Dgplug

From What Does Immersing Yourself in a Book Do to Your Brain? … Reading allows us to try on, for a few moments, what it truly means to be another person, with all the similar and sometimes vastly different emotions and struggles that govern others’ lives. The reading circuitry is elaborated by such simulations; so also our daily lives, and so also the lives of those who would lead others. The novelist Jane Smiley worries that it is just this dimension in fiction that is most threatened by our culture: “My guess is that mere technology will not kill the novel. . . . But novels can be sidelined. . . . When that happens, our society will be brutalized and coarsened by people . . . who have no way of understanding us or each other.” It is a chilling reminder of how important the life of reading is for human beings if we are to form an ever more realized democratic society for everyone. ...

Riffing off last weeks mail on reading, Scott H Young has a really thorough, helpful post on how to take notes, while reading. Starting with the why, and then onto various strategies on how to take notes, the post is well worth your time. P.S. If you like my emails, forward it to your friends and ask them to subscribe too!

Abby lost her grandmother this week. This is her eulogy to her. She was Aunty Matty to other people, mummy to her children and countless other fond names to who knew her. But she was my Nana. I have memories of her cradling me, and taking care of me as a baby. Vacations at Nana’s were the highlight of my childhood years. She was a tireless, hard working woman who raised her large family to the best of her abilities. And not just her family, but also (to me it seemed) the whole neighbourhood. She was loved and appreciated, just by about everyone whose life she touched. ...

Busy with exams this month, so leaving you with this Austin Kleon post with tonnes of quotes on reading. Here’s a few of my favourite ones … “You can’t be a good writer without being a devoted reader.” —J.K. Rowling “Read, read, read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!” —William Faulkner ...

A young friend of mine had this to say a while back, when I suggested he use gender neutral pronouns in his writing. the gender thing. I thought a lot about it and came to the conclusion that it is okay to be biased in your writing. Me being a male, it is only natural for me to use ‘he’ more often than ‘she’. But the idea of flipping the roles1 seems interesting :) I’d keep that in mind. ...

Then be willing to look like an idiot. (Claude) Shannon had courage. Who else but a man with almost infinite courage would ever think of averaging over all random codes and expect the average code would be good? He knew what he was doing was important and pursued it intensely. Courage, or confidence, is a property to develop in yourself. Look at your successes, and pay less attention to failures than you are usually advised to do in the expression, “Learn from your mistakes”. While playing chess Shannon would often advance his queen boldly into the fray and say, “I ain’t scaird of nothing”. I learned to repeat it to myself when stuck, and at times it has enabled me to go on to a success. I deliberately copied a part of the style of a great scientist. The courage to continue is essential since great research often has long periods with no success and many discouragements. ...