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diff --git a/app/books/kindle.json b/app/books/kindle.json deleted file mode 100644 index f2924f0..0000000 --- a/app/books/kindle.json +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3165 +0,0 @@ -[ - { - "title": "Ender’s Game", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "Ender’s Game", - "author": "Orson Scott Card", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 342 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 5230 - ], - "date": "2012-12-16T06:03:11.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Freedom", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "business", - "title": "Freedom", - "author": "Daniel Suarez", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 5 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 64, - 64 - ], - "date": "2012-12-20T04:12:05.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. —Theodore Roosevelt in 1906", - "title": "Freedom", - "author": "Daniel Suarez", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 5 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 61, - 65 - ], - "date": "2012-12-20T04:12:28.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Kill Decision", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "Kill Decision", - "author": "Suarez, Daniel", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 18 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 268 - ], - "date": "2012-12-23T10:23:32.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "the information age was selective about its information, and the same industrial world that fueled the conflict", - "title": "Kill Decision", - "author": "Suarez, Daniel", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 115 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1760, - 1761 - ], - "date": "2012-12-24T15:58:09.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Of course, Odin knew a system like EITS was not intended to resolve conflicts. It was intended merely to manage them. To keep violence disorganized, channeled, and isolated long enough to permit uninterrupted resource extraction. Once that was finished, the locals would be left to their own devices again. Rinse and repeat, and you pretty much understood the conflict map of the globe. This system let them know more about the locals than the locals knew about themselves. And it was just the beginning.", - "title": "Kill Decision", - "author": "Suarez, Daniel", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 123 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1870, - 1873 - ], - "date": "2012-12-24T16:10:22.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Kill Decision", - "author": "Suarez, Daniel", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 206 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3153 - ], - "date": "2012-12-25T01:30:23.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Kill Decision", - "author": "Suarez, Daniel", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 232 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3557 - ], - "date": "2012-12-25T01:53:40.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Instapaper: Wednesday, Jan. 9", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "With the arrival of farming, Diamond argues, women were subjected to domestic drudgery; people started to hoard resources and wealth; and our proximity to animals triggered disease epidemics that still threaten to overwhelm us. “With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence,” he states.", - "title": "Instapaper: Wednesday, Jan. 9", - "author": "Instapaper", - "type": "Highlight", - "locationRange": [ - 387, - 390 - ], - "date": "2013-01-13T03:34:33.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Hobbit (Middle-Earth Universe)", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "The Hobbit (Middle-Earth Universe)", - "author": "J. R. R. Tolkien", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 248 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3800 - ], - "date": "2013-01-22T03:02:42.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "most of our understanding of human psychology is based on subjects who may be described by the acronym WEIRD: from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies.", - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "author": "Jared Diamond", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 22 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 335, - 337 - ], - "date": "2013-01-23T02:36:56.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Hence states need police, laws, and codes of morality to ensure that the inevitable constant encounters between strangers don’t routinely explode into fights. That need for police and laws and", - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "author": "Jared Diamond", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 25 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 370, - 371 - ], - "date": "2013-01-23T02:40:56.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "chiefdoms confront two new problems that bands or tribes did not. First, strangers in a chiefdom must be able to meet each other, to recognize each other as fellow but individually unfamiliar members of the same chiefdom, and to avoid bristling at territorial trespass and getting into a fight. Hence chiefdoms develop shared ideologies and political and religious identities often derived from the supposedly divine status of the chief. Second, there is now a recognized leader, the chief, who makes decisions, possesses recognized authority, claims a monopoly on the right to use force against his society’s members if necessary, and thereby ensures that strangers within the same chiefdom don’t fight each other.", - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "author": "Jared Diamond", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 31 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 466, - 471 - ], - "date": "2013-01-24T02:26:51.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "author": "Jared Diamond", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 53 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 799 - ], - "date": "2013-01-26T02:21:33.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "author": "Jared Diamond", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 58 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 881 - ], - "date": "2013-01-26T14:37:43.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "author": "Jared Diamond", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 26 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 396 - ], - "date": "2013-01-28T01:52:16.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "large", - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "author": "Jared Diamond", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 30 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 451, - 451 - ], - "date": "2013-01-28T01:55:21.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?", - "author": "Jared Diamond", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 64 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 973 - ], - "date": "2013-01-28T02:06:47.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings", - "author": "John Ronald Reuel Tolkien", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 23 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 341 - ], - "date": "2013-01-29T02:29:00.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Instapaper: Friday, Jan. 25", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "As the philosopher Colin McGinn has emphasized, your very inability to imagine a solution might reflect your cognitive limitations as an evolved creature. The point is that we have no reason to believe that we, as organisms whose brains are evolved and finite, can fathom the answer to every question that we can ask. All other species have cognitive limitations, why not us? So even if matter does give rise to mind, we might not be able to understand how.", - "title": "Instapaper: Friday, Jan. 25", - "author": "Instapaper", - "type": "Highlight", - "locationRange": [ - 361, - 364 - ], - "date": "2013-02-07T02:06:24.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The joyous cosmology: adventures in the chemistry of consciousness", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "It thus escaped our attention that the organism as a whole, largely unconscious, was using consciousness and reason to inform and control itself. We thought of our conscious intelligence as descending from a higher realm to take possession of a physical vehicle. We therefore failed to see it as an operation of the same formative process as the structure of nerves, muscles, veins, and bones---a structure so subtly ordered (that is, intelligent) that conscious thought is as yet far from being able to describe it.", - "title": "The joyous cosmology: adventures in the chemistry of consciousness", - "author": "Alan Watts", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 14 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 202, - 207 - ], - "date": "2013-02-11T03:27:45.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "We believe, then, that the mind controls the body, not that the body controls itself through the mind. Hence the ingrained prejudice that the mind should be independent of all physical aids to its working---despite microscopes, telescopes, cameras, scales, computers, books, works of art, alphabets, and all those physical tools apart from which it is doubtful whether there would be any mental life at all. At", - "title": "The joyous cosmology: adventures in the chemistry of consciousness", - "author": "Alan Watts", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 15 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 219, - 224 - ], - "date": "2013-02-11T03:30:05.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "In the Beginning_.was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, except that it's been turned upside down. In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it's the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks. So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we've evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands.", - "title": "In the Beginning_.was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson", - "type": "Highlight", - "locationRange": [ - 538, - 544 - ], - "date": "2013-04-27T01:19:34.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "In the Beginning_.was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson", - "type": "Bookmark", - "locationRange": [ - 773 - ], - "date": "2013-04-27T03:53:14.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "If Mark Twain were brought back to San Francisco today and dropped into one of these old seismically upgraded buildings, it would look just the same to him, with all the doors and windows in the same places--but if he stepped outside, he wouldn't recognize it. And--if he'd been brought back with his wits intact--he might question whether the building had been worth going to so much trouble to save. At some point, one must ask the question: is this really worth it, or should we maybe just tear it down and put up a good one? Should we throw another human wave of structural engineers at stabilizing the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or should we just let the damn thing fall over and build a tower that doesn't suck? Like an upgrade to an old building, cruft always seems like a good idea when the first layers of it go on--just routine maintenance, sound prudent management. This is especially true if (as it were) you never look into the cellar, or behind the drywall. But if you are a hacker who spends all his time looking at it from that point of view, cruft is fundamentally disgusting, and you can't avoid wanting to go after it with a crowbar. Or, better yet, simply walk out of the building--let the Leaning Tower of Pisa fall over--and go make a new one THAT DOESN'T LEAN.", - "title": "In the Beginning_.was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson", - "type": "Highlight", - "locationRange": [ - 1247, - 1255 - ], - "date": "2013-04-29T02:17:50.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Fool on the Hill: A Novel", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "‘The thing to remember, George,’ he used to say, ‘is that artists are magical beings. They’re the only people other than the gods who can grant immortality.’", - "title": "Fool on the Hill: A Novel", - "author": "Matt Ruff", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 12 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 179, - 180 - ], - "date": "2013-05-05T01:11:21.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Fool on the Hill: A Novel", - "author": "Matt Ruff", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 357 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 5467 - ], - "date": "2013-05-10T02:08:42.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "One Acre Homestead", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "Public education has a mission: to serve public interest. The public interest in our modern society means, above all, a single-minded focus on national economic goals, namely GDP/GNP growth. Young people in school are being trained to contribute to these national economic standards, both as consumers and as potential employees or business owners. To a lesser extent, students are there to boost US ranks in international competitions over who has the smartest kids—another way to boost our world economic standing. This attitude trickles down. Now parents truly seem to believe that their children must measure up to these national standards, first and foremost, or something is wrong. Many parents are afraid to homeschool their children because they fear the requirements they have to meet to prove their children are learning.", - "title": "One Acre Homestead", - "author": "McDonald, Sara Simmons", - "type": "Highlight", - "locationRange": [ - 1396, - 1402 - ], - "date": "2013-05-14T00:59:22.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "It is an unquestioned cultural assumption in developed countries that your food will come from the grocery store, and all of your household supplies will be brought in from some distant source. In his essay “Feminism, The Body, and The Machine,” Wendell Berry observes, “The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere.”", - "title": "One Acre Homestead", - "author": "McDonald, Sara Simmons", - "type": "Highlight", - "locationRange": [ - 1420, - 1426 - ], - "date": "2013-05-14T00:59:52.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "I, personally, side with Wendell Berry and other authors, who assert that the home is the basic economic unit—the foundation on which the rest of capitalist society is based. If we cannot invest ourselves in our own homes, then where are we headed as a society? In truth, the concept of home is gender-neutral and universally desirable. The home should function well as a symbol of security. While security is never guaranteed, an insecure home is no good place to be. Home economics is, at its very basis, the study and practice of making a secure and functioning home.", - "title": "One Acre Homestead", - "author": "McDonald, Sara Simmons", - "type": "Highlight", - "locationRange": [ - 1428, - 1432 - ], - "date": "2013-05-14T01:00:26.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "In economic terms, declining marginal value means that every extra hour of work provides less benefit than the previous hour. This is especially true if you have other ways to use your time. If the other things you’d do with that 20 surplus hours a week have profit potential, then there is a monetary opportunity cost for working an extra 20 hours per week. The opportunity cost is the lost profit from other ventures, and should be subtracted directly from the monetary compensation for those 20 hours per week.", - "title": "One Acre Homestead", - "author": "McDonald, Sara Simmons", - "type": "Highlight", - "locationRange": [ - 1450, - 1455 - ], - "date": "2013-05-14T01:02:06.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy", - "author": "Matt Ruff", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 160 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2441 - ], - "date": "2013-05-17T02:33:42.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy", - "author": "Matt Ruff", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 160 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2441 - ], - "date": "2013-05-17T02:33:42.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "M. M. Ballou’s Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain.", - "title": "Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy", - "author": "Matt Ruff", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 186 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2846, - 2846 - ], - "date": "2013-05-24T03:01:36.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "“you don’t disprove someone’s pessimism by adding up good and evil on a dessert napkin to see which is the greater total. Hope’s a choice, not a sum; you can have as much of it as you damn well feel like having, regardless of actual circumstances.", - "title": "Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy", - "author": "Matt Ruff", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 189 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2890, - 2891 - ], - "date": "2013-05-24T03:05:37.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy", - "author": "Matt Ruff", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 252 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3854 - ], - "date": "2013-05-26T01:49:18.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "Today, the average CEO in the United States makes more in a day than the average worker makes in year. This isn’t said to fuel envy of the wealthy and demand a piece of the pile for the poor. Rather, it’s to point out that while absolute poverty deprives our bodies of necessities, relative poverty—being so much poorer than people no smarter or more willing to work than we are—makes us dissatisfied with our lot in life no matter how much we have. It corrodes society and the psyche—saps our belief in justice and fairness and hope. It makes us poor amidst plenty. We feel left out, lonely10 and are more likely to give up on the dream that we can have a better life than our parents.", - "title": "Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century", - "author": "Vicki Robin;Joe Dominguez;Monique Tilford", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 15 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 217, - 222 - ], - "date": "2013-07-11T02:35:42.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The perfect work life would offer enough challenge to be interesting. Enough ease to be enjoyable. Enough camaraderie to be nourishing. Enough solitude to be productive. Enough hours at work to get the job done. Enough leisure to feel refreshed. Enough service to feel needed. Enough silliness to have fun. And enough money to pay the bills . . . and then some.", - "title": "Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century", - "author": "Vicki Robin;Joe Dominguez;Monique Tilford", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 36 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 544, - 547 - ], - "date": "2013-07-11T02:56:31.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The Poverty of Affluence,", - "title": "Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century", - "author": "Vicki Robin;Joe Dominguez;Monique Tilford", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 47 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 706, - 706 - ], - "date": "2013-07-12T02:23:47.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century", - "author": "Vicki Robin;Joe Dominguez;Monique Tilford", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 95 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1445 - ], - "date": "2013-07-15T02:13:50.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "For many of us, however, “growing up” has meant outgrowing our dreams. The aspiration to write a great book has shrunk to writing advertising copy. The dream of being an inspiring preacher has evolved into being an administrator and a mediator between the factions in the congregation. Instead of really knowing who their patients are, how their patients live or the challenges in their lives, doctors today are plagued with back-to-back fifteen-minute patient visits and malpractice suits. The dream of traveling around the world becomes two weeks a year of hitting the tourist traps. Living a fulfilling and meaningful life seems almost impossible, given the requirements of simply meeting day-to-day needs and problems. Yet, at one time or another practically every one of us has had a dream of what we wanted our lives to be. People with a diagnosis of cancer often get that divorce or take the trip they’ve been dreaming about or take up a new hobby that’s been patiently waiting for its time in the sun.", - "title": "Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century", - "author": "Vicki Robin;Joe Dominguez;Monique Tilford", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 142 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2166, - 2173 - ], - "date": "2013-07-16T18:09:22.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "◆What did you want to be when you grew up? ◆What have you always wanted to do that you haven’t yet done? ◆What have you done in your life that you are really proud of? ◆If you knew you were going to die within a year, how would you spend that year? ◆What brings you the most fulfillment—and how is that related to money? ◆If you didn’t have to work for a living, what would you do with your time?", - "title": "Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century", - "author": "Vicki Robin;Joe Dominguez;Monique Tilford", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 143 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2178, - 2182 - ], - "date": "2013-07-17T02:20:25.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Information Diet", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "In 1995, in the very early days of the World Wide Web, Clifford Stoll wrote in Silicon Snake Oil (Anchor), “Computers force us into creating with our minds and prevent us from making things with our hands. They dull the skills we use in everyday life.” Keller, Stoll, and Carr all point to something interesting: new technologies do create anthropological changes in society. Yet", - "title": "The Information Diet", - "author": "Clay A. Johnson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 32 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 474, - 477 - ], - "date": "2013-07-22T01:41:23.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Westen and his colleagues found that when these subjects processed “emotionally threatening information” about their preferred candidates, the parts of the brain associated with reasoning shut down and the parts responsible for emotions flared up.[41] Westen’s research indicates that once we grow biased enough, we lose our capacity to change our minds.", - "title": "The Information Diet", - "author": "Clay A. Johnson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 60 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 915, - 918 - ], - "date": "2013-07-22T02:47:14.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "We already know that things like confirmation bias make us seek out information that we agree with. But it’s also the case that once we’re entrenched in a belief, the facts will not change our minds.", - "title": "The Information Diet", - "author": "Clay A. Johnson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 61 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 927, - 928 - ], - "date": "2013-07-22T02:47:32.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "“Why do humans reason?,”[43] they argue instead that “reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.” Mercier and Sperber argue that our minds may have evolved to value persuasion over truth. It certainly is plausible— human beings are social animals, and persuasion is a form of social power.", - "title": "The Information Diet", - "author": "Clay A. Johnson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 62 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 937, - 941 - ], - "date": "2013-07-22T02:48:44.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Back in 1954, psychologist James Olds found that if he allowed a rat to pull a lever and administer a shock to its own lateral hypothalamus, a shock that produced intense pleasure, the rat would keep pressing the lever, over and over again, until it died. He found that “the control exercised over the animal’s behavior by means of this reward is extreme, possibly exceeding that exercised by any other reward previously used in animal experimentation.”[48] This launched the study of brain stimulation reinforcement, which has been shown to exist in all species tested, including humans. At the heart of brain stimulus reinforcement is a neurotransmitter called dopamine.", - "title": "The Information Diet", - "author": "Clay A. Johnson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 68 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1032, - 1038 - ], - "date": "2013-07-22T02:52:39.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "2007, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists—the last major scientific body to reject climate change’s existence and cause— changed its mind. Climate scientists reached consensus: global warming is “unequivocal” and mankind is the primary cause.[54] Since then, no recognized scientific body has dissented from the theory[55] or rejected the idea of climate change. In the five years since consensus was reached by the scientific community, the number of people doubting climate change’s occurrence has increased. When the battle for scientific minds ended, the doubt production machines shifted into overdrive.", - "title": "The Information Diet", - "author": "Clay A. Johnson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 74 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1120, - 1127 - ], - "date": "2013-07-22T02:58:37.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Diamond Age", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "\"Common as the air\" meant something worthless, but Hackworth knew that every breath of air that Fiona drew, lying in her little bed at night, just a silver glow in the moonlight, was used by her body to make skin and hair and bones. The air became Fiona, and deserving- no, demanding- of love. Ordering matter was the sole endeavor of Life, whether it was a jumble of self-replicating molecules in the primordial ocean, or a steam-powered English mill turning weeds into clothing, or Fiona lying in her bed turning air into Fiona.", - "title": "The Diamond Age", - "author": "Neal Stephenson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 78 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1188, - 1192 - ], - "date": "2013-07-25T09:09:41.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The ancients who wished to demonstrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extention of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.", - "title": "The Diamond Age", - "author": "Neal Stephenson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 295 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4517, - 4522 - ], - "date": "2013-07-27T03:20:10.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "\"the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people-and this is true whether or not they are well-educated-is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations-in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.", - "title": "The Diamond Age", - "author": "Neal Stephenson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 338 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 5166, - 5169 - ], - "date": "2013-07-27T17:47:17.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "\"Precisely. The names are pulled out of a hat. The participants have only a few hours' warning. Here, the ritual is done with a cliff and a rope, because there happened to be a cliff in the vicinity. In other R.D.R. nodes, the mechanism might be different. For example, person A might go into a room, take a pistol out of a box, load it with live ammunition, put it back in the box, and then leave the room for ten minutes. During that time, person B is supposed to enter the room and replace the live ammunition with a dummy clip having the same weight. Then person A comes back into the room, puts the gun to his head, and pulls the trigger.\" \"But person A has no way of knowing whether person B has done his job?\" \"Exactly.\" \"What is the role of the third person?\" \"A proctor. An official of the R.D.R. who sees to it that the two participants don't try to communicate.\" \"How frequently must they undergo this ritual?\" \"As frequently as their name comes up at random, perhaps once every couple of years,\" Hackworth said. \"It's a way of creating mutual dependency. These people know they can trust each other. In a tribe such as the F.D.R., whose view of the universe contains no absolutes, this ritual creates an artificial absolute.\"", - "title": "The Diamond Age", - "author": "Neal Stephenson", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 453 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 6932, - 6944 - ], - "date": "2013-07-30T03:47:44.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Man's Search for Meaning", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to “be happy.” But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.", - "title": "Man's Search for Meaning", - "author": "Viktor Frankl", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 112 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1714, - 1718 - ], - "date": "2013-11-12T02:38:49.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon—laughter. If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Doing so would be the same as urging people posed in front of a camera to say “cheese,” only to find that in the finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial smiles. In logotherapy, such a behavior pattern is called “hyper-intention.” It plays an important role in the causation of sexual neurosis, be it frigidity or impotence. The more a patient, instead of forgetting himself through giving himself, directly strives for orgasm, i.e., sexual pleasure, the more this pur- suit of sexual pleasure becomes self-defeating. Indeed, what is called “the pleasure principle” is, rather, a fun-spoiler.", - "title": "Man's Search for Meaning", - "author": "Viktor Frankl", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 113 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1718, - 1724 - ], - "date": "2013-11-12T02:39:17.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "As for the third issue, addiction, I am reminded of the findings presented by Annemarie von Forstmeyer who noted that, as evidenced by tests and statistics, 90 percent of the alcoholics she studied had suffered from an abysmal feeling of meaninglessness. Of the drug addicts studied by Stanley Krippner, 100 percent believed that “things seemed meaningless.”", - "title": "Man's Search for Meaning", - "author": "Viktor Frankl", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 116 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1774, - 1776 - ], - "date": "2013-11-12T02:44:26.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "To invoke an analogy, consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn’t it the same with life? Doesn’t the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? And doesn’t this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual’s knowledge and belief?", - "title": "Man's Search for Meaning", - "author": "Viktor Frankl", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 117 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1780, - 1785 - ], - "date": "2013-11-12T02:46:34.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "As logotherapy teaches, there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love. Edith Weisskopf-Joelson observed in this context that the logotherapeutic “notion that experiencing can be as valuable as achieving is therapeutic because it compensates for our one-sided emphasis on the external world of achievement at the expense of the internal world of experience.”", - "title": "Man's Search for Meaning", - "author": "Viktor Frankl", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 118 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1802, - 1805 - ], - "date": "2013-11-12T02:48:01.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.", - "title": "Man's Search for Meaning", - "author": "Viktor Frankl", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 118 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1806, - 1808 - ], - "date": "2013-11-12T02:48:20.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "You may be prone to blame me for invoking examples that are the exceptions to the rule. “Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt” (but everything great is just as diffcult to realize as it is rare to find) reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza. You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to “saints.” Wouldn’t it suffce just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.", - "title": "Man's Search for Meaning", - "author": "Viktor Frankl", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 125 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1900, - 1904 - ], - "date": "2013-11-12T02:57:47.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "Secondary roads are preferred. Paved county roads are the best, state highways are next. Freeways are the worst. We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and dont get swung from side to side in any compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where youre from and how long youve been riding. It was some years ago that my wife and I and our friends first began to catch on to these roads. We took them once in a while for variety or for a shortcut to another main highway, and each time the scenery was grand and we left the road with a feeling of relaxation and enjoyment. We did this time after time before realizing what should have been obvious: these roads are truly different from the main ones. The whole pace of life and personality of the people who live along them are different. Theyre not going anywhere. Theyre not too busy to be courteous. The hereness and nowness of things is something they know all about. Its the others, the ones who moved to the cities years ago and their lost offspring, who have all but forgotten it. The discovery was a real find. Ive wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didnt see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, Im looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. But once we caught on, of course, nothing could keep us off these roads, weekends, evenings, vacations. We have become real secondary-road motorcycle buffs and found there are things you learn as you go. We have learned how to spot the good ones on a map, for example. If the line wiggles, thats good. That means hills. If it appears to be the main route from a town to a city, thats bad. The best ones always connect nowhere with nowhere and have an alternate that gets you there quicker. If you are going northeast from a large town you never go straight out of town for any long distance. You go out and then start jogging north, then east, then north again, and soon you are on a secondary route that only the local people use. The main skill is to keep from getting lost. Since the roads are used only by local people who know them by sight nobody complains if the junctions arent posted. And often they arent. When they are its usually a small sign hiding unobtrusively in the weeds and thats all. County-road-sign makers seldom tell you twice. If you miss that sign in the weeds thats your problem, not theirs. Moreover, you discover that the highway maps are often inaccurate about county roads. And from time to time you find your “county road” takes you onto a two-rutter and then a single rutter and then into a pasture and stops, or else it takes you into some farmers backyard. So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesnt show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to “get somewhere” it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 5 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 46, - 76 - ], - "date": "2013-11-12T03:10:22.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "You follow these little discrepancies long enough and they sometimes open up into huge revelations. There was just a feeling on my part that this was something a little bigger than I wanted to take on without thinking about it, and I turned instead to my usual habit of trying to extract causes and effects to see what was involved that could possibly lead to such an impasse between Johns view of that lovely shim and my own. This comes up all the time in mechanical work. A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 58 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 874, - 878 - ], - "date": "2013-11-15T03:36:47.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " At first this difference seemed fairly minor, but then it grew-and grew-and grew-until I began to see why I missed it. Some things you miss because theyre so tiny you overlook them. But some things you dont see because theyre so huge. We were both looking at the same thing, seeing the same thing, talking about the same thing, thinking about the same thing, except he was looking, seeing, talking and thinking from a completely different dimension.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 59 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 887, - 891 - ], - "date": "2013-11-15T03:38:18.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. Theres so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 105 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1598, - 1603 - ], - "date": "2013-11-17T01:56:40.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " In the final category, conclusions, skill comes in stating no more than the experiment has proved. It hasnt proved that when he fixes the electrical system the motorcycle will start. There may be other things wrong. But he does know that the motorcycle isnt going to run until the electrical system is working and he sets up the next formal question: “Solve problem: what is wrong with the electrical system?”", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 114 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1745, - 1748 - ], - "date": "2013-12-12T02:27:41.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " But there it was, the whole history of science, a clear story of continuously new and changing explanations of old facts. The time spans of permanence seemed completely random he could see no order in them. Some scientific truths seemed to last for centuries, others for less than a year. Scientific truth was not dogma, good for eternity, but a temporal quantitative entity that could be studied like anything else. He studied scientific truths, then became upset even more by the apparent cause of their temporal condition. It looked as though the time spans of scientific truths are an inverse function of the intensity of scientific effort. Thus the scientific truths of the twentieth century seem to have a much shorter life-span than those of the last century because scientific activity is now much greater. If, in the next century, scientific activity increases tenfold, then the life expectancy of any scientific truth can be expected to drop to perhaps one-tenth as long as now. What shortens the life-span of the existing truth is the volume of hypotheses offered to replace it; the more the hypotheses, the shorter the time span of the truth. And what seems to be causing the number of hypotheses to grow in recent decades seems to be nothing other than scientific method itself. The more you look, the more you see. Instead of selecting one truth from a multitude you are increasing the multitude. What this means logically is that as you try to move toward unchanging truth through the application of scientific method, you actually do not move toward it at all. You move away from it! It is your application of scientific method that is causing it to change!", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 121 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1830, - 1842 - ], - "date": "2013-12-12T02:36:42.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The Meeting of East and West, by F. S. C. Northrop,", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 129 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1971, - 1971 - ], - "date": "2013-12-12T02:47:15.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " When you split it either of those ways you get a lot of dull stuff that doesnt really tell you much you cant get out of the official school bulletin. But Phćdrus split it between “the church” and “the location,” and once this cleavage is made the same rather dull and imponderable institution seen in the bulletin suddenly is seen with a degree of clarity that wasnt previously available. On the basis of this cleavage he provided explanations for a number of puzzling but normal aspects of University life.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 158 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2419, - 2422 - ], - "date": "2013-12-12T03:32:23.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " ”Peace of mind isnt at all superficial, really,” I expound. “Its the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate tests always your own serenity. If you dont have this when you start and maintain it while youre working youre likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.” They just look at me, thinking about this. ”Its an unconventional concept,” I say, “but conventional reason bears it out. The material object of observation, the bicycle or rotisserie, cant be right or wrong. Molecules are molecules. They dont have any ethical codes to follow except those people give them. The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isnt any other test. If the machine produces tranquillity its right. If it disturbs you its wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of the machines always your own mind. There isnt any other test.”", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 176 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2682, - 2691 - ], - "date": "2013-12-14T02:51:26.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " ”Well, it isnt just art and technology. Its a kind of a noncoalescence between reason and feeling. Whats wrong with technology is that its not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that. People havent paid much attention to this before because the big concern has been with food, clothing and shelter for everyone and technology has provided these. ”But now where these are assured, the ugliness is being noticed more and more and people are asking if we must always suffer spiritually and esthetically in order to satisfy material needs. Lately its become almost a national crisis
antipollution drives, antitechnological communes and styles of life, and all that.”", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 180 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2750, - 2756 - ], - "date": "2013-12-14T02:55:46.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "A really new exploration, one that would look to us today the way the world looked to Columbus, would have to be in an entirely new direction.” ”Like what?” ”Like into realms beyond reason. I think present-day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it youre presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics. Theres a very close analogue there.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 183 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2786, - 2791 - ], - "date": "2013-12-14T02:59:15.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " ”The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isnt the way it ever is. People should see that its never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. Its never been anything else, ever, but you cant get that across in an essay.” ”You should do it anyway,” Gennie says. “Without trying to get it perfect.” ”I suppose,” I say.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 185 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2822, - 2827 - ], - "date": "2013-12-14T03:02:31.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when youre no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isnt just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. Its the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Heres where things grow.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 219 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3342, - 3346 - ], - "date": "2013-12-15T03:49:42.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "“Squareness may be succinctly and yet thoroughly defined as an inability to see quality before its been intellectually defined, that is, before it gets all chopped up into words", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 235 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3595, - 3596 - ], - "date": "2013-12-16T01:46:29.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " Quality is not a thing. It is an event. Warmer. It is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object. And because without objects there can be no subject
because the objects create the subjects awareness of himself
Quality is the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 259 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3964, - 3967 - ], - "date": "2013-12-17T03:04:40.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "You cant be aware that youve seen a tree until after youve seen the tree, and between the instant of vision and instant of awareness there must be a time lag. We sometimes think of that time lag as unimportant, But theres no justification for thinking that the time lag is unimportant
none whatsoever. The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual reality is what Phćdrus felt he had properly identified as Quality.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 269 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4116, - 4122 - ], - "date": "2013-12-17T03:13:31.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " ”In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms respond to our environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues. We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality. We throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into an insane asylum. But that which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 273 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4174, - 4178 - ], - "date": "2013-12-17T03:19:26.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person whos bound to have some characteristics of Quality.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 301 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4607, - 4608 - ], - "date": "2013-12-29T17:36:16.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " Thus, if the problem of technological hopelessness is caused by absence of care, both by technologists and antitechnologists; and if care and Quality are external and internal aspects of the same thing, then it follows logically that what really causes technological hopelessness is absence of the perception of Quality in technology by both technologists and antitechnologists.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 301 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4608, - 4611 - ], - "date": "2013-12-29T17:36:47.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "For true science to take place these must be rigidly separate from each other. “You are the mechanic. There is the motorcycle. You are forever apart from one another. You do this to it. You do that to it. These will be the results.” This eternally dualistic subject-object way of approaching the motorcycle sounds right to us because were used to it. But its not right. Its always been an artificial interpretation superimposed on reality. Its never been reality itself. When this duality is completely accepted a certain nondivided relationship between the mechanic and motorcycle, a craftsmanlike feeling for the work, is destroyed. When traditional rationality divides the world into subjects and objects it shuts out Quality, and when youre really stuck its Quality, not any subjects or objects, that tells you where you ought to go.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 309 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4719, - 4726 - ], - "date": "2013-12-29T17:46:31.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " To put it in more concrete terms: If you want to build a factory, or fix a motorcycle, or set a nation right without getting stuck, then classical, structured, dualistic subject-object knowledge, although necessary, isnt enough. You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work. You have to have a sense of whats good. That is what carries you forward. This sense isnt just something youre born with, although you are born with it. Its also something you can develop. Its not just “intuition,” not just unexplainable “skill” or “talent.” Its the direct result of contact with basic reality, Quality, which dualistic reason has in the past tended to conceal.", - "title": "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", - "author": "Robert M. Pirsig", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 311 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4758, - 4763 - ], - "date": "2013-12-29T17:50:28.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Bleeding Edge", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "Bleeding Edge", - "author": "Pynchon, Thomas", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 73 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1114 - ], - "date": "2013-11-19T03:17:31.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Bleeding Edge", - "author": "Pynchon, Thomas", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 77 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1168 - ], - "date": "2013-11-19T03:22:35.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Ernie’s office, which he shares with a washer and dryer, an antique Apple CRT monitor on a desk, left on, Elaine’s dining-room museum of long-operating lightbulbs from this apartment, each in its little foam display holder, labeled with the dates of screw-in and burnout. Sylvania bulbs of a certain era seem to’ve lasted the longest.", - "title": "Bleeding Edge", - "author": "Pynchon, Thomas", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 421 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 6445, - 6448 - ], - "date": "2013-12-07T03:31:11.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "What has the alternative ever been? Reclaimed by the small-time day-to-day, pretending life is Back To Normal, wrapping herself shivering against contingency’s winter in some threadbare blanket of first-quarter expenses, school committees, cable-bill irregularities, a workday jittering with low-life fantasies for which “fraud” is often too elegant a term, upstairs neighbors to whom bathtub caulking is an alien concept, symptoms upper-respiratory and lower-intestinal, all in the quaint belief that change will always be gradual enough to manage, with insurance, with safety equipment, with healthy diets and regular exercise, and that evil never comes roaring out of the sky to explode into anybody’s towering delusions about being exempt . . .", - "title": "Bleeding Edge", - "author": "Pynchon, Thomas", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 427 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 6541, - 6546 - ], - "date": "2013-12-07T03:45:03.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Out here at the far ancient edge of the island, this all used to be trainyard. Deep below, trains still move through tunnels in and out of Penn Station, horns chiming in B-major sixths, deep as dreams, while ghosts of tunnel-wall artists and squatters the civil authorities have no clue what to do about—evict, ignore, re-evict—go drifting past the train-car windows in the semidark, whispering messages of transience, and overhead in this cheaply built apartment complex tenants come and go, relentlessly ephemeral as travelers in a nineteenth-century railroad hotel.", - "title": "Bleeding Edge", - "author": "Pynchon, Thomas", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 453 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 6941, - 6945 - ], - "date": "2013-12-08T03:09:48.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "This, then, is the story of life: each individual seeks happiness. His concept of what will bring him happiness will differ from that of every other human being; happiness will be relative to him. His resources (time, energy, knowledge and property) are limited; so he must choose constantly between the many alternative courses of action he sees. And he does this by placing values on everything he sees. These values lead him to prefer one thing more than another.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 16 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 235, - 238 - ], - "date": "2013-11-21T02:26:03.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Profit is the increase in happiness by replacing one situation with another.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 17 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 252, - 252 - ], - "date": "2013-11-21T02:27:14.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "So profit can come in many different ways: through money, knowledge, contentment, spiritual understanding, leisure, etc.. In each case, it is what increases the individual’s happiness.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 18 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 274, - 276 - ], - "date": "2013-11-21T02:29:28.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "All individuals seek profit ~ of one kind or another. . . .which means that each individual is seeking to increase his own happiness ~ in whatever way he believes he can.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 19 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 279, - 281 - ], - "date": "2013-11-21T02:29:54.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "There’s an old saying that “one man’s gain must be another man’s loss.” Many people take that old adage for granted as the whole truth. And yet , it is totally false. Why? SECRET OF SELLING ANYTHING/Harry Browne 23 Because happiness is relative. And what pleases one person is not necessarily going to please the next person. This means that two individuals ~ with different values ~ can arrange an exchange between them that will satisfy both of them. Neither has to triumph over the other one. Both can gain.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 20 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 293, - 298 - ], - "date": "2013-11-21T02:31:24.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The universal fallacy is the belief that an individual would willingly accept something unprofitable to himself.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 22 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 326, - 327 - ], - "date": "2013-11-21T02:33:37.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The extent of your own profit depends upon your ability to satisfy the needs and desires of others.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 25 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 377, - 378 - ], - "date": "2013-11-21T14:38:04.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "People only pay for what they want ~ so you will succeed only if you are providing people with what they want.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 40 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 605, - 606 - ], - "date": "2013-11-22T03:46:53.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Find out what people want and help them get it!", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 43 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 648, - 648 - ], - "date": "2013-11-22T03:49:59.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The key element in the solution was my simple question, “What’s the biggest sales problem facing you right now ?” Everything flowed irresistibly from that.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 51 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 778, - 779 - ], - "date": "2013-11-22T04:00:51.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Any businessman is concerned about dozens of things at any given time. Here are just a few examples: poor employee rapport; lethargic salesmen; bad leads from his advertising; finding new markets; a negative image in his customers’ eyes; quarterly taxes to be paid next Tuesday; spotty distribution; a competitor’s new line; cost-profit squeezes; seasonal delivery problems; lagging sales; higher transportation costs; new government regulations; suppliers cheating him; etc., etc., etc. Not motivated??? How could a man with so many problems not be motivated? He’s a live bundle of motivations. There are so many things he wants, so many problems to solve, so many hopes, so many dreams. He’s loaded with motivations. Everyone is already motivated. The only question is “By what?” Your job is to find out what it is that motivates your prospect. And then show him how he can get what he wants through your product or service. Only then will he buy.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 53 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 792, - 799 - ], - "date": "2013-11-22T04:05:16.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "You can try, if you wish, to change his motivation. But why bother?", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 53 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 809, - 810 - ], - "date": "2013-11-22T04:06:26.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "his motivations are the hopes and dreams and plans he has that he feels will bring him happiness. Those motivations exist before you ever walk onto the scene. You can try, if you wish, to change his motivation. But why bother?", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 53 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 808, - 810 - ], - "date": "2013-11-22T04:06:41.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Find this prospect’s motivation and appeal to it. That’s all there is to it. Find this prospect’s motivation and appeal to it. The emphasis is on the word this. The individual is different from all other human beings in the world. He has his own life, his own outlook, his own nature, his own personality, his own ideas, his own goals, his own plans. You cannot treat him as a carbon copy of every prospect you’ve ever faced. He isn’t. If you try to put him into a mold, you’ll fail. Unless you appeal to him in a way that fits what he is, he won’t respond.", - "title": "The Secret of Selling Anything", - "author": "Harry Browne", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 56 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 841, - 845 - ], - "date": "2013-11-22T04:09:15.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "Remember that the shadows on the wall are just a part of life. There's no reason to only follow the rules of the shadows. I have been inspired by many different sources: books on backpacking, observations of animals and ecosystems, boating, cycling, people living in cars--even the homeless. I have read books on systems theory, biology, physics, finance, as well as more practical manuals on plumbing, house wiring, construction, etc., and then I have adapted these ideas to my own life.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 17 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 255, - 258 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T00:06:12.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "one's entire philosophy must change. Later on I offer a philosophy modeled on the Renaissance ideal of the 17th century and the craftsmen of the 18th century who wrote the Constitution of the United States at the peak of the Age of Enlightenment. This is a framework of complexity where a person is skilled in more than just one area. It is, in a way, a contrarian approach to the contemporary idea of \"one man-one specialization.\" It's an interlocking way of arranging one's life. In risk management parlance, one wants to transfer from a tightly coupled linear system of financed consumerism to a loosely coupled, complex system of the financially independent Renaissance man.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 18 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 263, - 268 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T00:07:46.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 20 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 304 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T00:17:15.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 22 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 335 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T00:20:11.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Dissatisfaction with the current situation may be high and the vision of an alternative may be high as well, but without a plan, this can only lead to frustration. There must be a strategy or at least a plan, and it must be practical. To get things done, it's much better to have a plan than to have passion, at least insofar as you act on it.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 27 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 406, - 408 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T01:15:18.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Changemongers thus have the following four variables to play with: Increase your dissatisfaction with present situation. Strengthen your vision of future situation. Build a plan to get from the present to the future. Lower the perceived cost of the plan.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 27 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 409, - 411 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T01:15:54.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The Darwinian \"survival of the fittest\" often has undertones of \"survival of the best,\" a belief that the \"fittest\" are happy to reinforce. The distinction should not be forgotten, though. In competitive environments, the selection isn't for the best but for those that best fit the environment.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 41 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 622, - 624 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T01:55:45.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The Darwinian \"survival of the fittest\" often has undertones of \"survival of the best,\" a belief that the \"fittest\" are happy to reinforce. The distinction should not be forgotten, though. In competitive environments, the selection isn't for the best but for those that best fit the environment. People are not selected for the best attributes, they're selected for the fittest attributes. A world without trees selects the short-necked giraffe, which is better adapted. Similarly, the career track selects people who are willing to give up their lives for the sake of work.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 41 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 622, - 626 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T01:56:09.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The means to survival for a specialist is his ability to rapidly learn new subjects, quickly produce saleable works, and then move on. This is called skimming. It's the same strategy pursued by weeds, to use an ecological analogy. At the expert level (see Gauging mastery), a person needs 80-100 hours a week to stay competitive. For masters level, it's 60-80 hours, and to remain competent requires 40-60 hours a week.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 45 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 679, - 683 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T02:56:59.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Our culture was founded on the idea that maximizing production equals maximizing happiness. In the past, pursuing this goal was admirable since any increase in production resulted in an increase in well-being: better food, better medicine, better clothing, better housing, better work, and better living. At some point the focus changed from better to more: more food, more medicine, more clothing, more bedrooms, more bathrooms, and more work. But can we honestly say this still results in better living and greater well-being?", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 47 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 717, - 720 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T03:01:54.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "garage and parking the car on the street. People don't seem to realize that the quest to bring more possessions in through the front door is a chronic disease, and that the shortage of space is a symptom rather than an underlying problem.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 50 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 765, - 767 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T03:07:24.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Many more people started prodigally wasting the abundance of resources and goods that were suddenly at their disposal. This has now turned into a collaborative/exploitative arrangement, where a few get wealthy selling waste to the many, while the many are employed in arrangements in which they have little control over what they produce.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 61 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 931, - 933 - ], - "date": "2013-11-24T03:27:17.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Anyone who has been out in the world for a while and experienced a lot of different situations has a good idea of what is normal, and thus can describe a bad situation as what it is: simply a bad situation. Conversely, people with less agency and a belief that they are not in control of their destiny are more likely to be stressed and to suffer the associated health effects. Combined with self-confidence, agency is the attitude that any problem can be fixed, given enough resources in the form of time, effort, and determination. This attitude rests either on a thorough knowledge of or training in what is to be done, or on the surety that such knowledge or training can be attained. This attitude is often transferable from one field to another, completely unrelated field.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 83 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1253, - 1258 - ], - "date": "2013-11-26T02:31:36.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "We have an economic model that is based on pulling resources out of the ground and mostly turning them into unnecessary products, getting people to buy the products by convincing them that they need them, then getting them to throw the products away because they're obsolete. This makes people buy the next model and bury the other one in the ground. The sole goal of this seemingly pointless exercise is to work faster and grow the gross domestic product, which measures the resource churn.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 83 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1263, - 1266 - ], - "date": "2013-11-26T02:34:02.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "the present methodical, milestone-governed specialist approach is largely a mopping-up operation which leads to increasing levels of detail but no new ways of understanding things. This way of thinking has dominated our culture for some time, where problems are formulated and solved within the present framework of thinking, leading to the world and way of life described in The lock-in. If you want to change your life, don't be tempted to outsource your life or your operations. You'll never know which kind of connections or synergies you're missing and you'll only make yourself", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 88 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1342, - 1346 - ], - "date": "2013-11-26T02:43:14.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "technically adept person will be able to quickly crunch numbers and manipulate equations, while perhaps not quite understanding the underlying concepts of his chosen specialization, whereas a more experienced person will quickly understand the underlying concepts of even unfamiliar subject areas. In physics and mathematics, such experienced people are said to have physical intuition or mathematical maturity, respectively. Sadly, many educations focus more on technical details because they are more easily testable. Even without the need for testing, many authors and educators are guilty of obscuring the fundamentals by giving equal time to all pieces of information.33 Automatically grasping what is important only comes with experience. Now, there are", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 101 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1540, - 1546 - ], - "date": "2013-11-26T03:01:48.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "However, working in the same place for five years does not imply five years of experience. If you've been doing exactly the same thing, day in and day out for five years, and it only took a day to learn, you have one day's experience, five years over.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 101 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1546, - 1548 - ], - "date": "2013-11-27T03:42:10.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "it's more useful to look at expertise by considering the following list, which parallels the development mentioned above. Copying Comparing Compiling Computing Coordinating Creating", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 103 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1567, - 1569 - ], - "date": "2013-11-27T03:55:12.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "For instance, at any one time I have four to six simultaneous projects going. If I restricted myself to just one project for the sake of simplicity, or tried to switch projects on a pre-arranged schedule dictated by time management, there would be a lot of downtime when my subconscious was processing a problem while I would be sitting around doing nothing and being underutilized. Hence, not allowing yourself to do anything but focus on one specific task will actually not increase productivity for creative work. It will only increase productivity for assembly line work", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 107 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1632, - 1636 - ], - "date": "2013-11-27T03:57:56.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "It's important to understand that doing the right thing (good strategy) is much more important than doing things right (good tactics).", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 110 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1677, - 1678 - ], - "date": "2013-11-27T04:02:09.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Yet enormous amounts of resources in our society are aimed towards solving problems heterotelically. Sometimes the solution is the cause of a new problem, but thanks to short-term thinking, the focus is often on responding to problems rather than preventing them. Our culture seems to have an ongoing fascination with action, and \"reaction\" is ironically more visible than \"proaction.\"", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 125 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1906, - 1908 - ], - "date": "2013-11-28T01:38:31.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "In general, people who live a life of abundance, like \"primitive\" tribesmen (see Human capital and necessary personal assets) or Californians, will be happy to give things away, the latter primarily to create more space in their garages, and the former presumably because they can easily build replacements.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 167 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2552, - 2555 - ], - "date": "2013-11-29T16:32:55.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Make a list of activities (verbs) that you need to do--sleeping, eating, washing up--and what you want to do--writing, hiking, cycling, entertaining, working, skating, talking, cooking, playing, exercising, etc. Now consider whether you do some of these activities often enough to have \"in-home\" facilities or whether you're better off outsourcing them. Consider this list and extend it to your general facilities--for example, how long since you last used the guest room, the bar room, the home cinema room, etc. Consider that some rooms could have multiple uses (see Monouse and Multiuse). In particular, are the facilities available nearby already? In this case, there's really no reason to duplicate them at home. For instance, if you're a gym rat and spend six days a week at the gym, maybe you can shower there and thus don't need elaborate bathroom facilities at home. If you eat in cafeterias most of the time, maybe you don't need anything fancier than a microwave and a minirefrigerator for your in-home kitchen facilities. Hence, if you currently have rooms and facilities that mostly go unused or could go unused with a change of habit or hobby to something that requires less stuff on location, yet provides as much enjoyment, don't include them in your next home.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 179 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2733, - 2742 - ], - "date": "2013-11-30T00:49:52.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 201 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3069 - ], - "date": "2013-11-30T01:31:54.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 219 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3344 - ], - "date": "2013-11-30T02:01:49.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Unfortunately, so many people see it differently. That is why they keep working to both cut down existing trees, as well as planting seeds and cutting down the saplings as soon as they get the chance. They don't see the freedom that the mature forest offers. The entire focus is on maximum wood production in the present rather than minimum effort in the future.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 240 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3671, - 3674 - ], - "date": "2013-12-01T02:44:00.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "This frame of mind is pervasive. Retirement is seen as spending hoarded savings, and survivalists tend to focus on stocking up on tools and supplies. Rather than forming an environment which can sustain them, they accumulate assets to survive in an environment that isn't conducive to their living. Conversely, a hunter-gatherer lives in an environment conducive to living. The traditional hunter-gatherer works 15 hours a week to gather resources from his environment. With our level of technology and understanding, we can gather resources from our environment more effectively and only work a few hours a week, or part of the year, or develop enough assets to no longer work at all, letting others do the work.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 240 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3674, - 3679 - ], - "date": "2013-12-01T02:44:22.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "\"mortgage\" is French for \"death pledge.\"", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 292 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4475, - 4475 - ], - "date": "2013-12-04T03:29:08.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Many associate effort with taking action, but not taking action is also a form of action. In fact, often not taking action is just what is required. The easiest way to get in the right frame of mind is to stop thinking like a farmer and start thinking like a hunter. A farmer (and a modern salary-, working-, and businessman) gets rewarded by activity. The more he does, the greater his reward. Conversely, a hunter isn't going to catch anything if he thrashes around in the woods, frantically looking for prey.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 268 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4104, - 4107 - ], - "date": "2013-12-04T03:45:53.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "A strategy where he first identifies the best place to hunt (skill), and then waits patiently for the opportunity to present itself, will be more successful. In this sense, the farmer-turned-hunter is his own worst enemy. Patience is a virtue that can take years or maybe even decades to develop. An impatient investor is likely to fire off all his arrows before the situation is optimal and will never make as much money as someone who can wait.", - "title": "Early Retirement Extreme: A philosophical and practical guide to financial independence", - "author": "Fisker, Jacob Lund;Averbach, Zev;Beaver, Ann", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 269 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 4107, - 4111 - ], - "date": "2013-12-04T03:46:19.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Childhood's End", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.", - "title": "Childhood's End", - "author": "Arthur C. Clarke", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 119 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1811, - 1812 - ], - "date": "2013-12-19T02:29:51.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Neuromancer", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "Neuromancer", - "author": "William Gibson", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 17 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 251 - ], - "date": "2013-12-21T03:05:34.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Calcutta Chromosome, The", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "they believed that to know something is to change it, therefore in knowing something, you‘ve already changed what you think you know so you don‘t really know it at all: you only know its history. Maybe they thought that knowledge couldn’t begin without acknowledging the impossibility of knowledge.", - "title": "Calcutta Chromosome, The", - "author": "Amitav Ghosh", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 520 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 7945, - 7967 - ], - "date": "2013-12-27T03:08:55.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Museum of Innocence", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "Kissing Füsun was no longer a provocation devised to test and to express our attraction for each other; it was something we did for the pleasure of it, and as we made love we were both amazed to discover love’s true essence. It was not just our wet mouths and our tongues that were entwined but our respective memories. So whenever we kissed, I would kiss her first as she stood before me, then as she existed in my recollection. Afterward, I would open my eyes momentarily to kiss the image of her a moment ago and then one of more distant memory, until thoughts of other girls resembling her would commingle with both those memories, and I would kiss them, too, feeling all the more virile for having so many girls at once; from here it was a simple thing to kiss her next as if I were someone else, as the pleasure I took from her childish mouth, wide lips, and playful tongue stirred my confusion and fed ideas heretofore not considered (“This is a child,” went one idea—“Yes, but a very womanly one,” went another), and the pleasure grew to encompass all the various personae I adopted as I kissed her, and all the remembered Füsuns that were evoked when she kissed me. It was in these first long kisses, in our lovemaking’s slow accumulation of particularity and ritual, that I had the first intimations of another way of knowing, another kind of happiness that opened a gate ever so slightly, suggesting a paradise few will ever know in this life.", - "title": "The Museum of Innocence", - "author": "Orhan Pamuk", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 56 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 840, - 850 - ], - "date": "2013-12-30T02:45:12.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Kissing Füsun was no longer a provocation devised to test and to express our attraction for each other; it was something we did for the pleasure of it, and as we made love we were both amazed to discover love’s true essence. It was not just our wet mouths and our tongues that were entwined but our respective memories. So whenever we kissed, I would kiss her first as she stood before me, then as she existed in my recollection. Afterward, I would open my eyes momentarily to kiss the image of her a moment ago and then one of more distant memory, until thoughts of other girls resembling her would commingle with both those memories, and I would kiss them, too, feeling all the more virile for having so many girls at once; from here it was a simple thing to kiss her next as if I were someone else, as the pleasure I took from her childish mouth, wide lips, and playful tongue stirred my confusion and fed ideas heretofore not considered (“This is a child,” went one idea—“Yes, but a very womanly one,” went another), and the pleasure grew to encompass all the various personae I adopted as I kissed her, and all the remembered Füsuns that were evoked when she kissed me. It was in these first long kisses, in our lovemaking’s slow accumulation of particularity and ritual, that I had the first intimations of another way of knowing, another kind of happiness that opened a gate ever so slightly, suggesting a paradise few will ever know in this life. Our kisses delivered us beyond the pleasures of flesh and sexual bliss for what we sensed beyond the moment of the springtime afternoon was as great and wide as Time itself.", - "title": "The Museum of Innocence", - "author": "Orhan Pamuk", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 56 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 840, - 851 - ], - "date": "2013-12-30T02:45:41.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "But I also saw in Füsun’s eyes her pleasure in sex, her growing amazement at discovering delights that she’d wondered about for so long. She called to mind an adventurer of old who, after years of dreaming of a distant legendary continent, sets out across the seas, and who, having crossed oceans, suffered hardships, and shed blood, finally steps onto its shores, to meet each tree, each stone, each creature with awe and enchantment, drawing from the same elation to savor each flower she smelled, each fruit she put into her mouth, exploring each novelty with a cautious, bedazzled curiosity.", - "title": "The Museum of Innocence", - "author": "Orhan Pamuk", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 58 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 878, - 882 - ], - "date": "2013-12-30T02:49:38.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis'd it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 17 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 243, - 250 - ], - "date": "2014-01-01T04:09:18.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "interesting that f essentially advocates the opposite tact as is current the vogue among english and rhetoric teachers. that is the eqivocating of \"seems to me\" and the like", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Note", - "pageRange": [ - 17 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 259 - ], - "date": "2014-01-01T04:12:30.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "improvement", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 17 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 259, - 259 - ], - "date": "2014-01-01T04:12:30.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 17 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 253, - 254 - ], - "date": "2014-01-01T04:13:14.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 34 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 520, - 521 - ], - "date": "2014-01-02T04:07:25.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "I should have mentioned before, that, in the autumn of the preceding year, I had form'd most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the JUNTO; we met on Friday evenings. The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory; and, to prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 58 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 870, - 876 - ], - "date": "2014-01-03T03:00:36.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The books were imported; the library was opened one day in the week for lending to the subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns, and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented by donations; reading became fashionable; and our people, having no publick amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observ'd by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 75 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1142, - 1146 - ], - "date": "2014-01-03T06:39:40.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "These names of virtues, with their precepts, were: 1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation. 11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. 13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 80 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1208, - 1217 - ], - "date": "2014-01-03T06:50:11.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "And conceiving God to be the fountain of wisdom, I thought it right and necessary to solicit his assistance for obtaining it; to this end I formed the following little prayer, which was prefix'd to my tables of examination, for daily use. \"O powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest! strengthen my resolutions to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return in my power for thy continual favors to me.\"", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 82 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1254, - 1257 - ], - "date": "2014-01-04T04:28:26.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag'd in went on more pleasantly.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 88 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1329, - 1335 - ], - "date": "2014-01-04T04:38:37.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "that, for distinction, we should be call'd The Society of the Free and Easy: free, as being, by the general practice and habit of the virtues, free from the dominion of vice; and particularly by the practice of industry and frugality, free from debt, which exposes a man to confinement, and a species of slavery to his creditors.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 90 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1372, - 1374 - ], - "date": "2014-01-04T04:43:37.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "I did not, however, aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him, but, after some time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return'd it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, \"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.\" And it shows how much more profitable it is prudently to remove, than to resent, return, and continue inimical proceedings.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 97 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1480, - 1487 - ], - "date": "2014-01-04T04:56:59.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "I imagin'd it might be well to publish the articles of their belief, and the rules of their discipline. He said that it had been propos'd among them, but not agreed to, for this reason: \"When we were first drawn together as a society,\" says he, \"it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors; and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confin'd by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive farther improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.\" This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, tho' in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 111 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1687, - 1697 - ], - "date": "2014-01-05T02:01:49.000Z" - }, - { - "content": " Look round the habitable world, how few Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!", - "title": "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", - "author": "Benjamin Franklin", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 126 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1922, - 1923 - ], - "date": "2014-01-08T04:07:25.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "Daily Rituals How Artists Work", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "character. Character, for Kant, is a rationally chosen way of organizing one’s life, based on years of varied experience—indeed, he believed that one does not really develop a character until age forty. And at the core of one’s character, he thought, were maxims—a handful of essential rules for living that, once formulated, should be followed for the rest of one’s life. Alas, we do not have a written list of Kant’s personal maxims. But it is clear that he resolved to transform the “certain uniformity” of his lifestyle from a mere habit into a moral principle. Thus, before his fortieth birthday, Kant would sometimes stay out until midnight playing cards; after forty, he stuck to his daily routine without exception. This routine was as follows: Kant rose at 5:00 A.M., after being woken by his longtime servant, a retired soldier under explicit orders not to let the master oversleep. Then he drank one or two cups of weak tea and smoked his pipe. According to Kuehn, “Kant had formulated the maxim for himself that he would smoke only one pipe, but it is reported that the bowls of his pipes increased considerably in size as the years went on.” After this period of meditation, Kant prepared his day’s lectures and did some writing. Lectures began at 7:00 A.M. and lasted until 11:00. His academic duties discharged, Kant would go to a restaurant or a pub for lunch, his only real meal of the day. He did not limit his dining company to his fellow academics but enjoyed mixing with townspeople from a variety of backgrounds. As for the meal itself, he preferred simple fare, with the meat well done, accompanied by good wine. Lunch might go until as late as 3:00, after which Kant took his famous walk and visited his closest friend, Joseph Green. They would converse until 7:00 on weekdays (9:00 on weekends, perhaps joined by another friend). Returning home, Kant would do some more work and read before going to bed precisely at 10:00.", - "title": "Daily Rituals How Artists Work", - "author": "Mason Currey", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 64 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 968, - 981 - ], - "date": "2014-01-19T02:33:13.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "Daily Rituals How Artists Work", - "author": "Mason Currey", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 66 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1012 - ], - "date": "2014-01-19T02:40:57.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "As the biographer John Richardson has written, “After the shabby gentility of his boyhood and the deprivations of his early days in Paris, Picasso wanted a lifestyle which would permit him to work in peace without material worries—‘like a pauper,’ he used to say, ‘but with lots of money.’ ”", - "title": "Daily Rituals How Artists Work", - "author": "Mason Currey", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 75 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1137, - 1139 - ], - "date": "2014-01-19T16:22:27.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The biographer Annie Cohen-Solal reports, “His diet over a period of twenty-four hours included two packs of cigarettes and several pipes stuffed with black tobacco, more than a quart of alcohol—wine, beer, vodka, whisky, and so on—two hundred milligrams of amphetamines, fifteen grams of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea, rich meals.” Sartre knew he was wearing himself out, but he was willing to gamble his philosophy against his health.", - "title": "Daily Rituals How Artists Work", - "author": "Mason Currey", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 77 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1167, - 1170 - ], - "date": "2014-01-19T16:25:55.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "As with many lonely children, his problem was not solitude itself but that he was never left free to enjoy it. There were always well-meaning adults trying to jolly him, to improve and counsel him, to bribe and cajole and bully him into making friends, speaking up, getting some fresh air; teachers poking and wheedling with their facts and principles, when all he really needed was to be handed a stack of textbooks and left alone; and, worst of all, other children, who could not seem to play their games without including him if they were cruel ones or, if their games were innocent, pointedly keeping him out.", - "title": "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", - "author": "Michael Chabon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 596 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 9127, - 9131 - ], - "date": "2014-02-03T03:03:54.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "“The subject,” Jane murmured into my ear again, undoing a giant zipper within me.", - "title": "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", - "author": "Michael Chabon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 25 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 372, - 373 - ], - "date": "2014-02-06T05:36:42.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "“You look very beautiful, Phlox,” I said, and with my ridiculous heart beating as though I were that first German laborer, ignorant of engineering and about to remove that first wooden support from that first lacy thousand-ton dome of poured concrete, I made a fractional movement toward her lips with mine; then I drew her slightly into the shadow of a little tree and kissed her; somebody coughed. I heard the scrape of her dress against the thin branches, and the faint noise of her lips, fleshy, wet, tasting of lime and gin. I opened my eyes.", - "title": "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", - "author": "Michael Chabon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 69 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1051, - 1055 - ], - "date": "2014-02-11T04:01:13.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep: Simple Solutions for Kids from Birth to 5 Years", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep: Simple Solutions for Kids from Birth to 5 Years", - "author": "Karp, Harvey", - "type": "Bookmark", - "locationRange": [ - 5197 - ], - "date": "2014-02-19T20:04:34.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Shadow Lines", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "I could not persuade her that a place does not merely exist, that it has to be invented in one’s imagination; that her practical, bustling London was no less invented than mine, neither more nor less true, only very far apart. It was not her fault that she could not understand, for as Tridib often said of her, the inventions she lived in moved with her, so that although she had lived in many places, she had never travelled at all.", - "title": "The Shadow Lines", - "author": "Amitav Ghosh;Amitav", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 23 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 336, - 339 - ], - "date": "2014-03-03T03:23:08.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "It’s nothing to do with fading or anything, she said, pointing at a picture of, her parents. It has to do with the way the camera looked at people then. In modern family photographs the camera pretends to circulate like a friend, clicking its shutters at those moments when its subjects have disarranged themselves to present to it those postures which they like to think of as informal. But in the pictures of that time the camera is still a public and alien eye faced with which people feel bound either to challenge the intrusion by striking postures of defiant hilarity, or else to compose their faces and straighten their shoulders, not always formally, but usually with just that hint of stiffness which is enough to suggest a public face. For example, in the foreground of one of those pictures, there is a large, shallow pit. Snipe has been digging that pit for the last two weeks in the back garden. This pit is intended to be the foundation of an Anderson air-raid shelter, his second line of defence against the expected German bombs. It is a serious pit therefore. But in the picture it looks anything but that; it looks like a dishevelled flowerbed. It was probably as some kind of joke that they decided to stand beside it; one of Tresawsen’s friends must have thought of it. Perhaps moments before the picture was taken they were doubled up with laughter, looking down at this pathetic would-be shelter. But now that the camera is upon them only one of them is laughing, defying the lens. The rest have composed their faces.", - "title": "The Shadow Lines", - "author": "Amitav Ghosh;Amitav", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 65 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 982, - 993 - ], - "date": "2014-03-06T03:49:44.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The enemy of silence is speech, but there can be no speech without words, and there can be no words without meanings – so it follows, inexorably, in the manner of syllogisms, that when we try to speak of events of which we do not know the meaning, we must lose ourselves in the silence that lies in the gap between words and the world. This is a silence that is proof against any conceivable act of scorn or courage; it lies beyond defiance – for what means have we to defy the mere absence of meaning? Where there is no meaning, there is banality, and that is what this silence consists in, that is why it cannot be defeated – because it is the silence of an absolute, impenetrable banality.", - "title": "The Shadow Lines", - "author": "Amitav Ghosh;Amitav", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 234 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3579, - 3584 - ], - "date": "2014-03-18T03:23:17.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "There is nothing quite as evocative as an old newspaper. There is something in its urgent contemporaneity – the weather reports, the lists of that day’s engagements in the city, the advertisements for half-remembered films, still crying out in bold print as though it were all happening now, today – and the feeling besides that one may once have handled, if not that very paper, then its exact likeness, its twin, which transports one in time as nothing else can.", - "title": "The Shadow Lines", - "author": "Amitav Ghosh;Amitav", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 244 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3730, - 3733 - ], - "date": "2014-03-25T02:49:55.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "for the madness of a riot is a pathological inversion, but also therefore a reminder, of that indivisible sanity that binds people to each other independently of their governments. And that prior, independent relationship is the natural enemy of government, for it is in the logic of states that to exist at all they must claim the monopoly of all relationships between peoples. The theatre of war, where generals meet, is the stage on which states disport themselves: they have no use for memories of riots.", - "title": "The Shadow Lines", - "author": "Amitav Ghosh;Amitav", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 247 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 3783, - 3786 - ], - "date": "2014-03-25T02:54:43.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life - The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine - Pdf", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "According to Epicurus, for example, “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profi t in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profi t in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.”", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life - The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine - Pdf", - "author": "Yeal", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 8 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 109, - 111 - ], - "date": "2014-04-12T01:49:26.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Goldfinch", - "clippings": [ - { - "title": "The Goldfinch", - "author": "Donna Tartt", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 717 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 10989 - ], - "date": "2014-04-12T02:47:01.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "In other words, of the things in life you might pursue, which is the thing you believe to be most valuable?", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 6 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 78, - 79 - ], - "date": "2014-04-14T01:49:37.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Our culture doesn’t encourage people to think about such things; indeed, it provides them with an endless stream of distractions so they won’t ever have to. But a grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life. This means that if you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life. Why is it important to have such a philosophy? Because without one, there is a danger that you will mislive—that despite all your activity, despite all the pleasant diversions you might have enjoyed while alive, you will end up living a bad life. There is, in other words, a danger that when you are on your deathbed, you will look back and realize that you wasted your one chance at living. Instead of spending your life pursuing something genuinely valuable, you squandered it because you allowed yourself to be distracted by the various baubles life has to offer.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 6 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 81, - 87 - ], - "date": "2014-04-14T01:50:11.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Thus, although Lutherans, Baptists, Jews, Mormons, and Catholics hold different religious views, they are remarkably alike when encountered outside of church or synagogue. They hold similar jobs and have similar career ambitions. They live in similar homes, furnished in a similar manner.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 22 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 324, - 326 - ], - "date": "2014-04-15T03:27:15.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "In fact, this isn’t at all what the Stoics have in mind when they talk about virtue. For the Stoics, a person’s virtue does not depend, for example, on her sexual history. Instead, it depends on her excellence as a human being—on how well she performs the function for which humans were designed. In the same way that a “virtuous” (or excellent) hammer is one that performs well the function for which it was designed—namely, to drive nails—a virtuous individual is one who performs well the function for which humans were designed. To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature.18 The Stoics would add that if we do this, we will have a good life.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 33 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 486, - 491 - ], - "date": "2014-04-16T01:06:53.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "How, after all, can we convince ourselves to want the things we already have? THE STOICS THOUGHT they had an answer to this question. They recommended that we spend time imagining that we have lost the things we value—that our wife has left us, our car was stolen, or we lost our job. Doing this, the Stoics thought, will make us value our wife, our car, and our job more than we otherwise would. This technique—let us refer to it as negative visualization—was employed by the Stoics at least as far back as Chrysippus.5 It is, I think, the single most valuable technique in the Stoics’ psychological tool kit.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 57 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 861, - 866 - ], - "date": "2014-04-17T02:29:14.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "if negative visualization of an object producesno emotion in you then get rid of (sell, give away) the object.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Note", - "pageRange": [ - 57 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 866 - ], - "date": "2014-04-17T02:31:46.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "if negative visualization of an object producesno emotion in you then get rid of (sell, give away) the object. its the stoics guide to spring cleaning", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Note", - "pageRange": [ - 57 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 866 - ], - "date": "2014-04-17T02:32:21.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Hedonic adaptation has the power to extinguish our enjoyment of the world. Because of adaptation, we take our life and what we have for granted rather than delighting in them. Negative visualization, though, is a powerful antidote to hedonic adaptation. By consciously thinking about the loss of what we have, we can regain our appreciation of it, and with this regained appreciation we can revitalize our capacity for joy.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 62 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 943, - 945 - ], - "date": "2014-04-17T03:04:06.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Another thing I think we have complete control over is our values. We have complete control, for example, over whether we value fame and fortune, pleasure, or tranquility. Whether or not we live in accordance with our values is, of course, a different question: It is something over which we have some but not complete control.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 77 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1164, - 1166 - ], - "date": "2014-04-19T03:37:56.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "It is indeed curious: Although they would have been satisfied with next to nothing, they nevertheless strove for something. Here is how Stoics would explain this seeming paradox. Stoic philosophy, while teaching us to be satisfied with whatever we’ve got, also counsels us to seek certain things in life. We should, for example, strive to become better people—to become virtuous in the ancient sense of the word. We should strive to practice Stoicism in our daily life. And we should, as we shall see in chapter 9, strive to do our social duty: This is why Seneca and Marcus felt compelled to participate in Roman government and why Musonius and Epictetus felt compelled to teach Stoicism. Furthermore, the Stoics see nothing wrong with our taking steps to enjoy the circumstances in which we find ourselves; indeed, Seneca advises us to be “attentive to all the advantages that adorn life.”6 We might, as a result, get married and have children. We might also form and enjoy friendships. And what about worldly success? Will the Stoics seek fame and fortune? They will not. The Stoics thought these things had no real value and consequently thought it foolish to pursue them, particularly if doing so disrupted our tranquility or required us to act in an unvirtuous manner. This indifference to worldly success, I realize, will make them seem unmotivated to modern individuals who spend their days working hard in an attempt to attain (a degree of) fame and fortune. But having said this, I should add that although the Stoics didn’t seek worldly success, they often gained it anyway.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 90 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1356, - 1368 - ], - "date": "2014-04-22T02:41:19.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "What the Stoics were advocating, then, is more appropriately described as a program of voluntary discomfort than as a program of self-inflicted discomfort.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 91 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1394, - 1395 - ], - "date": "2014-04-23T03:35:43.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "It is instructive to contrast the advice that we periodically undertake acts of voluntary discomfort with the advice that might be offered by an unenlightened hedonist. Such a person might suggest that the best way to maximize the comfort we experience is to avoid discomfort at all costs. Musonius would argue, to the contrary, that someone who tries to avoid all discomfort is less likely to be comfortable than someone who periodically embraces discomfort. The latter individual is likely to have a much wider “comfort zone” than the former and will therefore feel comfortable under circumstances that would cause the former individual considerable distress. It would be one thing if we could take steps to ensure that we will never experience discomfort, but since we can’t, the strategy of avoiding discomfort at all costs is counterproductive.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 93 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1414, - 1420 - ], - "date": "2014-04-23T03:38:09.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "(In his famous dictionary, by the way, Samuel Johnson includes a wonderful term for these individuals: A seeksorrow, he explains, is “one who contrives to give himself vexation.”)", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 109 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1670, - 1671 - ], - "date": "2014-04-26T03:27:43.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "the broader Stoic belief that, as Epictetus puts it, “what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about these things.”", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 118 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1804, - 1805 - ], - "date": "2014-04-27T02:37:42.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Do the things that happen to me help or harm me? It all depends, say the Stoics, on my values. They would go on to remind me that my values are things over which I have complete control. Therefore, if something external harms me, it is my own fault: I should have adopted different values.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 119 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1813, - 1814 - ], - "date": "2014-04-27T02:39:05.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "In such cases, though, the Stoic needs to keep in mind that he is punishing the insulter not because she has wronged him but to correct her improper behavior. It is, says Seneca, like training an animal: If in the course of trying to train a horse, we punish him, it should be because we want him to obey us in the future, not because we are angry about his failure to obey us in the past.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 122 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1865, - 1868 - ], - "date": "2014-04-27T02:44:19.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Indeed, he will probably do a better job of punishing and protecting if he can avoid getting angry. More generally, when someone wrongs us, says Seneca, he should be corrected “by admonition and also by force, gently and also roughly.” Such corrections, however, should not be made in anger. We are punishing people not as retribution for what they have done but for their own good, to deter them from doing again whatever they did. Punishment, in other words, should be “an expression not of anger but of caution.”", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 130 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1976, - 1979 - ], - "date": "2014-04-28T01:43:54.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Epictetus asserts that “it is better to die of hunger with distress and fear gone than to live upset in the midst of plenty.”", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 140 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2136, - 2137 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T09:51:43.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "not needing wealth is more valuable than wealth itself is.", - "title": "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy", - "author": "William B. Irvine", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 140 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2138, - 2138 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T09:51:57.000Z" - } - ] - }, - { - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "clippings": [ - { - "content": "When hunting, a fox can leap eight metres and land with enough precision to pin a mouse beneath its forepaws, meaning that at takeoff the fox has accounted for its own speed and trajectory, the speed and trajectory of the mouse, along with other factors such as wind and ground cover, all without ever actually seeing the prey. Such a pounce is so carefully controlled that a fox will, at times, beat its tail to one side or the other in mid-air to adjust its flight path. There were always fox dens on my home prairie.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 8 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 117, - 120 - ], - "date": "2014-04-20T01:15:29.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "there is no question that we are flesh-and-blood animals, carbon-based life forms spun from the same celestial dust as the rest of creation. At the same time, we have always sought to define ourselves as separate from all other species, whether through our capacity for self-awareness and rational thought or the presumed existence of the human soul. Such efforts often carry more than a whiff of desperation: one philosopher saw a sign of human exceptionalism even in the fact that our noses are a “marked projection” from our faces—apparently unaware of, say, the proboscis monkey, which has a hugely bulbous nose that dangles down to below its mouth.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 11 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 163, - 167 - ], - "date": "2014-04-20T01:20:05.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "scientist Daniel Pauly published a commentary about what he called “shifting baseline syndrome.” Pauly had been inspired, in part, by the 1984 book Sea of Slaughter, in which author Farley Mowat reviews five centuries of explorers’ journals and pioneer accounts to expose the terrible toll of human hunting and fishing in the North Atlantic. The book had recently been revisited by three biologists who concluded, based on Mowat’s research, that biomass—the total weight of living things—off North America’s east coast may have declined by 97 percent since written records began. The failure of coastal residents and scientists to recognize such a shocking diminution seemed to Pauly explainable only by a long-term pattern of amnesia. Each generation of people saw the coast that they grew up on as the normal state of nature, and measured the declines of sea life against that baseline. With every new generation, the baseline shifted—“a gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance,” Pauly said. We were forgetting what the world used to look like.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 20 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 293, - 301 - ], - "date": "2014-04-20T01:58:25.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "We generally don’t notice small or gradual changes. Our minds would otherwise be crowded with turning leaves and the paths of clouds across the sky—a beguiling madness, but a madness all the same.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 22 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 326, - 327 - ], - "date": "2014-04-20T02:01:06.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Yet the belief that your own eyes will not fool you is persistent enough that psychologists have given that condition a name too: “change blindness blindness.” If you don’t believe that you are capable of missing significant changes to a scene, then you won’t heighten your awareness in order not to miss them—which means that you probably will. Change blindness blindness is the failure to see that we so often fail to see.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 23 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 337, - 340 - ], - "date": "2014-04-20T02:02:24.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "By the end of the American Revolution, not quite a century later, the natural economy of the Muscogee was in collapse and they were no longer able to find enough “bucks”—the origin of the slang term for money—to pay off their debts to colonial traders offering easy credit, especially for tafia rum.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 28 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 413, - 415 - ], - "date": "2014-04-21T02:51:32.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Denial is the last line of defence against memory. It helps us to forget what we’d rather not remember, and then to forget that we’ve forgotten it, and then to resist the temptation to remember.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 28 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 424, - 425 - ], - "date": "2014-04-21T02:52:35.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "“The ability to deny is an amazing human phenomenon, largely unexplained and often inexplicable,” writes the sociologist Stanley Cohen, author of States of Denial. Yet we find denial useful. It fulfills, to quote the definition preferred by Cohen, “our need to be innocent of a troubling recognition.”", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 28 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 425, - 427 - ], - "date": "2014-04-21T02:52:53.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The best available evidence suggests that we exist in the accelerating freefall of what has been branded “the sixth extinction”—a fading-to-black of species worldwide at a rate that recalls five earlier spasms of mass loss imprinted in the fossil record. These range over time from the Ordovician extinction, 440 million years ago, in which 85 percent of known animal species died off, most likely through the fluctuations of an extreme ice age, to the most recent Cretaceous extinction, which sidelined 75 percent of species, among them the dinosaurs, probably in the aftermath of an asteroid’s collision with the earth or a period of spectacular volcanic eruptions. Today, worst-case scenarios count as many as 36 percent of the planet’s life forms as vulnerable to near-term extinction. It is not an empty threat: among species believed to have gone extinct since the year 2000 are the Chinese paddlefish, a European mountain goat called the Pyrenean ibex, and a tiny vesper bat with the lovely name of Christmas Island pipistrelle.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 37 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 555, - 562 - ], - "date": "2014-04-30T01:19:36.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The pioneering book on the sixth extinction is The Sinking Ark, published by the biologist Norman Myers in 1979.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 37 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 567, - 568 - ], - "date": "2014-04-30T01:21:16.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Our baselines have shifted. But it’s one thing to recognize that amnesia, and another to say what the original baseline actually is. Where in the billions of years of life on earth could we possibly draw that line?", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 46 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 702, - 704 - ], - "date": "2014-04-30T02:03:32.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "In 1916 Clements published Plant Succession, one of history’s most influential books of ecological ideas.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 53 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 801, - 802 - ], - "date": "2014-04-30T02:13:02.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "There is an ever more urgent need, as the environmental historian Donald Worster puts it, to hold fresh “the memory of a world by which civilization could be measured.” Research today considers new questions: How much balance is normal in nature, and how much change? At what point does change become damage? In what ways is natural change different from the changes wrought by human influence?", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 54 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 819, - 822 - ], - "date": "2014-04-30T02:15:20.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Awareness can be its own reward. One particularly endless February, when the grey and damp of the season had crept into life itself and good news seemed to have gone out of fashion, I noticed that the heads and necks of glaucous-winged gulls were changing, almost overnight, from the smudged brown of winter to the waiter’s-apron white of breeding season. The traditional first sign of spring—the arrival of the first robin—was weeks away at most northern latitudes, but here was a more subtle, much earlier reminder that, yes, one day the sun would again beat down upon our backs. There is much to be gained and nothing to lose in these small acts of reconnection.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 71 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1071, - 1076 - ], - "date": "2014-05-01T23:39:40.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "“Either massive numbers of country people are experiencing social psychosis, or there is something out there that is worth investigating,” says Alayne Street-Perrott, a geographer with Swansea University in Wales. It may be, though, that it is the landscape of the imagination that should be investigated. Whether or not black panthers are lurking in the British countryside, it is clear that a lot of people want very badly to believe that they are.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 76 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1154, - 1157 - ], - "date": "2014-05-01T23:50:12.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The natural world of the past is not simply gone and forgotten; in many ways it is still with us. The presence of absence is an idea that dates back at least to Plato, and is instantly understandable to anyone who has traced a family tree and seen the patterns of his or her own life reflected in the personalities, historical wounds and turning points of distant ancestors.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 76 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1157, - 1160 - ], - "date": "2014-05-01T23:50:35.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "To recognize that what has been lost is a part of what remains, however, still leaves questions of scale and character. How large an absence are we talking about? Where do we see its effects? What is the complete inventory of the missing? The answers to these questions not only shape the way we measure the world around us, but also help reveal the character of nature itself—including human nature.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 76 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1160, - 1162 - ], - "date": "2014-05-01T23:51:14.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Place names are a measure of the relationship between people and their surroundings.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 80 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1221, - 1222 - ], - "date": "2014-05-02T00:15:07.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The solution to these riddles appears to lie in the deep past. Both plants evolved at a time when huge, plant-eating animals still roamed the world. Hawthorn is not adapted to defend against deer, but against megafauna. Animals like ground sloths, which resembled giant bears but were committed vegetarians, could not afford to daintily browse on individual leaves. Instead, they had foreclaws as long as a person’s forearm, designed to hook thick clusters of vegetation toward their mouths; hawthorn’s spines served to discourage such damaging browsers. Similarly, holly is designed to ward off animals tall enough to feed through the windows of a second-storey apartment, despite the fact that the plant hasn’t encountered such threats for thousands of years. Holly and hawthorn are memory incarnate. They are ecological ghosts, manifestations of a world that no longer exists.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 81 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1234, - 1240 - ], - "date": "2014-05-02T00:17:26.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The lone person on a wild landscape is a baseline of human liberty, a condition in which we are restrained only by physical limits and the bounds of our own consciousness. It is for this reason, perhaps, that so many of us are drawn to nature as a counterpoint to the world of regulations and traditions, grids and networks, that we live in day to day.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 86 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1314, - 1316 - ], - "date": "2014-05-02T00:26:56.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Leopold writes, “Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 87 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1320, - 1320 - ], - "date": "2014-05-02T00:27:27.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "“Sight is a faculty,” Marsh wrote. “Seeing is an art.”", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 89 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1355, - 1356 - ], - "date": "2014-05-02T00:30:16.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 95 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1445 - ], - "date": "2014-05-02T00:40:02.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "We have changed the earth to such an extent that even if it was possible to suddenly lay down our tools, we would still end up with a world of our own creation. The choices going forward are our own, however squeamish we may be about human hubris, however unwilling we may be to shoulder responsibility for the rest of creation. We are, as one wildlife biologist put it, “condemned to art.”", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 117 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1792, - 1794 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T06:18:31.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The common North American bird called the chickadee, for example, appears to grow a larger brain in autumn, when it needs to remember where it is caching seeds for the winter, then shrinks it again in the spring in order to conserve energy for mating.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 122 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1868, - 1870 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T06:26:38.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "We have been looking at the natural world as something separate from humankind, using the common definition of nature as everything that is not us and is not made by us. It’s one useful way to see the world, but to gain a wider view, it is ultimately essential to bring our own species into the picture—just another living creature, after all, as miraculous as the rest. The question—which nature?—applies to human nature as well.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 124 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1888, - 1891 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T06:37:03.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Some 60 percent of the genes associated with the sense of smell are now inactive in most people, a loss that has likely taken place only since the dawn of agriculture some ten thousand years ago.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 124 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1898, - 1900 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T06:37:57.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "We don’t say that the rarity of gifted musicians represents the slow fade of rhythm and melody from human culture—the world is still home to a lot of church choirs and kitchen-party guitarists. But music is more accessible than ever, while our relationship to nature is increasingly distant and disconnected. Picture a world in which the history of music is largely forgotten, songs are heard less and less often and musical instruments are poorly understood by the vast majority of people.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 126 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1920, - 1923 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T06:41:01.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "when we choose the kind of nature we will live with, we are also choosing the kind of human beings we will be. We shape the world, and it shapes us in return.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 126 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 1925, - 1926 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T06:41:25.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "The question of living with a wilder nature may have less to do with risks and challenges than with the degree to which people identify with the idea of wildness. Rewilding is a matter of nature, but also of culture. In Banff, people want bison; the presence of the animals fits with the locals’ understanding of themselves and the reasons they live where they do.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 138 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2105, - 2107 - ], - "date": "2014-05-03T06:59:07.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Another maxim: that which is old has proven itself, and that which is very old may contain wisdom.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 140 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2144, - 2144 - ], - "date": "2014-05-04T00:29:31.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Twenty years ago, Ray Rogers, a Canadian environmental philosopher and one-time commercial fisherman, turned his thoughts to extinction and extirpation. In many cases, he realized, the loss of a plant or animal also marks the end of a human relationship to that species. As bears faded across Europe, for example, so did the festival of Chandelours—the word translates as “bearsong”—that celebrated the end of the animals’ winter hibernation in early February. Similarly, as wildlife populations vanished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so did the “market hunting” profession, along with such wild foods as brant goose, diamondback terrapin, bison tongue and Olympia oysters, each of which was once common on dinner tables and restaurant menus in North America. Rogers described each broken link between people and nature as a “double disappearance,” a form of environmental amnesia that went beyond mere memory to hollow out our sense of community with the rest of the living planet.* We were losing species from our social networks.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 149 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2268, - 2275 - ], - "date": "2014-05-05T02:02:08.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "Rather than proclaim humans the pinnacle of nature’s progress, however, Hawaiian cosmogony holds that we are new arrivals among respected elders. For example, the taro plant, known as kalo on the islands, is specifically identified as the Hawaiians’ immediate older brother; humans are called upon to care for the taro, which has its own obligation to keep its younger sibling alive.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 153 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2330, - 2332 - ], - "date": "2014-05-07T02:33:40.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "To live in a wilder world, we’ll have to find a way to weave nature into our identities, until guarding against harms to the natural world is as innate as watching out for ourselves, our families or our communities. Only this kind of person—we might call him or her the ecological human—can inhabit nature deeply enough to change our troubled relationship to non-human life, to observe carefully enough the changes we will continue to make, and to truly love the return of the wild as a formidable presence in our lives. For some, such a transformation is probably impossible; they have been away from nature too long and in too many ways to make their way back.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 178 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2716, - 2721 - ], - "date": "2014-05-08T01:55:22.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "As a boy, I sometimes sat down from my wandering only to wake up an hour later, surprised to find I had fallen asleep in a warm patch of grass. That wouldn’t happen in bear country. When I walk in a place like Yellowstone, it’s always with a slight but solemn recognition of the slender possibility that I will die, that some wild animal will kill me. My senses come alive: I taste the air, listen for sounds beneath the wind. Suddenly, nature is not the backdrop to life, it is life itself, and I am no longer myself, but myself in nature. I note and classify even small changes: a shrew darting across the path, an updraft twisting a fern frond, a hummingbird gathering spiderweb for its nest. Light and form take on greater clarity, and given enough time to sink into these sensations, visual tricks will arise that are somewhere between vigilance and hallucination, such as seeing clearly every trembling leaf on a tree while in the same moment watching a bumblebee pass by in slow motion.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 188 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2873, - 2880 - ], - "date": "2014-05-09T03:53:01.000Z" - }, - { - "content": "It’s possible, of course, to stumble through the wilderness while locked inside yourself, mentally racing over day-to-day worries, but that is not a good way to remain alive. It’s not that self-awareness is absent in animals—it has been tentatively revealed in experiments involving such species as apes, dolphins, magpies, even octopuses—but that it is a less useful tool than an outward mind: to endure among other species, you must experience the world as a place you share with them.", - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Highlight", - "pageRange": [ - 189 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2882, - 2886 - ], - "date": "2014-05-09T03:54:24.000Z" - }, - { - "title": "The Once and Future World", - "author": "J.B. MacKinnon", - "type": "Bookmark", - "pageRange": [ - 194 - ], - "locationRange": [ - 2967 - ], - "date": "2014-05-09T23:35:43.000Z" - } - ] - } -]
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