Deep Blue
“In 1997 an IBM computer called Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and unlike its predecessors, it did not just evaluate trillions of moves by brute force but was fitted with strategies that intelligently responded to patterns in the game. Newsweek called the match The Brains Last Stand. Kasparov called the outcome, the end of mankind.”
—Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002.
Red and green
“The difference in kind between our experience of red and our experience of green does not mirror any difference in kind in lightwaves in the worldthe wavelengths of light, which give rise to our perception of hue, form a smooth continuum. Red and green, perceived as qualitatively different properties are constructs of the chemistry and circuitry of our nervous system. They could be absent in an organism with different photopigments or wiring; indeed, people with the most common form of colorblindness are just such organisms.”
—Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002.
your tears
“Give me your tears, gypsy, or I will take them.”
—Borat, in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, 2006.
a mote
“I am half distracted, captain Shandy, said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approachd the door of my uncle Tobys sentry-boxa moteor sandor somethingI know not what, has got into this eye of minedo look into itit is not in the white . . .
Widow Wadmans left eye shines this moment as lucid as her rightthere is neither mote, or sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of opake matter floating in itThere is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions, into thine
If thou lookest, uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment longerthou art undone.”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 8, 1765.
the amorous mirror
“I refuse to see the most beautiful countries of the world microscopically reflected in the amorous mirror of your eyes.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.
New Orleans street signs
Standard street signs no longer exist in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. In response to the damage of Hurricane Katrina, locals have resorted to making their own signage system with hand painted letterforms or stencils and spray paint on plywood or telephone poles. Heres a look at this crude typography:
Essay and photos by Kari Cesta, a graduate student in Graphic Design at LSU. Isn’t this shocking!
long hours dreaming before a white page
“To write, to be able to write, what does it mean It means spending long hours dreaming before a white page, scribbling unconsciously, letting your pen play round a blot of ink and nibble at a half-formed word, scratching it, making it bristle with darts and adorning it with antennae and paws until it loses all resemblance to a legible work and turns into a fantastic insect or a fluttering creature half butterfly, half fairy.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.
under the greenish gas
“My street, under the greenish gas at this hour, is a morass of toffee-like, creamy mudcoffee-coloured, maroon and caramel yellowa sort of crumbling, slushy trifle in which the floating bits of meringue are lumps of concrete.”
—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.
As for candle-lightI give it up
“[T]is evident to me, when they affirm, That they who have seen Paris, have seen every thing, they must mean to speak of those who have seen it by day-light.
As for candle-lightI give it upI have said before, there was no depending upon it . . .”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 7, 1765.
the rubies about thy neck
“I will not argue the matter: Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return moreevery thing presses onwhilst thou art twisting that lock,see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.
Heaven have mercy upon us both!”
—Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 9, 1767.