randomWalks

When children age 3 to 5 see a ball rolling into a box, they say that the ball couldn’t have done anything else. But when they see an experimenter put her hand in the box, they insist that she could have done something else.

(via Taking precautions › Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion)

I am a huge geek; my wife, however, is not. She, like Luke, could never be turned, so the responsibility for making sure our two little kids end up liking stuff like Star Wars, Tolkien, Final Fantasy, Doc Brown and, of course, D&D is on me.

Scary and Sad: Japanese House Floats Through Pacific - Disasters - Curbed LA

Owsley Stanley,” my dad wrote. “Didn’t know his first name was Owsley. Just knew that the first few hits of acid were called Owsley. Went with friends to the Fillmore West to see Janis Joplin and the Holding Company, or so I was told. They laughed when I told them that I didn’t know who she was. Had just started U.C. Berkeley and had taken an Alternative Course in creative writing and another course on Gandhi. Dropped the Acid and well what is time and space anyway.

As the drug was then unknown in the UK and they had no knowledge of dosage or potency, he and his partner Paula injected the whole shipment in one go. It was an experience that he never really recovered from…

I tried “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but listening to Alex recite Atticus Finch made me want to push an icepick in my ear.

My grandmother took me down to the mailbox in Brooklyn every morning, and she would say, ‘It’s a federal offense for anyone to look at your mail. That’s what makes this country great.’ In the old country they’d open your mail, and that’s how they knew about you.

Don’t forget the human and the first-person experience, he said, we have this job to wake up the world to itself.

I’d always been a writer but, boy, did I get an education. He’d say: ‘It’s easier than you think! Just look out your eye like you’re looking through a window!’ and, ‘Nobody wants to hear about your feelings, darling, tell me what you see!’

Hi, I hear you’re really nice, if you come down to the Howard Johnsons in Greenwich Village, I’ll be waiting at the counter in a red-and-black-checked shirt.

In the noise of everything you see and do in your life, those moments that garner the strongest reaction are the ones that are remembered. Fear, rejection, humiliation, glee, joy, devotion, tenderness, devastation, grief. So, to have a life filled with memories, you must always feel genuinely and passionately, and let everything make an impression on you. Avoid walls or defenses. You must always take chances. Accept it all, unshielded. That way, you’ll get the most value for your time.

The situation is not unfavorable; there is a prospect of ultimate success, but there are still obstacles in the way, and we can merely take preparatory measures. Only through the small means of friendly persuasion can we exert any influence. The time has not yet come for sweeping measures. However, we may be able, to a limited extent, to act as a restraining and subduing influence. To carry out our purpose we need firm determination within and gentleness and adaptability in external relations.