Wouldn’t that be freaky?

“Look at it another way. We’re here. We’re nice guys. We’re doing O.K. But we know that in X number of years, we won’t be here, and between now and then something unpleasant is gonna happen, or at least potentially unpleasant and scary. And when we turn to try and understand that, I don’t really think the humanist verities are quite enough. Because that would be crazy if they were. It would be so weird if we knew just as much as we needed to know to answer all the questions of the universe. Wouldn’t that be freaky? Whereas the probability is high that there is a vast reality that we have no way to perceive, that’s actually bearing down on us now and influencing everything. The idea of saying, ‘Well, we can’t see it, therefore we don’t need to see it,’ seems really weird to me.”

George Saunders, “George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Why blog?

Marcia Lynx Qualey:

…the blog is not about creating knowledge and it is certainly not about presenting anything in a finished form. She thinks of her blog as an old-fashioned salon: a semi-public, semi-private place where readers, writers, and translators of various stripes, are able to gather informally and chat about things — a kind of laboratory of thoughts. In the context of her blog, she is not a critic, and she is not even a curator, but more of a hostess.

Some links for March 22nd through November 17th

Here are some recommended links for March 22nd through November 17th: