| We are going to prove
that climate change action and economic prosperity are not contradictions,
but mutually dependent.
- Sigmar Gabriel
Keep it simple
- Popular expression
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that
one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome
while trying to succeed.
-Booker T. Washington
Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires
no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge
. . . is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and
live in another’s world. It requires profound, purpose-larger-than-the-self
kind of understanding.
- Bill Bullard, quoted online Free
Will Astrology
In the market place, for practical reasons, innumerable qualitative
distinctions which are of vital importance for man and society
are suppressed; they are not allowed to surface. Thus the reign
of quantity celebrates its greatest triumphs in 'The Market.'
Everything is equated with everything else. To equate things
means to give them a price and thus to make them exchangeable.
To the extent that economic thinking is based on the market,
it takes the sacredness out of life, because there can be nothing
sacred in something that has a price. Not surprisingly, therefore,
if economic thinking pervades the whole of society, even simple
non-economic values like beauty, healthy, or cleanliness can
survive only if they prove to be 'economic.'
- E.F.
Schumacher, Small
is Beautiful
What's the point of new blood if you won't let it circulate?
- Conversation
Why buy new when used will do?
- Toolbarn advertisement, New Zealand
Visitors will know they have arrived in a real place
when they deal with clerks who do not wear uniforms, where they
find in shops well-crafted articles whose makers live nearby,
when they discover on restaurant menus dishes they could not
order anywhere else.
- Scott Russell Sanders, foreward, Civic Tourism
In a high technology age, you actually want easy entertainment.
- Roger Beaumont, jumpin
We can't wait for miracles to happen. If there are problems
that have to be solved, if we want our lives to be better, then
we have to do something for ourselves. If we're not taking action
to make our life better, if we're not walking, if our feet are
not moving, then there's no footprint for people to follow.
- Oliver Mtukudzi, World
Music Central
So if there is a global village, it is not a very equitable
one, and if there is a tragedy of our times, it may be that
we are all interconnected but we fail to see it and take care
of our relationships with others. For me, the ultimate promise
of digital technology is that it might enable us to truly see
one another once again and all the ways we are interconnected.
It might help us create a truly global view that can spark the
kind of empathy we need to create a better world for all of
humankind.
- Michael Wesch, A
Brief Interview with Michael Wesch - John Battelle
A real place
conveys a sense of temporal depth, a sense that people have
been living and laboring here for a long time.
- Scott Russell Sanders, foreward, Civic Tourism
Unless we use natural resources in a sustainable way, we are
mining the future. Unless the relationships between our citizens
are respectful and inclusive, we are a divided and diminished
society.
- Rick Farley, Australia
Day 2003 Address
There is no place that does not see you. You must change your
life.
- Rainer Maria Rilke (Archaic Torso of Apollo)
Something independent of definitions and trends has quietly
awakened. It's widespread. It nourishes. It quickens life through
communion, deepens inner power. And it's expressing itself in
small festivals among friends.
- Michael Ventura, Letters
at 3AM
What value does an object have when you can buy 10 more exactly
the same in an instant?
- Bernadette Murphy, Zen and the Art of Knitting
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count.
It's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln
It takes a long time to grow young.
- Pablo Picasso
Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives.
- Maurice Chevalier
The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.
- English Proverb
Last week the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood
around and sang Happy Birthday.
- Stephen Wright
Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because
when it comes, you'll know you're dead.
- Tennessee Williams
Let's give them something to talk about.
- Bonnie Raitt
What kind of a world do you want for everybody? And how can
that world be demonstrated?
- Michael Ventura, Letters
at 3AM
Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists.
Every day there are newspaper pages and television newscasts
to be filed, and an expert who can deliver a jarring piece of
wisdom is always welcome. Working together, journalists and
experts are the architects of conventional wisdom.
- Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics
Manaki Whenua, Manaki Tangata, Haere Whakamua (Care for the
land, Care for people, Go forward)
- Maori proverb, 2007
photo exhibit
In an interconnected world we have great need and basic responsibility,
for our own survival, to attend to the weakest links. By that
I mean those places in the world that suffer, those places in
the world where people die because they are too poor to stay
alive, those parts of the world which -- by virtue of physical
geography, epidemiology, climate stress, rain-fed agriculture
and drought-prone savannah climates for example -- face horrific
challenges to even get onto the ladder of development. One billion
people on the planet are too poor, too hungry, too disease-burdened,
too bereft of the most basic infrastructure even to get on the
ladder of development. The rich world seems to be believe, despite
all the fine speeches (and there have been many), that this
doesn't really matter, because the actions of the rich countries
don't begin to address this problem. We are leaving ten million
people to die every year because they are too poor to stay alive.
Fine speeches will not solve that problem.
- Jeffrey Sachs, Reith
Lectures 2007: Bursting at the Seams
He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the
treasury and he saw a poor widow put in two copper coins. And
he said, 'Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more
than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance,
but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had.'
- Luke
21
Al que buen arbol se arrima, buena sombra le cobija.
(The closer to a tree, good shade covers you.)
- Mexican proverb
Perro que no anda no encuentra hueso. (A dog that
does not go out does not find the bone.)
- Mexican proverb
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark
from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep
gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
- Albert Schweitzer
Don't hide your light under a bushel
- Jesus, Sermon on the Mount
Life is how you make it. The quality of life is measured by
the kinds of steps you take as you walk through it. The footprint
is a representation of who we are, where we are and where we're
going. If you happen to see a footprint in the road, it means
someone has been there before you, and there's something to
be learned from that person's life and that person's story.
Tsimba Itsoka. There is no footprint without the foot.
- Oliver Mtukudzi, World
Music Central
You'll never know what is enough unless you know what is more
than enough. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
If the fool would persist in her folly she would become wise.
- William Blake
Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Irresponsible travel to me is where the focus is entirely on
the visitor, to the neglect and detriment of the host and their
community.
- Jane Crouch, Ecoclub
Interview
We ought to focus as much on the micro as the macro.
- David Fennell, Ethics
and Sustainable Tourism (slidecast)
When St. Augustine arrived in Milan, he observed that the Church
did not fast on Saturday as did the Church at Rome. He consulted
St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who replied: 'When I am at Rome,
I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not. Follow the
custom of the Church where you are.' The comment was changed
to 'When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done' by
Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy. Eventually it became
'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.'
- Trivia
Library
Moving forward is often due less to a blinding stroke of genius
than a sudden cessation of stupidity..... not having a new thought,
but stopping having an old one.
- Edwin
Land, inventer of the Polaroid
If we live as if it matters, and it doesn't matter, then it
doesn't matter. If we live as if it doesn't matter, and it matters,
then it matters.
- Popular saying
The quickest way to a heart attack is to nurse a grievance
- Proverb
I do believe sleep deprivation has a lot to do with some of
the edginess of Washington,
DC.
- Bill Clinton, Daily
Show (September 2007)
You'll never know what is enough unless you know what is more
than enough. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
If the fool would persist in her folly she would become wise.
- William Blake
Tsimba Itsoka (There is no footprint without the foot)
- Shona proverb and Oliver
Mtukudzi's new CD
What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more
than to think what we are doing.
- Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already
tomorrow in Australia.
- Charles
M. Schulz
If you use email, you have a spam filter. You block out the
sales pitches, fake information, and random noise that constantly
flow toward your inbox. In the coming week, I urge you to expand
your concept of what constitutes spam by shielding yourself
against all the other junk food for thought that besieges you.
Be ruthlessly discerning about the toxins that spew from the
radio, TV, Web, newspapers, and magazines. Minimize your contact
with narcissists who think 'conversation' consists of you soaking
up their compulsive self-revelations.
- Rob Brezsny, Free
Will Astrology
Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range
of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range
of our intellectual ray -- we are not looking for it. So, in
the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.
- Henry D. Thoreau
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry D. Thoreau
Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no
longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
- Marc Prensky, Digital
Natives, Digital Immigrants (PDF)
Institutions everywhere, from corporations to the military,
are discovering that maintaining a healthy balance of 'bottoms
up' management (i.e. listening) with the old 'top-down' management
is a far better way to be successful. It is high time we stop
hiding behind our teaching and administration desks, afraid
of our own kids, and learn to dialog with them about their own
learning. After all, isn't that what real education is all about?
- Marc Prensky, To
educate, we must listen (PDF)
Tags work very well. I knew I could not design an ontology
that would work for all of you because you all have different
views.
- Steve Coast, State
Of The Map 2007
A desire
path could be a short cut through waste ground, across the
corner of a civic garden or down an embankment. They were expressions
of free will, 'paths with a passion', an alternative to the
strictures of railings, fences and walls that turned individuals
into powerless apathetic automatons. On desire paths you could
break out, explore, feel your way across the landscape.
- Nick Crane, Two degrees west
Keep looking up.
- Jack Horkheimer
When each of these three elements of vision -- concern for
excellence, for people and for the wider environment -- are
present, business is transformed from a tool for making profits
into a creative, humane experiment for improving life.
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The cookies on my daughter's computer know more about her interests
than her teachers do.
– Henry Kelly, President, Federation of American Scientists,
quoted by Marc Prensky, To
educate, we must listen (PDF)
Choosing a guidebook is not as simple as it used to be, back
when Lonely
Planet guides were usually the best choice for independent
budget travelers and Fodor's guides were for wealthy retirees.
Now Lonely Planet is the biggest guidebook publisher in the
world and Fodor's is trying hard to be more hip and contemporary.
If anything is consistent, it's that nearly all the guidebook
publishers have moved away from serving a niche: they seem to
be doing their best to please everyone, in all budget ranges,
and it's getting harder to find much opinionated personality
anymore.
- Tim
Leffel, Guidebook Smackdown
The Golden Rule is a decent ethical principle, but it could
be even better. "Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you" presumes that others enjoy what you enjoy.
But that's wrong. There are many things you'd like to have done
unto you that others would either despise or be bored by. Here's
a new, improved formulation, which we call the Platinum Rule:
Do unto others as they would like to have you do unto them.
- Rob Brezsny, Free
Will Astrology
Can I be a vegetarian and still eat fried chicken?
- Nicole
Hollander
Can a NASCAR fan be an ecotourist?
- Conversation
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
- Claud
Cockburn
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of
the fight in the dog that counts.
- Popular saying
It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
- Popular saying
Without a place to sell local products, farmers lose hope.
And without local food traditions, people lose hope. If you
don't dream, you don't exist. So let's dream together.
- Kamal Mouzawak, founder of the farmers' market in Beirut,
a city which has lost almost all of its public gathering places,
which makes the farmers' market so vital. Source: Gathering
to Celebrate Food Made the Old, Slow Way - New York Times
The problem is that people who have the power don't care.
- Conversation
Measure twice, cut once.
- Popular saying
You have visitors in your house, not tourists nor travelers.
- Conversation with tourism official
Do consultants add enough value to earn their keep?
- Conservation with a consultant
In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king.
- Desiderius
Erasmus
Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted
from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever
is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever
is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an
inadequate or lying language -- this will become not merely
unspoken, but unspeakable.
- Adrienne Rich
I was dreamin' when I wrote this. Forgive me if it goes astray.
- Prince
Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century
environment that still characterizes the educational establishment
where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented,
classified patterns subjects and schedules.
- Marshall McLuhan, cited in A
vision of students today - YouTube
What I think is coming instead are much more organic ways of
organizing information than our current categorization schemes
allow, based on two units -- the link, which can point to anything,
and the tag, which is a way of attaching labels to links. The
strategy of tagging -- free-form labeling, without regard to
categorical constraints -- seems like a recipe for disaster,
but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount
of value from big messy data sets.
- Clay Shirky, Ontology
is Overrated
One reason Google was adopted so quickly when it came along
is that Google understood there is no shelf, and that there
is no file system. Google can decide what goes with what after
hearing from the user, rather than trying to predict in advance
what it is you need to know.
- Clay Shirky, Ontology
is Overrated
We are moving away from binary categorization -- books either
are or are not entertainment -- and into this probabilistic
world, where N% of users think books are entertainment. It may
well be that within Yahoo, there was a big debate about whether
or not books are entertainment. But they either had no way of
reflecting that debate or they decided not to expose it to the
users. What instead happened was it became an all-or-nothing
categorization, "This is entertainment, this is not entertainment."
We're moving away from that sort of absolute declaration, and
to observing how people handle it in practice.
- Clay Shirky, Ontology
is Overrated
If, on the other hand, you believe that we make sense of the
world, if we are, from a bunch of different points of view,
applying some kind of sense to the world, then you don't privilege
one top level of sense-making over the other. What you do instead
is you try to find ways that the individual sense-making can
roll up to something which is of value in aggregate, but you
do it without an ontological goal. You do it without a goal
of explicitly getting to or even closely matching some theoretically
perfect view of the world.
- Clay Shirky, Ontology
is Overrated
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