Notes:
- Photo: John Roberts (via Ali Adnan. Thank you Ali.)
- Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again
Tag: Photography
Walking. And quivering with guilt.
I print “Thank you!” on the hotel note pad and lean into the pen on the exclamation mark. Maybe I should add another.
I decide against it.
I count out the bills. And, Pause. Then I add a few more. They rest in my hand, feather-like and heavy – shackled to a ship’s anchor and dragging me down to Earth. These same bills passing through thousands of hands before me. Maybe I should add another.
I add another.
I stack the bills neatly on the Note below the Thank You! I place the pen on top of the stack. I pause to take measure, I’m unsettled.
I step away, taking one last look around the room for anything left behind.
I grab my 2-wheel carry on and step out the door, removing the ‘Do Not Disturb‘ sign and affixing it to the inside of the door.
I walk. The long, narrow, dimly lit corridor adds to the weight of my shoulder bag. Continue reading “Walking. And quivering with guilt.”
Miracle? All of it.
Fashionable descriptions of the inevitable triumph of machine intelligence (over man) contain many critical biases and assumptions that could derail them from turning into reality. […]
Our brains use energy at a rate of about 20 watts. If you wanted to upload yourself intact into a machine using current computing technology, you’d need a power supply roughly the same as that generated by the Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric plant in China, the biggest in the world. To take our species, all 7.3 billion living minds, to machine form would require an energy flow of at least 140,000 petawatts. That’s about 800 times the total solar power hitting the top of Earth’s atmosphere. Clearly human transcendence might be a way off.
~ Caleb Scharf, Where Do Minds Belong
Find more at Steve Layman’s Blog: A Power Shortage. (Thank you Steve)
Notes:
- Related Posts: Miracle? All of it.
- Drawing: HongBo 洪波 (Chinese, Shanghai, China) – Untitled, 2011 – Drawings: Pastels. Source: Thank you Your Eyes Blaze Out
- Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
And he reads to them, as he does every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet.
And he reads to them, as he does every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet. There are stories he has never heard of, and others he has known as a child, these stepping stones that are there for everyone. What is the real meaning of these stories, he wonders, of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination: princes, woodcutters, honest fishermen who live in hovels. He wants his children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, the habit which gives us shape. He wants them to know both degradation and sainthood, the one without humiliation, the other without ignorance. He is preparing them for this voyage. It is as if there is only a single hour, and in that hour all the provender must be gathered, all the advice offered. He longs for the one line to give them that they will always remember, that will embrace everything, that will point the way, but he cannot find the line, he cannot recognize it. It is more precious, he knows, than anything else they might own, but he does not have it. Instead, in his even, sensuous voice he laves them in the petty myths of Europe, of snowy Russia, the East.
~ James Salter, Light Years
Monday Morning: Flashflashflashes
The light beyond my eyes flashflashflashes
with a hundred futures for me.
Doctor.
Ship’s captain.
Forest ranger.
Librarian.
Beloved of that man or that women or those children or those people who voted for me or who painted my picture.
Poet.
Acrobat.
Engineer.
Friend.
Guardian.
Avenging whirlwind.
A million futures –
not all pretty,
not all long,
but all of them mine.
I do have a choice.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
Notes:
- Quote: Hidden Sanctuary
- Photo: Anka Zhuraleva (via Artists Inspire Artists) and bio
- Related Posts: Anka Zhuraleva