“I like restraint, if it doesn’t go too far.” — Mae West

I like restraint, if it doesn’t go too far.

She had lost something dark and complicated deep within herself. She was a different person now. Freer, much easier at heart. She felt footloose. Mellowed. Agile and even giggly. Full of honest joy.

She stared at a fluffy morning cloud through the tinted panels of the roof. “Oh my God,” she told the cloud, “I’ve finally become a Californian.”

Vera stared through the camp’s apparent confusion, out to sea. Morning on the Adriatic. How pure and simple that sea looked… Although, when Vera had learned analysis, she had come to see that the famous “Adriatic blue” was spectrally nuanced with cloudy gray, plankton green, mud brown, and reflective tints of sky; that apparently “simple and natural” blue emerged from a wild mélange of changing cloud cover, solar angles, seasonal changes in salinity, floods, droughts, currents, storms, even the movements of the viewer…

The sea had no “real” blue. And the camp was no “real” camp. There was a mélange of potent forces best described as “futurity”. They were futuring here, and the future was a process, not a destination.

The two teams used the same technique in their experiments. They managed to do what had previously been thought impossible: they probed reality without disturbing it. Not disturbing it is the quantum-mechanical equivalent of not really looking. So they were able to show that the universe does indeed exist when it is not being observed.

[...]

The only mathematically consistent explanation known for this result is therefore Hardy’s. The weird things he predicted are real and they can, indeed, only be seen by people who are not looking. Dr Yokota and his colleagues went so far as to call their results “preposterous”. Niels Bohr, no doubt, would have been delighted.

I’m not looking, honest! - The Economist

Evolved individuals know that people who are not intuitive can be dangerous to work with, since they are guided solely by the current appearance of things that are in reality, changing. Evolved individuals seek out others who have intuition and vision - a form of intelligence that comes from cultivating the instincts, observing the direction of change, apprehending the evolution of ideas.

— Lao Tzu

via swissmiss, who got it via andybons

Kenji is entirely like and actual human (except that he only uses cat and dog noises to communicate):

“Despite our initial enthusiasm, it has become clear that Kenji’s impulses and behavior are not entirely rational or genuine,” conceded Dr. Takahashi.

Robot Programmed to Love Goes too Far

[clarification: the original article is a fake]

The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.

point #6 (from a total of 13) of The Cult of Done Manifesto

“To ‘follow’ someone is to have a fantasy of who this person you’re following is, and you use it as a map reference or signpost to guide your own life because you are lost,” says James. “I would guess that the typical profile of a ‘follower’ is someone who is young and who feels marginalised, empty and pointless. They don’t have an inner life,” he says.

A load of Twitter - Times Online

It never takes longer than a few minutes, whenever they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That’s what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts.

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.

found while futzing around on the Internet Anagram Server

An American woman listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the world’s longest fingernails has had them broken off in a car crash.

Lee Redmond from Salt Lake City, Utah, had not cut her nails since 1979.

Their combined length was more than 28ft (8.5m), with the longest nail - on her right thumb - measuring 2ft 11in (89cm), Guinness said.

from BBC News - Record nails broken in car crash

This might turn into an interesting repository of business ideas.

You must post your business plan here on my blog where I expect other people can and will comment on it. I also expect that other people will steal the idea and use it elsewhere. That is the idea. Call this an open source funding environment.

If its a good idea and worth funding, we want it replicated elsewhere. The idea is not just to help you, but to figure out how to help the economy through hard work and ingenuity. If you come up with the idea and get funding, you have a head start. If you execute better than others, you could possibly make money at it. As you will see from the rules below, these are going to be businesses that are mostly driven by sweat equity.

The Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan - blog maverick

Thankfully for humans, courtship doesn't involve figuring out which partner is male and female. Not so for the hermaphroditic flatworm, who settle their similarities with penis jousting contests. The winner gets to be the man in the relationship.

Penis Jousting and 7 Other Great Animal Mating Rituals - Wired Science from Wired.com (seen in the Web Clip box while reading work e-mail; I kid you not)

But people are often successful not despite their dysfunctions but because of them. Obsessions are one of the greatest telltale signs of success. Understand a persons obsessions and you will understand her natural motivation. The thing for which she would walk to the end of the earth.

via The Interview Question You Should Always Ask - HarvardBusiness.org

Me <3 Hacker Newss:

Ask HN: Is it always this meta?: I'm rather new around here, so I don't know the full history of HN. Are there always so many meta discussions going on? Is this just a phase?

[Answer by mechanical_fish] Yes and no. This is the community's immune response. A couple of weeks after an influx of new users, the community stages a massive navel-gazing festival designed to test the new folks' mettle.

Once we shake off the people who don't really want to be here, we'll return to our usual diet of startup announcements, website reviews, complaints about techcrunch, artfully disguised attempts to reignite holy wars so that we can all spectate, and questions that have been asked every six months since the beginning of the site. Not to mention: news and information.

— NOTICE: This has been an attempt at humor. Do not refer to it as a “theory”, lest ye be mocked. Please phrase replies in haiku form.

Hacker News | Ask HN: Is it always this meta?

Nice to see that my (extended) team builds not entirely useless stuff.

Google Docs is the single platform that enabled Obama's effective organization an historic fundraising success. The Obama campaign was aware that this had become a major player in the grassroots space, sparking a revolution in the way people self-organize and conduct grassroots efforts and political campaigns. Since a campaign is constantly on a quest for money and voters, Obama's grassroots organization valued agility over hierarchy; online collaboration became a necessity.

[...]

Time was — and is — important. Being able to access something where and when you want to is even more important. Google understands that collaboration will save time, but not cut corners. Google recognizes political campaigns spend more time away from their computers and out on the political campaign trail. Knocking on doors with a mobile device in hand, pulling information in real time from a Google Doc is the future for all successful campaigns. Probably not Facebook.

Eric Kuhn: The 2008 Google Docs Campaign

The Turritopsis Nutricula is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature.

Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die.

Telegraph: ‘Immortal’ jellyfish swarming across the world, via Warren Ellis

Because shoes should only be used when absolutely necessary.

Americans don’t own the most cars. They don’t even come into the top 10. Heh.

From The Economist’s daily chart.

Design should be mastered as a liberal art before it is considered as a business tool. Great design comes from an artistic or cultural impulse, not from a focus group. Great design starts by creating meaningful stories with a POV, not by building a bulletproof business case. Great design creates new culture, not just clever new utilities. Great Design is about meaning first, the market second.

Scott Klinker in Design vs Innovation, The Cranbook / IIT Debate (via Bruce Sterling)

Much to my surprise, many Europeans* seem blissfully unaware of the constant flow of illegal African immigrants that every month try to reach the coasts of the Canary Islands, southern Spain or Malta. In overcrowded crumbling rowboats, with heavily pregnant women and sometimes even children, they try to make it into the European Union, hoping to find better lives there.

Levels of illegal immigration to the Canary Islands alone dropped to 13,424 last year, down from a peak of nearly 32,000 in 2006. Authorities in southern European nations are still struggling however, to patrol for, care for, to process and repatriate this continuing flow of immigrants.

The Big Picture published yesterday a moving collection of pictures that illustrate the issue. For the Spaniards in my (teeny weeny) audience, these images are nothing new. For the rest of you, enjoy: African Immigration to Europe - The Big Picture

* I suspect most North Americans are unaware of this problem too. But they have their own southern border to worry about.

From Peteris Krumins’ blog post My Job Interview at Google:

[...] I was contacted by a recruiter at Google. The email said:

“I recruit top notch Software Engineering talent at Google. I recently came across your name as a possible world class Engineer and am intrigued to know more about you. I promise to exchange some detailed info about us as well.”

“Interested to hear more? Want to be an impact player at Google? Then please respond with a current (English) copy of your resume and I’ll be happy to call you and discuss.”

Top notch I can live with. But “possible world class”, to be an “impact player”? Really?

Luckily I got a much more sensible and human e-mail from my sourcer when I was contacted by Google 3,5 years ago. If I would have received something like the above, I would have probably dismissed Google as a bunch of uninteresting, navel-gazing, full-of-hot-air brats. Here is hoping that not all our recruiters use this kind of language when approaching potential candidates.

Beautiful photographic summary of preparations for Obama’s inauguration tomorrow:
Inaugural preparations - The Big Picture - Boston.com

This post from Penelope Trunk is so awesome you all should go and read it. Penelope deconstructs Tim Ferris‘ “i am so cool, i work only 4 hours and am famous and rich and fit” image, plus gives some good time-management tips.

It's childish. It's a childish, semantic game. And it reminds me of him winning the Chinese National Kickboxing Championships by leveraging a little-known rule that people are disqualified if they stop outside the box. So he pushed each of his opponents outside the box to win.

He is winning the I-work-less-than-you game with a similarly questionable method: semantics.

5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss (found via Ade’s friendfeed)

Somebody give this guy a gift certificate for some therapy sessions.

Q: We've talked about Google, we've talked about the economy. Which actually occupies more of your time in terms of which do you spend your time worrying about?

Ballmer: Well in general, the answer is: Google, Google, Google, Google, Google.

Confirmed (again): Ballmer is not worried about competitors building better stuff than Microsoft; he is just worried about Google, no matter what Google does.

Full interview at: Ballmer: Google, Google, the economy, Google | Beyond Binary - CNET News