terribly

Plutarch: “I still grind, and that I do to gain my living…”

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Jan 022013
 

King Antigonus had not for a long time seen Cleanthes, the philosopher, said to him, “Do you still, Cleanthes, continue to grind?” “Yes, sir,” replied Cleanthes, “I still grind, and that I do to gain my living, and not to depart from philosophy.” How great and generous was the courage of this man, who, coming from the mill and the kneading-trough, did with the same hand which had been employed in turning the stone and moulding the dough, write of the nature of the gods, moon, stars, and sun.

Lawrence Krauss: “You are really a child of the stars”

 Books  Tagged with: ,
Dec 312012
 

Everything in your body, and everything you can see around you, is made up of tiny objects called atoms. Atoms come in different types called elements. Hydrogen, oxygen and carbon are three of the most important elements in your body.

[…]

How did those elements get into our bodies? The only way they could have got there, to make up all the material on our Earth, is if some of those stars exploded a long time ago, spewing all the elements from their cores into space. Then, about four and a half billion years ago, in our part of our galaxy, the material in space began to collapse. This is how the Sun was formed, and the solar system around it, as well as the material that forms all life on earth.

So, most of the atoms that now make up your body were created inside stars! The atoms in your left hand might have come from a different star from those in your right hand. You are really a child of the stars.

-from A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

Lewis Hyde: work is what we do by the hour

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Dec 182012
 

Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus–these are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it’s harder to quantify… Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms — these are labors.

Work is an intended activity that is accomplished through the will. A labor can be intended but only to the extent of doing the groundwork, or of not doing things that would clearly prevent the labor. Beyond that, labor has its own schedule.
…
There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, therefore, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work.

-From The Gift

Kurt Vonnegut: Practicing an art

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Dec 182012
 

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” — A Man Without a Country

Paul Krugman: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)

 Orts  Tagged with: ,
Nov 222012
 

“This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory and two useless but true theorems are proved.”

“Is space the Final Frontier of economics? Certainly this is only a first probe of the subject, but the possibilities are surely limitless. (In curved space-time, of course, this does not prevent the possibilities from being finite as well!). I have not even touched on the fascinating possibilities of interstellar finance, where spot and forward exchange markets will have to be supplemented by conditional present markets. Those of us working in this field are still a small band, but we know that the Force is with us.”

[www.princeton.edu]