"Larry Smith wants to know your story. Since 2006, Smith has undertaken the Six-Word Memoir Project inviting his Smith Magazine readers to tell their stories in just a handful of words. His project can now be found in classrooms, boardrooms, hospitals, churches, speed-dating sessions, and at live six-word “slams” across the world."

"If you’re a designer, entrepreneur, or creative – you probably haven’t been asked for your resume in a long time. Instead, people Google you – and quickly assess your talents based on your website, portfolio, and social media profiles. Do they resonate with what you’re sharing? Do they identify with your story? Are you even giving them a story to wrap their head around?"<br />
<br />
"the resume is on the out, and the bio is on the rise. People work with people they can relate to and identify with. Trust comes from personal disclosure. And that kind of sharing is hard to convey in a resume. Your bio needs to tell the bigger story. Especially, when you’re in business for yourself, or in the business of relationships. It’s your bio that’s read first."

"He attended Froebelian Kindergarten. Spending much of his youth on Bear Island, in Penobscot Bay off the coast of Maine, he had trouble with geometry, being unable to understand the abstraction necessary to imagine that a chalk dot on the blackboard represented a mathematical point, or that an imperfectly drawn line with an arrow on the end was meant to stretch off to infinity. He often made items from materials he brought home from the woods, and sometimes made his own tools. He experimented with designing a new apparatus for human propulsion of small boats.<br />
<br />
Years later, he decided that this sort of experience had provided him with not only an interest in design, but also a habit of being familiar with and knowledgeable about the materials that his later projects would require. Fuller earned a machinist's certification, and knew how to use the press brake, stretch press, and other tools and equipment used in the sheet metal trade."

"At 16 Berger left school and enrolled at the Central School of Art, where he encountered "older painters and teachers". Lucian Freud was there briefly at the same time. "I'm not saying we predicted what would happen with his career, but equally it is not that much of a surprise. He was an outstanding student, and it was clear that he was very gifted and also very confident.""<br />
<br />
""The only rule in collaborations is that one should never strike deals and never compromise," he says. "If you disagree on something you shouldn't yield and you shouldn't insist on winning. Instead you should just accept that the solution is not right and carry on until it is right. The temptation to say 'you can have this one and I will have the next one' is fatal.""<br />
<br />
[via: http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2011/05/03/easter-reading.php ]

"This biography is largely an oral auto-biography, stitched together from the various interviews. All the passages below that are in quotes are from DeLillo himself, and the other text is from the interviewer noted below each entry."

"In the first big DFW documentary since his suicide…Geoff Ward discusses the author’s childhood, legacy, preoccupations and battles with the gentleness of a true fan but the exactitude of a scholar. On the radio missive, which first aired on the BBC on February 6, Ward interviews Wallace’s contemporaries, Don DeLillo, Michael Pietsch, editor of Infinite Jest, Wallace’s agent, Bonnie Nadell & his sister, Amy Wallace. He also mines archives of interviews w/ DFW — some of the most wonderful are with Wallace discussing irony —  & accents his ruminations & conversations w/ passages from Infinite Jest as well as the forthcoming The Pale King.<br />
<br />
If you’re a reader, a writer or even just a member of the television saturation generation, it’s worth a listen, & if you’re a fan of Wallace, the program may tug at your heartstrings, suggesting what might have been, but celebrating the man as he was…DeLillo: “I can’t think of anyone quite like him, at all…Wallace stands alone.”

"Einstein could not make change…bus drivers of Princeton had to pick out his nickels & quarters for him. We dimmer bulbs love to seize on tales like this…comforted by the notion of the educated fool. It seems only right that some leveling principle should deprive the geniuses among us of common sense, street smarts, mother wit…<br />
<br />
Having myself grown up in Berkeley, where Nobel laureates are a dime a dozen, I certainly know the syndrome: mismatched socks, spectacles repaired with duct tape, forgotten anniversaries & missed appointments, valise left absentmindedly on park bench. Yet hometown experience did not prepare me completely for Dyson. In my interviews…he would sometimes depart the conversation mid-sentence, his face vacant for a minute or two while he followed some intricate thought or polished an equation, & then he would return to complete the sentence as if he had never been away. I have observed similar departures in other deep thinkers, but never for nearly so long."

"When he was 17, Capote's formal education ended when he was employed at The New Yorker magazine, which he held for two years. Years later, he reminisced, "Not a very grand job, for all it really involved was sorting cartoons and clipping newspapers. Still, I was fortunate to have it, especially since I was determined never to set a studious foot inside a college classroom. I felt that either one was or wasn't a writer, and no combination of professors could influence the outcome. I still think I was correct, at least in my own case."" [Summarized youth here: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2010/09/30]

"The United States has a startling ability to take its most angry, edgy radicals and turn them into cuddly eunuchs. The process begins the moment they die. Mark Twain is remembered as a quipster forever floating down the Mississippi River at sunset, while his polemics against the violent birth of the American empire lie unread and unremembered. Martin Luther King is remembered for his prose-poetry about children holding hands on a hill in Alabama, but few recall that he said the U.S. government was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."<br />
<br />
But perhaps the greatest act of historical castration is of Jack London. This man was the most-read revolutionary Socialist in American history, agitating for violent overthrow of the government and the assassination of political leaders—and he is remembered now for writing a cute story about a dog. It's as if the Black Panthers were remembered, a century from now, for adding a pink tint to their afros."

"2001: Live for two months in a base­ment in Port­land, Ore­gon enact­ing fan­tasy of being a mis­er­able artist that lives in a base­ment in Port­land, Ore­gon. Return to Chicago, the so-called “city of broad shoul­ders.” Work in a large uni­ver­sity library as a pro­fes­sional book mover. Relo­cate 12% of the col­lec­tion (800,000 vol­umes) from one place to another place. Develop a mighty grip and pow­er­ful fore­arms. Expe­ri­ence mys­ti­cal insight into the nature of time. For­get about art, move to Tokyo and refo­cus on housewifery."

"A polar bear display for the zoo. Free towels at public swimming pools. A “drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Iceland’s Best Party, founded in December by comedian, Jon Gnarr, to satirize his country’s political system, ran a campaign that was one big joke. Or was it?...

"A dozen years later, out of high school and having returned home from an adventure in Alaska, Andy realized what he needed to do: he was going to be an elementary school teacher. His childhood experience remains a vivid memory."

"Muybridge traveled widely, at a time when travel itself was changing dramatically: from horsepower to iron and steam. As trains cut down the time it took for people to move through space, Muybridge ventured beyond even the new boundaries, rappelling into treacherous crevasses and hauling his equipment to remote Alaskan villages.

"Darwin insisted on his intellectual ordinariness. He wanted it publicly understood that his native endowments were no more than average, that he had to overcome a youthful tendency to sloth and self-indulgence, that he had wasted his time at university, that becoming a serious naturalist owed much to good luck, that he had achieved what he had mainly through close observation, discipline, hard work and a genuine passion for science. ... Newton is ascetically ‘wholly other’, bent on destroying intellectual competitors; Galileo is a manipulator of patronage...Einstein is a man who loved humanity in general but treated his wives and his daughter as disposable appendages; Pasteur is a Machiavellian politician of science...Feynman is a philistine, a sexual predator, an over-aged adolescent show-off. This is what has now become of towering genius, of those who discover nature’s secrets. First we make them into icons and then we see how iconoclastic we can be. Darwin alone escapes whipping."

"Monk liked to wear a formidable ring bearing his name when he played, an encumbrance that no pianist in his right mind would want to burden a hand with. While he was flashing his ring for the world to see, from his own perspective he saw something else. "KNOW" said the ring, more or less, to the audience. "MONK" was the reply when he saw it himself."

"In 1938, he accepted his first American position as a scholarship holder at Princeton University. At this time, he began to develop the habit of traveling from campus to campus. He would not stay long in one place and traveled back and forth among mathematical institutions until his death.

"Miles Davis made more money. Duke Ellington was more prolific. Charlie Parker was more revered. But no one had a more profound impact on modern jazz than Thelonious Monk...Who knew, for instance, that the godfather of bebop‚ was a devoted family man, loving husband, and diaper-changing, doting father who lived in the same modest Manhattan apartment for a half century? Or that the pianist whose playing style was ravaged by critics for being “dissonant‚ unschooled‚ and primitive‚“ was in fact well-schooled in classical music at a young age and could play many difficult pieces from memory? But his real passion was kindled by the kind of jazz he heard as a teen, wafting through the halls and open windows of his San Juan Hill neighborhood, a densely populated melting pot of black and Caribbean transplants...if there is a single word that would most aptly define Monk’s music, it’s freedom."

"Revel in New York is a city and culture guide for curious travelers and locals alike. Through our original videos we introduce you to interesting New Yorkers that range from established artists, chefs, and musicians to the equally charismatic characters operating outside the margins of popular culture.

"Monk’s thought is, I think, an example of an anti-philosophy of the kind that Wittgenstein wrote about, and that interests me enormously. Monk says that biography is a model of “the kind of understanding that consists in seeing connections,” as opposed to theoretical understanding, which consists in explaining something via a fundamental theory, and the attended methods, frameworks, and jargon. I spend quite a lot of time reading various philosophy and critical theory blogs, and I’m often astounded by the impracticality and complexity of the writing produced for them. Finding philosophy that exhibits genuine clarity can be a difficult task in itself, but it’s often necessary for me to get a new and useful perspective of the things I want to write about."

""Mandatory reading for everybody interested in Latin America." Mariano Ben Plotkin, researcher at the Instituto de Desarrollo Economico y Social in Buenos Aires and professor at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero "A comprehensive and very readable account of a fascinating personality - this will, for some considerable period and perhaps forever, be the definitive source on Prebisch's personal life and career." Gerry Helleiner, Munk Institute for International Studies, University of Toronto" via: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/11/the-life-and-times-of-raul-prebisch-19011986.html

"He also told his parents how he'd felt at school. "Having his life fall apart narrowed his sense of what his options were — and the possibilities that were left became more real to him....He would talk about just being very sad, and lonely," Sally says. "It didn't have anything to do with being loved. He just was very lonely inside himself.""..."Back at school junior year, he never talked much about his breakdown. "It was embarrassing and personal," Costello says. "A zone of no jokes." Wallace regarded it as a failure, something he should have been able to control. He routinized his life." via: http://www.kottke.org/08/10/as-close-to-a-biography-of-david-foster-wallace-as-youll-get

"Throughout the campaign this year, McCain has tried to make the contest about honor and character. His own writing gives us the standard by which he should be judged. "Always telling the truth in a political campaign," he writes in Worth the Fighting For, "is a great test of character." He adds: "Patriotism that only serves and never risks one's self-interest isn't patriotism at all. It's selfishness. That's a lesson worth relearning from time to time." It's a lesson, it would appear, that the candidate himself could stand to relearn."

"Whether you know Irwin's work or not, are an art afficionado or not, this is a great read for the curious and perceptually

""At the very best," Irwin says, talking about the experience he wants his work to engender, "a few people will walk in and it will change their lives." While this statement may sound a bit grandiose, I can say with certainty that seeing that triangular piece and hearing Irwin speak about his work so early in my life as an artist had a singular impact; I cannot recall being so affected by a work of art before or since. What struck me was not his method--although I'm always impressed when art is wrested from such basic materials--but rather the realization that all the art I'd seen till then seemed based on the same artistic concepts, while here was an approach to problem-solving that began not with the known but with the unknown."

"Beautiful Losers celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural movements of a generation. In the early 1990's a loose-knit group of likeminded outsiders found common ground at a little NYC storefront gallery. Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip hop & graffiti, they made art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Developing their craft with almost no influence from the "establishment" art world, this group, and the subcultures they sprang from, have now become a movement that has been transforming pop culture. Starring a selection of artists who are considered leaders within this culture, Beautiful Losers focuses on the telling of personal stories...speaking to themes of what happens when the outside becomes "in" as it explores the creative ethos connecting these artists and today's youth."

"He was long a jewel of the MIT faculty. Now, after a devastating brain injury, mathematician Seymour Papert is struggling bravely to learn again how to think like, speak like, be like the man of genius he was."

"A Biography of America is a telecourse and video series that presents American history as a living narrative. This series web site lets you delve further into the topics of the 26 video programs."

"The life and death of Alan Turing."

"fundamentally preferred to figure out everything himself...made people feel like a child does, when a grown-up first treats him as an adult." more quotes: http://robertogreco.tumblr.com/post/36115523/richard-feynmann-understanding-and-explaining

"Is he tough enough? That’s the question being asked of Barack Obama. To those who have known the candidate since boyhood, it’s not just those “dreams from my father” that make Obama a contender, but also his mother’s daring, his grandmother’s

"What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension?"

"Anyone interested in Ballard must get used to the idea of repetition, after all, in all its guises and in every iteration; multiple personas are the key to Ballard’s fractured take on supermodernity."

"The Times is featuring an extract from J.G. Ballard’s forthcoming autobiography, Miracles of Life. There’s also an accompanying interview, in which it’s revealed that Ballard has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer"

"Joybubbles (the legal name of the former Joe Engressia since 1991), a blind genius with perfect pitch who accidentally found he could make free phone calls by whistling tones and went on to play a pivotal role in the 1970s subculture of “phone phreaks,

"Imagine a library that collected all the world's information about all the world's books and made it available for everyone to view and update. We're building that library. Search it:"

"Daniel Martino, the editor of Borges, says that “Bioy’s diaries open up a vast universe where his notes on his conversations with Borges coexist with his writings on everyday life and his frequent examinations of matters of conduct”.

profile of Michel Gondry