Jean de La Bruyère
As quoted in Selected Thoughts from the French: XV Century-XX Century, with English Translations (1913), pp. 132-133, by James Raymond Solly. This may conceivably be a misattribution, because as yet no definite citation of a specific work by La Bruyère has been located, and the statement is very similar to one known to have been made by Horace Walpole in a letter of 31 December 1769: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.
Always wear the suit
Always shave (except in November)
Never put all your underwear in the laundry at once
You can (probably) type much faster than you can write
Never forget your laptop’s power cord
Never forget deodorant
Sniff test your clothes, it saves money
Grab the belt
I am now about a month into school at Pepperdine University, where I am a Political Science and Philosophy double major.
The campus here is absolutely amazing, as is the community. Almost everyone at Pepperdine actually wants to be here over anywhere else, and it makes for incredibly nice, happy people.
I have a course load of 17 credits: Religion 101, Great Books I, Theater 210, Humanities 111, and Psychology 200.The academics in the way of GEs suck (Religion and Humanities are large lectures that are quite pointless).
Faculty for the most part try to help students, but not everything works out. I’ve had some financial aid issues (that have thankfully since been resolved), but that were very stressful.
The convocation requirement is childish, but I don’t mind the convocations themselves. Also childish are the suite lobby curfews on the opposite gender, and the free speech restrictions. (Which will be discussed extensively in a later article.)
Overall, I absolutely love Pepperdine, and almost everything has far exceeded my expectations.
As my (free) host (FreeHostia) doesn’t allow outbound connections, I was never able to import my tweets from @AndSchwa. As a remedy for now, (as I love to microblog), here is a quoted list of the best things I’ve written lately (hand imported):
If you like what I write, go ahead and follow me.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Maybe)
I’ve also learned that most people do not respond to reasoned, well-articulated arguments (contrary to what I was taught in college). When attempting to persuade others, good rhetoric is sadly often more effective than good debate. Realizing this also opened my eyes to the staggering amount of manipulative maneuvering at play in the political world, and turned me into a huge cynic — but that’s another story. The best direction for me to head from that point was to learn to love the ignorant masses instead of loathing them, accept a world that’s much less than perfect, and make lemonade out of lemons. Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People is much less exploitative than it sounds, and was a tremendously valuable resource for me.
From a MetaFilter conversation
To quote Salman Khan of the Khan Academy on religion:
If you believe in trying to make the best of the finite number of years we have on this planet (while not making it any worse for anyone else), think that pride and self-righteousness are the cause of most conflict and negativity, and are humbled by the vastness and mystery of the Universe, then I’m the same religion as you.
This man sums up my current beliefs perfectly.
I believe that you should use your time the best you can, and that means enjoying yourself, but not causing harm on other people (for this reason, marijuana ought to be legalized).
Although I haven’t thought of it much before, I completely agree that self-righteousness causes far too many problems. People need to learn to admit when they’re wrong and not make the world worse in order to “become right”.
From one of my previous posts, “I am an infinitesimal speck composed of infinitesimal specks”, I am humbled by the universe, and I’ve always admitted that there is too much that we don’t know about the world.
Salman Khan has life figured out.
I’ve decided to join Technorati, and in order to claim my blog, I must post this: FMPBTUNHJF5Q
Andrew Schwartzmeyer
A few days ago, Pioneer One debuted. It’s an independent sci-fi dramatic “television series” (currently only one episode, my fingers are crossed for more) that’s funded solely through donations (originally via Kickstarter) and distributed freely through the BitTorrent protocol via Vodo. The show is licensed under Creative Commons.
Pioneer One itself is very intriguing, especially for geeks like me. I would talk more about the plot so far, but I don’t want to give it away. If you enjoy science fiction, you ought to watch this show, especially considering that it costs you nothing but your time (and a pinch of bandwidth).
From the Vodo site:
An object in the sky spreads radiation over North America. Fearing terrorism, U.S. Homeland Security agents are dispatched to investigate and contain the damage. What they discover will have implications for the entire world.
The creators have planned 7 episodes for the first season, with four possible seasons depending on funding. As of this writing, about $17,000 of the $20,000 needed to film three more episodes has been raised.
I have also emailed a tip to Lifehacker, in hopes that they publish an article about this show. The Wikipedia entry underwent a comedic (to outsiders) flame war for deletion, but as no consensus was reached, the article has been kept.
This project is one of the best out there, and I hope to see it become popular. I urge you to watch this show, and if you like it, you should donate.