Why do you think that? Girls don't want to talk with me. - But you got your genes from mommy and daddy. So? - Mommy and daddy talked to each other. Did you? - Yes. ...
Smile encounter
I ride the Seoul subway, line six. A small young woman in a colorful dress gets in and takes a seat. She is not Korean and she wears a scarf. As relative outsider in this monocultural megalopolis, I instinctively feel solidarity with the timid girl, whose face was ridden with acne. I smile at her. ...
Meditation on nature
Close your eyes and breathe in. How do we meditate about nature? Let us think of some cliché scenes of nature: magnificent Alpine peaks, unspoilt blue lakes, endless tundra, rain forest. The concept of nature seems to be defined as those objects left alone by men. The fewer humans have set foot somewhere, the more ...
57 ways how I grew my blog exponentially and you won’t believe what happens next
From September 2017 until May 2018 the number of views per month increased exponentially. I posted every day: essays, poems, reviews, aphorisms, jokes, short stories, meditations. Yes, I am living the dream. I really do writing every single sentence. But this month my stats look like I'm not going to surpass last month. I am ...
Meditation on love
Can we imagine a love that is without lack, hence without desire? We sit for a brief meditation on love. Erotic love, parental love, the love for truth, beauty and the good. Imagination that our love is indeed without lack, that the constellation lover - beloved has a value as it is and does not ...
How I created a novel meme
Last night, under the influence of the free blended spirits in the backpackers hostel I stay, I told a young traveler named Joey the outline of my satire novel. Joey was interested so with but few leaps and bounds I told him the entire story. He told me he liked it, but what really touched ...