« To the past
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Jul 23, 2010
A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.
Tim Keller (via azspot)
It’s a shame that more people of faith don’t allow the “[discard] after long reflection” advice to apply to their beliefs, not just their doubts.
(via danielholter)
Jul 23, 2010
Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.William Zinsser
Jul 23, 2010
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.Lin Yutang (via mnmal)
Jul 23, 2010
souffrance
La souffrance soulage la culpabilité, aussi la douleur qui apporte la vie dans le monde est-elle inconsciemment doublement enviable pour l’homme.
Joan Riviere et Melanie Kein, L’amour et la haine, Payot, 2001, Paris, Traduit de l’anglais par Annette Stronck, Titre Original : Love, Hate and Reparation, P.58.
Jul 19, 2010
In mathematics, an algebraic number is a complex number that is a root of a non-zero polynomial in one variable with rational (or equivalently, integer) coefficients.
Pictured above: Algebraic numbers colored by degree.
Jul 15, 2010
La première étude de l’homme qui veut être poète est sa propre connaissance, entière; il cherche son âme, il l’inspecte, Il la tente, I’apprend. Dès qu’il la sait, il doit la cultiver; cela semble simple: en tout cerveau s’accomplit un développement naturel; tant d’égoistes se proclament auteurs; il en est bien d’autres qui s’attribuent leur progrès intellectuel! - Mais il s’agit de faire l’âme monstrueuse: à l’instar des comprachicos, quoi! Imaginez un homme s’implantant et se cultivant des verrues sur le visage.
Je dis qu’il faut être voyant, se faire voyant.
Le Poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens. Toutes les formes d’amour, de souffrance, de folie; il cherche lui-même, il épuise en lui tous les poisons, pour n’en garder que les quintessences. Ineffable torture où il a besoin de toute la foi, de toute la force surhumaine, où il devient entre tous le grand malade, le grand criminel, le grand maudit, - et le suprême Savant! - Car il arrive à l’inconnu! Puisqu’il a cultivé son âme, déjà riche, plus qu’aucun! Il arrive à l’inconnu, et quand, affolé, il finirait par perdre l’intelligence de ses visions, il les a vues! Qu’il crève dans son bondissement par les choses inouïes et innombrables: viendront d’autres horribles travailleurs; ils commenceront par les horizons où l’autre s’est affaissé!
Translation:
The first task of the man who wants to be a poet is to study his own awareness of himself, in its entirety; he seeks out his soul, he inspects it, he tests it, he learns it. As soon as he knows it, he must cultivate it!… —But the problem is to make the soul into a monster, like the compachicos, you know? Think of a man grafting warts onto his face and growing them there.
I say you have to be a visionary, make yourself a visionary.
A Poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons and preserves their quintessence’s. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the Supreme Scientist!
— Les lettres du voyant (The Letters of the Seer), Rimbaud
Jul 13, 2010
The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse
Jul 12, 2010
This morning, as I was about to leave for work, my boyfriend danced into the kitchen singing a made up song consisting of only my name, over and over.
When he saw me, he turned red and said “Oh, you’re still here”.
Sneaking a peak in the daily routine of someone who really loves me GMH.
Jul 4, 2010
A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Russian poet)
Jul 4, 2010
FUCK YEAH MATH: not so fast, e^x
The cocky exponential function ex is strolling along the road insulting the functions he sees walking by. He scoffs at a wandering polynomial for the shortness of its Taylor series. He snickers at a passing smooth function of compact support and its glaring lack of a convergent power series about many of its points. He positively laughs as he passes |x| for being nondifferentiable at the origin. He smiles, thinking to himself, “Damn, it’s great to be ex. I’m real analytic everywhere. I’m my own derivative. I blow up faster than anybody and shrink faster too. All the other functions suck.”
Lost in his own egomania, he collides with the constant function 3, who is running in terror in the opposite direction.
“What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you look where you’re going?” demands ex. He then sees the fear in 3’s eyes and says “You look terrified!”
“I am!” says the panicky 3. “There’s a differential operator just around the corner. If he differentiates me, I’ll be reduced to nothing! I’ve got to get away!” With that, 3 continues to dash off.
“Stupid constant,” thinks ex. “I’ve got nothing to fear from a differential operator. He can keep differentiating me as long as he wants, and I’ll still be there.”
So he scouts off to find the operator and gloat in his smooth glory. He rounds the corner and defiantly introduces himself to the operator. “Hi. I’m ex.”
“Hi. I’m d / dy.”
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Notes and Quotes from my reading
Autodidact: n. A self-taught person.
[From Greek autodidaktos, auto: self + didaktos: taught; see didactic.]
Autodidact: n. A self-taught person.
[From Greek autodidaktos, auto: self + didaktos: taught; see didactic.]
My life as a curious Autodidact is © 2007-2010 Nazeeruddin Ikram
