Does more information mean we know less?
14 January 2011Last updated at 17:55 We pay a price for all the information we consume these days - and it's knowing less, says Alain de Botton. One of the more embarrassing difficulties of our age is that most of us have quite lost the ability to concentrate, to sit still and do nothing other than focus on certain basic truths of the human condition. The fault lies in part with our new gadgets. Thanks to our machines, of which we are generally so proud, the past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything.
550 Free eBooks: Download Great Books for Free
Download 800 free eBooks to your Kindle, iPad/iPhone, computer, smart phone or ereader. Collection includes great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, including works by Asimov, Jane Austen, Philip K. Dick, F.
Get Organized: 25 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts - 25 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts
Organization and productivity go hand-in-hand. Learn even a few of these keyboard shortcuts for Windows PCs or Macs to improve your efficiency. 25 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts—Windows Note: Single letter keys are shown capitalized, but you do not have to hold Shift unless it's specified. You also don't have to type the plus sign; plus sign just means push the keys on either side of it at the same time. Commonly Used OS-Level Shortcuts 1.
20 mental barriers you should let go of
photo by admitchell08 You are in an imaginary hot air balloon. It’s just you and all of your belongings in the wicker basket. Something went wrong and you are losing altitude fast. You will hit the ground in less than ten minutes if you don’t come up with something quick. The only immediate solution is to get rid of excess weight and throw off at least half of your belongings.
Find Free Kindle Books
Disclaimer: this post is about free, legal Kindle books, of which there are shedloads (seriously, scroll downwards). It’s not sponsored by Amazon or anyone else. And if you’re reading, you probably have a Kindle.
Has our relationship with nature changed?
21 January 2011Last updated at 17:48 Fear of ecological destruction causes us to pity and protect nature rather than oppose it, says Alain de Botton The environmental dangers that now face mankind put non-scientific philosophical types like me in an awkward situation. We have to acknowledge that we can have precisely nothing interesting to say on the two most important questions in the air right now, namely: "What is going to happen to the human race?" and "What should we do about it?" It is not from a philosopher that you stand to be enlightened.
The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free eBooks
Every revolutionary age produces its own kind of nostalgia. Faced with the enormous social and economic upheavals at the nineteenth century’s end, learned Victorians like Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold looked to High Church models and played the bishops of Western culture, with a monkish devotion to preserving and transmitting old texts and traditions and turning back to simpler ways of life. It was in 1909, the nadir of this milieu, before the advent of modernism and world war, that The Harvard Classics took shape.
99 of the best Windows freeware programs you may not know of - StumbleUpon
Because of the popularity of my previous article on Help Desk Geek entitled 99 ways to make your computer blazingly fast, I’ve decided to write another list post with 99 items, but this time on Windows freeware programs that you may have not heard of. If you search for “best freeware programs” or “top freeware apps”, you’ll get lots of lists, but mostly with programs everyone has already heard of: AVG anti-virus, 7-zip, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc, etc. That’s all nice and fine, but what about all those little gems programs that work great, but don’t get all the headlines?
Top 40 Useful Sites To Learn New Skills
The web is a powerful resource that can easily help you learn new skills. You just have to know where to look. Sure, you can use Google, Yahoo, or Bing to search for sites where you can learn new skills , but I figured I’d save you some time. Here are the top 40 sites I have personally used over the last few years when I want to learn something new.
Books That Will Induce A Mindfuck
Here is the list of books that will officially induce mindfucks, sorted alphabetically by author. Those authors in bold have been recommended by one or more people as being generally mindfucking - any books listed under their names are particularly odd. You're welcome to /msg me to make an addition to this list. And finally, although he's way down at the bottom, my personal recommendation is definitely Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, as it turns the ultimate mindfuck: inverting the world-view of our entire culture, and it is non-fiction.
