Ohara Koson (Kanazawa, 1877 - Tokyo, 1945), 'Crow and Blossom', woodblock print, 1910.

"Why travel far in search of a new home when Blossom Valley is already a home to a crow family? There are lots of uninhabited trees in Blossom Valley and many herons in Penny Reeds who are brilliant architects of nest building?

(...)«What was he talking about? His he serious?» a crow with a patch on his left eye asked.

«He's an owl», the old crow blurted out. «Owls never speak words that aren't serious and wise. Remenber that.»"

Helen Fox, George the Orphan Crow and the Creatures of Blossom Valley

HOME LIBRARIES CONFER LONG-TERM BENEFITS

Uma pessoa tem que ter sempre um livro na mesa de cabeceira para descansar dos livros da especialidade e artigos científicos que se lêem com atenção de estudo. Acabei o que estava a ler e estou aqui indecisa sobre que livro começar... apetecem-me os dois e estou sem critério de decisão. Um dos livros traça o retrato da história milenar de Jerusalém, desde o rei David até à Guerra dos Seis Dias de Moshe Dayan. Fascinante, não é verdade? O outro é a biografia da Indira Gandhi, essa mulher extraordinária, de um tempo excitante, empurrada para o poder e traída pelos homens em quem mais confiava. Fascinante, não é verdade?

"10 years of experience in one hour" (Derek Sivers)

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” 

― W.B. Yeats

via pearl-nautilus

 

via Sam Lowry

É como fazer bolo mármore. Os ingredientes é que são outros.

Books self-portraits by Pierre Beteille

(...) extreme inequality “threatens our democratic institutions.” Democracy is not just one citizen, one vote, but a promise of equal opportunity.

“It’s very difficult to make a democratic system work when you have such extreme inequality” in income, he said, “and such extreme inequality in terms of political influence and the production of knowledge and information. One of the big lessons of the 20th century is that we don’t need 19th-century inequality to grow.” But that’s just where the capitalist world is heading again, he concludes.

Thomas Piketty’s best-selling new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” ((Harvard University Press)

Este livro contém as cartas de cinco ingleses do século XVII a seus filhos. As primeiras cartas são de Sir Walter Raleigh, aristocrata espião, corsário, aventureiro, cortesão, escritor e favorito da rainha Elizabeth de Inglaterra, escritas a seu filho com conselhos cheios de pragmatismo. Como ele foi um homem muito vivido, conhecedor do mundo e, inteligente, os conselhos dele são de uma sabedoria intemporal.

"The Wisest Men have been abused
BY Flatterers. " Take care thou be not
made a fool by flatterers,for even the
wisest men are abused by these. Know
therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind
of traitors ;
for they will strengthen thy
imperfections, encourage thee in all evils,
correct thee in nothing, but so shadow and
paint all thy vices and follies,as thou shalt
never, by their will, discern evil from good,
or vice from virtue. And because all men
are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain
the additions of other men's praises, is
most perilous.

(...)

But it is hard to know them from friends,
they are so obsequious and full of ptarotiteons-s
; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so
doth a flatterer a friend. A flatterer is
compared to an ape, who because she
cannot defend the house like a dog, labour
as an ox, or bear burdens as a horse,
doth therefore yet play tricks and provoke
laughter. Thou mayest be sure that he
that will in private tell thee thy faults.Is
thy friend, for he adventures thy dislike,

and doth hazard thy hatred ; for there are
few men that can endure it, every man
for the most part delightingin self-praise,
which is one of the most universal follies
that bewitcheth mankind."

Derek Sivers note on The Little Book of Talent - by Daniel Coyle

(http://sivers.org/book )

TIP #12:
FIVE WAYS TO PICK A HIGH-QUALITY TEACHER OR COACH

1) Avoid Someone Who Reminds You of a Courteous Waiter
2) Seek Someone Who Scares You a Little. Look for someone who: Watches you closely, is action-oriented, and is honest, sometimes unnervingly so.
3) Seek Someone Who Gives Short, Clear Directions
4) Seek Someone Who Loves Teaching Fundamentals
5) Other Things Being Equal, Pick the Older Person

Achei interessante porque duma maneira muito sucinta diz muito sobre qualidades fundamentais de um bom professor. Também dá para ver que aqui no rectângulo promovem-se as qualidades exactamente opostas às referidas acima, mais, castigam-se quase todas as referidas acima. O que explica muita coisa...

Chad Wright

.

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Carl Sagan

Finais de seculo XIX. Mary Kingsley perde ambos os pais e resolve ir viajar. E para onde vai? Para onde lhe dizem para não ir, sobretudo sozinha: África.

De várias viagens aventureiras que faz a África por regiões e selvas inóspitas e desconhecidas, resultam conferências, estudos e livros de memórias. Como este.

Desde que começou a viajar até que morreu passou pouco tempo. Morreu muito nova, aos trinta e sete anos, com febre tifóide.

O livro já andava cá em casa há bastante tempo. Relatos de viagens na primeira pessoa, sobretudo se são de pioneiros e se se passam antes da primeira grande guerra, são como certos bombons de chocolate: irresistíveis. Vejo-os, compro-os, mesmo se depois passam uns anos até ter tempo para os ler. Sei que eles estão ali à espera :)

Comecei-o há bocadinho e gostei logo da introdução (que na maioria das vezes só leio no fim de ter lido o livro mas, como não sabia quase nada dela e do contexto destas viagens...) que acaba com estas palavras:

Alone on a river bank at night, leaning against a rock, she writes in these pages of the majesty and beauty of the scene. 'Do not imagine it gave rise', she warns, ' ... to those complicated, poetical reflections natural beauty seems to bring out in other people's minds. It never works that way with me; I just loose all sense of human individuality, all memory of human life, with its grief and worry and doubt, and become part of the atmosphere.' With caracteristic paradox, she concludes the passage with a poetic touch of the very kind she has disclaimed. 'If I have a heaven,' she reflects on the scene, 'that will be mine'. I hope it is. (Sara Wheeler)

Lindo! Como não ficar logo entusiasmada...?

Photograph via Blogamole

Were you consciously trying to break down the image of a platonic God?

Absolutely. We’ve created a theology in the West of a God who is fundamentally self-centered. The imagery of God as distant, unapproachable, unreachable -  that’s not a God who is relational. It is a God that gets to declare or judge when he gets pissed off. But there is no basis for love and relationships if God is a fundamentally self-centered being.

There is all this imagery about God as ‘the father’. I’m a father, and there is a whole different way you look at the universe when you have your children. There are two totally different ways to approach anger, wrath and judgment: one as a father or a parent, and one as a judge. Well what if the judge is the father? The problem with theology is that a lot of times we end up with a God who’s not even a very good father.

Are there questions you aren’t supposed to ask about religion?

Oh yeah. There is sanctity and a limit of your ability to ask questions within the church. You aren’t supposed to ask about the system and the structure, because God created it, as opposed to all other systems and structures. You can’t ask ‘if men are so much more screwed up than women, then how come they’re in charge’? I’m of the belief that all religious systems are fundamentally opposed to women.

So your writing has a feminist agenda?

No, I’m pushing a pro-woman agenda. It’s not a political agenda. I think one of the greatest losses to humanity was the domination of women. I think every religious system has found ways to be kind to them in a kind of subordinate way.  Very patronizing, very colonial.

WM Paul Young

WM Paul Young: "Religious systems are