Abraham Shafi's Blog

"Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision."

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:32:40 -0500

“Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.”

- Winston Churchill

"When you read this sentence to yourself, it’s likely that you hear the words in your head. Now, in..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:23:29 -0500

“When you read this sentence to yourself, it’s likely that you hear the words in your head. Now, in what amounts to technological telepathy, others are on the verge of being able to hear your inner dialogue too. By peering inside the brain, it is possible to reconstruct speech from the activity that takes place when we hear someone talking. Because this brain activity is thought to be similar whether we hear a sentence or think the same sentence, the discovery brings us a step closer to broadcasting our inner thoughts to the world without speaking. The implications are enormous – people made mute through paralysis or locked-in syndrome could regain their voice. It might even be possible to read someone’s mind. Imagine a musician watching a piano being played with no sound, says Brian Pasley at the University of California, Berkeley. “If a pianist were watching a piano being played on TV with the sound off, they would still be able to work out what the music sounded like because they know what key plays what note,” Pasley says. His team has done something analogous with brain waves, matching neural areas to their corresponding noises.”

- Telepathy machine reconstructs speech from brainwaves - health - 31 January 2012 - New Scientist (via wildcat2030)

"Even though the data around productivity has proved pretty remorseless, humans have found the..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:13:02 -0500

“Even though the data around productivity has proved pretty remorseless, humans have found the message hard to accept. It seems so logical that two units of work will produce twice the output. Logical but wrong. The critical measure of work isn’t and never should be input but output. What matters isn’t how many hours your team puts in, but the quality and quantity of work they produce.”

- The Truth About Sleep & Productivity | Inc.com (via infoneer-pulse)

"There as a study in which it comes out that thirty of the largest companies in the United States are..."

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:55:50 -0500

“There as a study in which it comes out that thirty of the largest companies in the United States are now spending more on lobbying than they pay in federal taxes. …Who really pays for that? And the answer is America’s middle class — they’re the ones who are left to pick up all the pieces, to pay the taxes to keep the country running. And, more to the point, they’re the ones who are paying for the fact that there’s not enough money left to invest in our kids’ future.”

- Massachusetts Senate candidate ELIZABETH WARREN, on The Daily Show (via inothernews)

"The big question for universities going forward is this: Can control of credentialing last for long..."

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:17:11 -0500

“The big question for universities going forward is this: Can control of credentialing last for long without control of knowledge? If a great many people learn from Sebastian Thrun and Udacity how to create a search engine, and if some of those are very good search engines, might not the most successful students simply point to their work as a sufficient indicator of their coding chops? Who needs a credential when they can use a simple URL to show potential employers not just what they’re capable of but what they have already achieved?”

- The Great Unbundling of the University - Alan Jacobs - Technology - The Atlantic (via infoneer-pulse)

"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you."

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:38:14 -0500

“Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.”

- Aldous Huxley

"Piracy is not going to be solved by the heavy hand of the law. As far as businesses should be..."

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:13:04 -0500

“Piracy is not going to be solved by the heavy hand of the law. As far as businesses should be concerned, it can only ultimately be “solved” by new business models, just as radios, record players, tape recorders, and video recorders all required media companies to figure out new ways of making money. We are not about to jump in a time machine to return to the 60s and give up the internet just because some companies can’t compete.”

- SOPA is the equivalent of smashing the Gutenberg press – Telegraph Blogs (via infoneer-pulse)

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness..."

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:15:46 -0500

“We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.”

- Marcel Proust (via mirroir)

"Our lives are temporal. Time passes, and with that our lives. Dissolving into things, processes, and..."

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:27:28 -0500

“Our lives are temporal. Time passes, and with that our lives. Dissolving into things, processes, and events as the mode of their becoming, time is a medium within which every being is able to exist and develop. Time is, however, also destructive. Its power means that everything, including ourselves, is transient, provisional and bound to come to an irreversible end.”

- ESPEN HAMMER - On Modern Time

"Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know..."

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:45:00 -0500

“Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace (via zenhabits)

"Most good things happen without a plan: friendships, falling in love, finding a job, and so on. If..."

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:12:56 -0500

“Most good things happen without a plan: friendships, falling in love, finding a job, and so on. If you want to make your new year count, you’ll need to be intentional — not by setting goals, but by making space in your life for what really matters”

- » How to Have the Best Year of Your Life (without Setting a Single Goal) :zenhabits (via bijan)

"Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run the three miles in..."

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:29:19 -0500

“Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile [Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a-half minutes per mile]. So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.” I said, “Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older then you are, and I can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it.” I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m ok for three or four minuets, and then I really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more and I so I say to him, “Bruce if I run anymore,” — and we’re still running— “if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you say that?” He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.””

- Bruce Lee - On Limits

"When society equates maleness with a constant desire for sex, men are socialized out of genuine..."

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 02:22:20 -0500

“When society equates maleness with a constant desire for sex, men are socialized out of genuine sexual decision making, and are less likely to be able to know how to say no or to be comfortable refusing sex when they don’t want it.”

- Jill Filipovic, from “Offensive Feminism: The Conservative Gender Norms That Perpetuate Rape Culture, and How Feminists Can Fight Back” in Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power & a World Without Rape (via khaleesi)

"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a..."

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:17:14 -0500

“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there is nothing left to do, and nothing else to pursue.”

- Hagakure (via mnmal)

"You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to..."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:50:22 -0500

“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.”

- Brian Tracy (via myquotelibrary)

"The business of humanity has become entertainment, and entertainment is the business of feeding fake..."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:29:17 -0500

“The business of humanity has become entertainment, and entertainment is the business of feeding fake fitness cues to our brains.”

- Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM (via rafer)

"A strange thing happened Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill. As Rep. Stenny Hoyer (D-MD) attempted to..."

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:40:23 -0500

“A strange thing happened Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill. As Rep. Stenny Hoyer (D-MD) attempted to call for a vote to extend a payroll tax cut to middle class and working Americans, his Republican colleagues adjourned the House and walked out of the chamber. And if that weren’t odd enough, it got even stranger: As Hoyer railed against them for failing to help working Americans, footage from C-SPAN went silent, then cut away. Moments later, C-SPAN took to the Internet to explain that it wasn’t their doing, but someone working for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).”

- Boehner’s office cuts off C-SPAN cameras as GOP takes verbal beating | The Raw Story (via wreckandsalvage)
“We regret, Mr. Speaker, that you have walked off the platform without addressing the issue of critical importance to this country, and that is the continuation of the middle class tax cut, the continuation of unemployment benefits for those at risk of losing them, and a continuation of the access to doctors for all those 48 million seniors who rely on them daily for help.”

"You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf."

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:51:21 -0500

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

- Jon Kabat-Zinn (via sebastianwaters)

"The best practice one can make is to speak with oneself, with one’s own fear; to dispute with it,..."

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:27:28 -0500

“The best practice one can make is to speak with oneself, with one’s own fear; to dispute with it, and to root out the reasons on whose foundations it rests. What generally happens is that all things one fears, one fears even to think of them. But the solution of getting above fear lies in analyzing the cause of the fear and so making it non-existent. Man by nature possesses a tremendous power hidden in his heart, the power which waits constantly to become manifest. This power is hidden by fear. The day when fear disappears, this latent power will manifest to view.”

- VOLUME XIII - 17 (via rahmin)

"Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive..."

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:14:11 -0500

““Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.””

- - Gandhi

Life is a process. Recognize good process design.
(via bmdesign)