Donald Robert Perry Marquis (1878-1937) was a celebrated New York newspaper columnist and humorist in the early decades of the last century. Today he is remembered mostly for his stories of Archy and Mehitabel, a lowercase cockroach and a toujours gai alley cat, but in his lifetime Marquis was known equally well for the Old Soak — a hip-flask philosopher who struggled to endure the dry days of Prohibition. Altogether, he wrote five plays, dozens of books, and hundreds of poems and short stories.
Columnist, playwright, humorist, short story writer and screenwriter, Marquis also wrote several volumes of serious poetry and three full-length novels — a remarkable range of talents. While many of his stories are forgettable today, there are others — most notably the observations of a cockroach and an alley cat — that remain fresh and funny and unique in American literature. It’s a curious fact that none of Marquis’ books ever appeared on the best-seller lists, yet so many of the better-selling writers of his time are now virtually unknown. “Archy and Mehitabel,” meanwhile, has never gone out of print since it first appeared, 75 years ago.
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One important trademark of most self-improvement blogs is the abuse use of lists. You know: ten ways to do this, nine ways to do that, six steps to success, et cetera.
While some of these lists provide interesting informations, there is one thing that no-one seems to want you to know: lists stop being useful the instant you’re finished reading them (i.e., when you leave the page).
All learning is brain-based and through the process of learning we are literally trying to change the brain. When learning, we create new connections between brain cells.
The brain is radiant, it thinks centrally and explodes out in all directions. It thinks by imagination and association. Lists are linear, rigid, similar and boring, and the brain gets unhappy very quickly because of that. Only a few minutes of such lecture can be tolerated before the brain seeks other stimuli.
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Last night there was a power failure in my neighborhood. I was writing some emails on my desktop computer when all of sudden the power went down. Total darkness followed. And because the hour was pretty late (3 in the morning) I decided not to wait until the power comes back and I have gone to sleep.
But getting to sleep meant getting to the bedroom, and even though I don’t live in a huge apartment, getting from one room to another can be a tricky business if the visual sense can’t help.
I managed to reach the bedroom without too much trouble, but stumbling around in the darkness, without any visual sense of direction, has been a challenge…
We all know that our brain gets rusty if we don’t challenge it too often. If you, like me, aren’t too fond of geeky sudoku or crossword puzzles, you should want to mix up your daily routines and make a challenge out of ordinary things.
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In this post I initially planned to talk about the benefits that different opinions present to society. But I had a slight change of mind after stumbling upon a brilliant independent short film on choice.
Black Button
Mr Roberts finds himself awoken inexplicably in a white room. A man sits before him at a desk and in between them stands a black button. If Mr Roberts pushes it, he will receive a briefcase filled with millions of dollars. Or he can take the key to the door and leave penniless. The catch? Pushing the button will result in the death of a human being.
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No one in this world, as far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. - H. L. Mencken
The worst things in history have happened when people stop thinking for themselves. - Donald Trump
Lately I’ve become very skeptical about the self help industry. Most of the self help books that I’ve seen talk about things that everyone already knows and the few that don’t do that usually take the dangerous path of simply lying to their readers - very dangerous lies.
Reading that you can do everything you want by yourself, in a society based on teamwork, is wrong & dangerous as it discourages consciousness and encourages narcissism. Only a few of us could get food on the table if it weren’t for others, but they teach you that you can earn enough money to buy a 20+ million villa in Maui without help from anyone else. The sick society that this idea creates is too scary to even talk about here.
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