Merce Cardus's Blog, page 96
May 25, 2015
MONDAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-publishing, and Better Living: Be An Iconoclast
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Quote of the dayIconoclast.-A person who does something that others say can’t be done.
The brain has three natural roadblocks that stand in the way of truly innovative thinking: flawed perception, fear of failure, and the inability to persuade others. But like, an iconoclast, you can break through those barriers.
~GREGORY BERNS, author ofIconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently
WRITING & SCREENWRITING
You can master classic story s...
May 22, 2015
What Makes A Musician?
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InThis Is Your Brain on Music
, agroundbreaking union of art and science, roc
ker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitinexplores the connection between music – its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it – and the human brain.
How do people become expert musicians? And why is that of the millions of people who take music lessons as children, relatively few continue to play music as adults?
The chasm between musical experts...
The Whole Universe Is In A Glass Of Wine
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Richard Feynmanwas an American theoretical physicist known for his work in thepath integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model.
Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
reprints the six easiest chapters from Feynman’s celebrated Lecture...
WEEKEND LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-Publishing and Better Living: Writing on Both Sides of the Brain
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Quote of the dayWriting with a word processor is a whole-brained experience. In the beginning, when you first get your computer, you need to take a left-brained, logical approach and follow the sequence of steps. But the longer you continue to approach it as a left-brained task, the more frustrating it becomes. Finally, you let go and recognize the computer for the truyly right-brained, spontaneous, and playful tool that it is.
~HENRIETTE A....
May 21, 2015
And God Created The Banana
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InBanana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
, Dan Koeppel offers thefascinating and surprising exploration of the banana’s history, cultural significance, and endangered future.
It’s humanity’s oldest story
In the beginning, God spent a week creating heaven and earth. Fruit appeared on day two. Man arrived after the sixth dawn. After resting, God created a companion for his progeny, and Adam and Eve became a couple. Their Eden was a classi...
Want To Help Someone? Shut Up and Listen!
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Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the elegant and beautiful.
~ERNST F. SCHUMACHER, author ofSmall Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered
When most well-intentioned aid workers hear of a problem they think they can fix, they go to work. This, Ernesto Sirolli suggests, is naïve. In this funny and impassioned talk, he proposes that the first step is to listen to the people you’re...
THURSDAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-publishing, and Better Living: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil
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Letter from Renoir to Durand-Ruel, 1889:
The olive tree, what a beast! You can’t imagine how many problems it has caused me. A tree full of color, not too big, and its little leaves, how they’ve made me sweat! A breath of wind, and the whole tree changes its tonality, because the color isn’t in the leaves, but in the space between them. An artist can’t be great unless he understands the landscape.
~TOM MUELLER, author ofExtra Virginity: The Sublime an...
May 20, 2015
How To Manage Yourself
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InManaging Oneself, Peter Druker tells us that i
t’s up to you to carve out your 
place in the world and know when to change course.
Napoléon, da Vinci and Mozart were great achievers
History’s great achievers–a Napoléon, a da Vinci, a Mozart–have always managed themselves. That, in large measure, is what makes them great achievers. But they are rare exceptions, so unusual both in their talents and their accomplishments as to be considered outside the bo...
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
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Twenty four hundred years ago, Plato, one of history’s most famous thinkers
, said life is like being chained up in a cave forced to watch shadows flitting across a stone wall. Beyond sounding quite morbid, what exactly did he mean? Alex Gendler unravels Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, found in Book VII of The Republic.
What is reality, knowledge, the meaning of life?
Big topics you might tackle figuratively explaining existence as a journey down a r...
HUMP DAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-publishing and Better Living: Why You Should Be Tracking Your Habits
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With habits, we don’t make decisions, we don’t use self-control, we just do the thing we want ourselves to do—or that we don’t want to do.
~GRETCHEN RUBIN, author ofBetter Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives
WRITING & SCREENWRITING
Are you making these capitalization mistakes?, Men with pens | TweetThose of us who are passionate about grammar have our personal pet peeves, an everyday error that sends you into a red-pen rage whe...
