I was like: I’ve only heard one person play the mandolin like that - Chris Thile. Sure enough, seems like he’s teamed up with a crew of super talented musician under the banner of Punch Brothers to make some awesome, toe-tapping music. Tracing down these musical paths promises to provide hours of enjoyment. :)
(via sds, via hilker)
…[T]ime affluence is a better predictor of well-being than material affluence. — Tal Ben Shahar, from No Time for Happiness
This looks like it could come in handy - moldable silicon which sets at room temperature…hmmm, the possibilities… :) Sugru.
(via swissmiss, via projectsugru)
Come on snow, come on snow!… :)
(via sds, via clubmonaco, Photo by Lee Rentz. -Wit & Delight
catholicsoul:
An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut. In direct connection with this question of mythology and human belief the point may roughly be put thus: An extraordinary idea has arisen that the best critic of religious institutions is the man who talks coldly about religion. Nobody supposes that the best critic of music is the man who talks coldly about music. Within reasonable bounds, the more excited the musician is about music, the more he is likely to be right about it. Nobody thinks a man a correct judge of poetry because he looks down on poems. But there is an idea that a man is a correct judge of religion because he looks down on religions. Now, folklore and primitive faiths, and all such things are of the nature of music and poetry in this respect — that the actual language and symbols they employ require not only an understanding, they require what the Bible very finely calls an understanding heart. You must be a little moved in your emotions even to understand them at all; you must have a heart in order to make head or tail of them. Consequently, whenever I hear on these occasions that beliefs are being discussed scientifically and calmly, I know that they are being discussed wrong. Even a false religion is too genuine a thing to be discussed calmly. G.K. CHESTERTON
If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now — not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground — would be to throw down our weapons, and the betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. — C. S. Lewis, from “Learning in War-Time,” a sermon preached in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, in 1939 (via ayjay)
Three steps to yumminess. :)
Um…so…wow…the call of the wild.
sds:
theimmovabilityoftruth:
About as good as you can get without actually being at Yosemite.
This is worship.
by yours truly
<h1>Surrender Facebook</h1>
One of the best reflections I’ve seen on social media.
marylikesbagels:
I have had a facebook account for about 4 years. Facebook is supposed to be about reconnecting and keeping in touch with friends, and yet, I cannot think of a single way in which facebook has helped me do this. The idea of a “facebook friend” is highly superficial. It makes one think as though they have relationships with people they, in reality, do not have relationships with. My real friendships are characterized by actually talking and spending time with people. Sure, we may have facebook conversations, but these are merely a supplement to our friendship —if even that. I have friends from back home and friends from college. I consider myself to be a friendly person with a lot of friends, but not 400+ friends. After a few times of meeting someone, it is common to request the other person on facebook. By becoming facebook friends, I now have a detailed access to their life. I can see what they are doing, who they are doing it with, and what they look like doing it. Though I can view all of this information at ease, I was not actually a part of any of it. Facebook makes people feel as though they know someone that they do not really know.Through conversation and shared experiences, acquaintances become friends. Through facebook, I can enter into all of these experiences by virtue of the fact that someone trusts/ likes me enough grant me access their profile content.. Yet, by “sharing” in these experiences, I am not actually deepening my friendship with any one. I think facebook also, inadvertantly promotes jealousy and envy. I constantly know what other people are up to and who they are hanging out with. But few of the things I see talked about on facebook actually involve me. Scrolling through my facebook newsfeed is like listening to my friends discuss a party that I was not invited to. It makes me feel as though everyone is having fun without you —which is true! Of the 7 billion people who are having fun in the world, 99.99% are having fun without me. Why? Because they don’t know me, or they aren’t friends with me. Facebook makes us think we are friends with people that we are not friends with. We see in real time all that is happening without us, and we feel bad for being left out of things that we have no reason to be a part of anyways. More than anything, I think facebook functions as a virtual photo album. But the worst part is, we are all too aware of the fact. We know that every social event will be documented and immortalized for all of our friends and enemies to see on the internet. Therefore, we better make sure we look like we are having a good time and are looking good doing it. Girls, biologically, have a greater sensitivity to color and texture than boys do. I think this is part of the reason why girls, more-so than guys, are always comparing themselves physically with one another. Facebook, by its constant stream of photos, only encourages this toxic behavior. For all the time I spend on facebook each week, I don’t think I have grown from it in any way as a person. I can’t say the same for tumblr. Tumblr has helped me improve my writing and my thinking. It has helped me solidify my opinions or caused me to rethink them. But facebook, has only sucked time and energy from my already busy schedule and cluttered mind. Because facebook is constantly filling us in on what others are doing, the need to “keep up with the Jones’s” only intensifies. So much of facebook is about being “seen.” It gives us this heightened awareness that we are being watched. Well in the olden days, the feeling of being watched meant you were in danger and so your fight or flight instinct kicked in. No wonder the internet stresses me out. It is not important for people to see what I am doing. It’s not that I am hiding something or feel as though my privacy is being invaded. Quite the contrary. Facebook elevates my need to be seen. It feeds into my need for attention, turning it into an irrational appetite. I think having a facebook actually makes it harder to be content with myself because I am so aware of being seen. I know it may seem to some as though I am overdramatizing what has become the norm of social interaction. Maybe. But I think there are real consequences to the cyber-world of social media. I want my relationships with be authentic and to grow authentically. I want to learn about people because they are telling my about themselves, not because they are giving my access to their personal files. I want to spend time with real people and not with their pictures and status updates. I have given a friend my username and password and asked him to delete my account and change my password. Maybe some day I’ll be back, but for now, I surrender facebook.
For reflection.
When actions are robbed of consequence, choices are robbed of significance, and freedom becomes meaningless. — yours truly
My Tools | Michael Hyatt
davemorin:
The next generation Nest thermostat
Okay, so who knew thermostats were the frontier of innovation? :)
by yours truly
What a world full of wonder…
marylikesbagels:
Earth and Space category highly commended: The Milky Way View from the Piton de l’Eau, Reunion Island by Luc Perrot (Reunion Island). The Milky Way arches over a mirror-like lake on the island of Reunion. At the bottom of the picture Piton des Neiges, the highest peak of Reunion Island, can be seen. The bright patch to the left of the image marks the bulge of stars at the heart of our Galaxy. The photographer waited two years before all the combined conditions were favourable to succeed with this photo. Picture: Luc Perrot
marylikesbagels:
A spoken-word piece about the Catholic Church’s view on same-sex attraction. He really gets to the heart of the matter, but he packs it all in there very quickly. If you have any questions, please feel free to message me or even Fr. Pontifex himself. This is a topic that deserves a huge amount of sensitivity and compassion.
Early on in this I compared beginning to believe to falling in love, and the way that faith settles down in a life is also very like the way that the first dizzy-intense phase of attraction settles (if it does) into a relationship. Rapture develops into routine, a process which keeps its customary doubleness where religion is concerned. It’s both loss and gain together, with excitement dwindling and trust growing; like all human ties, it constricts at the same time as it supports, ruling out other choices by the very act of being a choice. And so as with any commitment, there are times when you notice the limit on your theoretical freedom more than you feel what the attachment is giving you, and then it tends to be habit, or the awareness of a promise given, that keeps you trying. God makes an elusive lover. The unequivocal blaze of His presence may come rarely or not at all, for years and years – and in any case cannot be commanded, will not ever present itself tamely to order. He-doesn’t-exist-the-bastard may be much more your daily experience than anything even faintly rapturous. And yet, and yet. He may come at any moment, when and how you least expect it, and that somehow slightly colours every moment in the mass of moments when he doesn’t come. And grace, you come to recognise, never stops, whether you presently feel it or not. You never stop doubting – how could you? – but you learn to live with doubt and faith unresolved, because unresolvable. So you don’t keep digging the relationship up to see how its roots are doing. You may have crises of faith but you don’t, on the whole, ask it to account for itself philosophically from first principles every morning, any more than you subject your relations with your human significant other to daily cost-benefit analysis. You accept it as one of the givens of your life. You learn from it the slow rewards of fidelity. You watch as the repetition of Christmases and Easters, births and deaths and resurrections, scratches on the linear time of your life a rough little model of His permanence. You discover that repetition itself, curiously, is not the enemy of spontaneity, but maybe even its enabler. Saying the same prayers again and again, pacing your body again and again through the set movements of faith, somehow helps keep the door ajar through which He may come. The words may strike you as ecclesiastical blah nine times in ten, or ninety-nine times in a hundred, and then be transformed, and then have the huge fresh wind blowing through them into your little closed room. And meanwhile you make faith your vantage point, your habitual place to stand. And you get used to the way the human landscape looks from there: re-oriented, re-organised, different. —
Francis Spufford, from Unapologetic (via ayjay)
Wow. I need to read this book.
(via sds)
Shakesbear
(via tastefully…)
The process in which well-defined and prioritized objectives are broken down into specific states and actions whose progress can be monitored and measured is not the reality of how people find fulfillment in their lives, create great art, establish great societies or build good businesses. — John Kay, in his book Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly