But how can art keep us alive when it cannot kill us?
The good life
Ecological sustainability, self-sufficiency, community building, everyday wisdom
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. - Salman Rushdie
“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: All of them make me laugh.” — W.H. Auden
Instagram poetry
Giving in to the social media requirement of visuality and brevity, I also publish poetry on - Instagram. There are a lot of so called "instapoets" but in my humble opinion they are not exactly innovative and their language sounds pretty dull to me. As it happens - and this doesn't contradict my modesty - my ...
From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends. - Hilaire Belloc
“It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.”
Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018
Ethics and Artificial Intelligence
Without further ado, let's assume the AI has all information available and imagine a debate with the world's foremost human intellectual. The AI will have a flawless argument that takes into account all the information in a superhuman fashion a human intellectual can never attain. Its rational reasoning is far superior. Recall the 2016 victory ...
What is context?
I asked Miru what 배 'bae' and 눈 'nun' means. She says 'pear' and 'snow'. But in Korean, bae also means boat and nun also means eye. I tell her that it depends on the context. Context is the concept I want to explain to her today. "Papa what is that, context?" -"Context is a ...
Simple focus exercise
Type one thing and say something else. For example, type the word 'blue' while you say 'red'. You can almost feel how your brain is creating new neuronal connections when you do this.
A Meditation on power
Find a comfortable place to sit. Be aware of your posture. Is your back straight, are your knees below your waist? Breathe in calmly and deeply. Focus on the phenomenon of power. When have you experienced power over another living being or another living being exercising power over you? How did it feel? Is the ...
An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian [whose] role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are - James Baldwin
A birthday wish
One year ago, for my 38th birthday, all I could wish and hope for was the absence of toothache. Unfortunately for me, I didn't get it. 'If and only if', my daily mantra became, 'my mind is not distracted by that pain in the upper jaw, so very close to the brain, I will do ...
"Religions are big slow poems, while most poems are short, fast religions." - Les Murray
"Poetry for me is not work but pleasure, not a career but a second life—a play within a play."- Peter Davison
Math
Dear Miru, Your calculating is improving and you actually like it. We play with numbers together. Two times ten is twenty. Six plus five is eleven. Ten minus 2 equals eight. It is all very playful. You learn how to figure out calculations by making drawings of dots, lines, squares on the whiteboard. You don't ...
Be Farecul When You Ross The Croad
You learn very fast now. Lately, we have been playing "lettertjes omdraaien", exchange letters in words. Even though you don't really get the concept of spelling yet and how several letters make up a word (it is interesting that this mental apparatus is apparently rather complicated; letters are an abstraction, the unit of our language ...
Learning: Definition game
Dear Miru, I taught you definitions and how to describe something without using the word for it. It is a game now, but later you'll understand why that is useful. You are good at it. I asked you to describe an ice-cream and you said a thing that children eat by licking and that is ...
The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. - Derek Walcott
Learning fun: Odd one out
Dear Miru, Everyday you are a little bit smarter. I try to catch up with you and come up with a suitable game. Today, I play 'The odd one out' with you. I mention four items and you tell me which one doesn't belong in the list and why. You are good at it! We ...
Looking for a web designer
If you have an 'Eye' for the design of Internet websites and have some clear and distinct ideas about how you would redesign the very website you are looking at right now, I'd like to hear from you. I have designed this by myself, so naturally I cannot look at it with the eyes of ...
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.
(Pablo Neruda)
Great was that chase with the hounds for the unattainable meaning
of the world.
And now I am ready to keep running
When the sun rises beyond the borderlands of death.
- Czesław Miłosz