As more people start realizing that there are better reasons to write blogs beyond trying to squeeze pennies out of ads, I bet we’ll see a significant movement toward tearing down these barriers. We’ll see more complete people blogging their whole lives, not just trying to emulate magazine columns or news sites. Some of them will get large audiences, but most won’t — and it won’t matter.

Wales cites Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek's essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society", which he read as an undergraduate,[16] as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project".[11]

What do you mean by flow?


Csikszentmihalyi: Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.

How can a Web site be designed to stimulate and sustain a flow experience?

A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrées, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same. Web site designers assume that the visitor already knows what to choose. That's not true. People enter Web sites hoping to be led somewhere, hoping for a payoff.


So goals are important?

Goals transform a random walk into a chase. You need clear goals that fit into a hierarchy, with little goals that build toward more meaningful, higher-level goals. Here you are, tracking the footprints of some animal you haven't seen. That's exhilarating. Then there's the question of feedback. Most Web sites don't very much care what you do. It would be much better if they said: "You've made some interesting choices" or "You're developing a knowledge of Picasso." There's also the ability to challenge. Competition is an easy way to get into flo

We conclude that, as far as activity in the brain is concerned, there is a faculty of beauty that is not dependent on the modality through which it is conveyed but which can be activated by at least two sources–musical and visual–and probably by other sources as well. This has led us to formulate a brain-based theory of beauty.

One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end. Maybe not soon, but probably before too long; humanity has never before managed to craft an eternal social system, after all, and capitalism is a notably more precarious and volatile order than most of those that preceded it. The question, then, is what will come next. Rosa Luxemburg, reacting to the beginnings of World War I, cited a line from Engels: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” In that spirit I offer a thought experiment, an attempt to make sense of our possible futures. These are a few of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if we fail.

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote “not guilty” — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.

Portugal’s 10 year experiment shows clearly that enough is enough. It is time to end the war on drugs worldwide. We must stop criminalising drug users. Health and treatment should be offered to drug users – not prison. Bad drugs policies affect literally hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities across the world. We need to provide medical help to those that have problematic use – not criminal retribution.

man you guys have a weird definition of "easiest" or "healthiest".

Here you go. You can do this for about 2 dollars and it will feed you for an entire day. You'll be getting hardly any fat, tons of protien and fiber, and it tastes delicious.

1 can of black beans
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can of corn

put it all in a saucepan. I add a boullion cube and whatever spice happens to be jumpin out at me. Of course garlic ginger cumin pepper all are fine. Or not. Heat it up and put it in a freaking bowl. Eat. Have energy. Lose weight. Make new friends. Get a promotion.

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I second glenwood's suggestion, with the addition of brown rice or quinoa for some fiber, and spinach, scallions, or other green veg for more nutrition.

REALLY cheap and really tasty: one package hippie ramen. Cook, drain, discard 'flavor' packet. Mix noodles with tablespoon all-natural peanut butter, juice of 1 lime, chili-garlic sauce to taste, and 3-4 chopped scallions. Add other veg in season.

I used to eat this every day for lunch. It's got grain, protein, vitamin c, etc. And it's yummy.

"Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses – where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere – are, because of these very facts, more precious than the productions of professionals. After a certain familiarity with these flourishings of an exalted feverishness, lived so fully and so intensely by their authors, we cannot avoid the feeling that in relation to these works, cultural art in its entirety appears to be the game of a futile society, a fallacious parade." - Jean Dubuffet. Place à l'incivisme (Make way for Incivism). Art and Text no.27 (December 1987 - February 1988). p.36 Dubuffet's writing on art brut was the subject of a noted program at the Art Club of Chicago in the early 1950s.

Pitchfork: You have really big ears and thoroughly non-Catholic taste, and this shows in the artists you recommend, though sometimes you get grief for championing your friends.

DB: Vashti [Bunyan], on a very personal level. Her music saved my life in many ways. Her music provided very concrete things I didn't have that time. I'd go so far as to say it replaced a bed and food pretty much. Water and Vashti got me through some pretty tough times. So, I owe that to her because her music was so nourishing.

Pitchfork: I like that, despite your reservations, you're not afraid to engage with the mystical or spiritual side of things but you never do it in a super serious kind of way.

DB: I grew up around so much new agey stuff. Part of me takes it lightly because I'm so used to it. It was my parents. It wasn't some path I discovered and want to share with people. It's just been a very natural part of my life. There's humor to it and there's seriousness to it, too. It's all about sensitivity. If you have sensitivity then mysticism will be part of your life. It's a very beautiful thing and a very real thing but it's not something to not take seriously and it's not something to take seriously. It's something to engage in the moment. It's all kinds of variables. There's always so many colors, you know?

Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.[8]


Duchamp adamantly asserted that he wanted to "de-deify" the artist. The readymades provide a way around inflexible either-or aesthetic propositions. They represent a Copernican shift in art. Fountain is what's called an "acheropoietoi," [sic] an image not shaped by the hands of an artist. Fountain brings us into contact with an original that is still an original but that also exists in an altered philosophical and metaphysical state. It is a manifestation of the Kantian sublime: A work of art that transcends a form but that is also intelligible, an object that strikes down an idea while allowing it to spring up stronger.[5]

According to critic Stephen Burt, in many poems Ammons combines three types of diction:
A “normal” range of language for poetry, including the standard English of educated conversation and the slightly rarer words we expect to see in literature (“vast,” “summon,” “universal”).
A demotic register, including the folk-speech of eastern North Carolina, where he grew up (“dibbles”), and broader American chatter unexpected in serious poems (“blip”).
The Greek- and Latin-derived phraseology of the natural sciences (“millimeter,” “information of actions / summarized”), especially geology, physics, and cybernetics.
Such a mixture is nearly unique, Burt says; these three modes are "almost never found together outside his poems".