In 2013 a Team in Cambridge took digital files of Shakespeare's sonnets, a video of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech, and Crick and Watson's original 1953 paper on the structure of DNA, and converted them into a new DNA code. They synthesized the DNA and dried it into a powder. They sent it to a lab in Germany with instructions on how to decode it. The German Team unscrambled it and translated it back into the original files with an error rate of exactly zero.

Genetics / Adam Rutherford

One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies.

Optimism over Despair / Noam Chomsky

     As a result of his time in Naples Lewis underwent a conversion.The experience occurred when a group of girls between the ages of nine and twelve appeared in the doorway of a restaurant where he was eating. The girls were orphans, attracted to the restaurant by the smell of food. Noticing that they were weeping and realizing they were blind, he expected his fellow diners to interrupt their meal. But nobody moved. The girls were treated as though they did not exist. 'Forkfuls of food were thrust into open mouths, the rattle of conversation continued, nobody saw the tears.'
     Reflecting on the scene Lewis found 'the experience changed my outlook. Until now I had clung to the comforting belief that human beings eventually come to terms with pain and sorrow. Now I understood I was wrong, and like Paul I suffered a conversion - but to pessimism . . . I knew that, condemned to everlasting darkness, hunger and loss, they would weep incessantly. They would never recover from their pain, and I would never recover from the memory of it.'

THE SILENCE OF ANIMALS / JOHN GRAY

The moment to leave isn't when we're sad; it's when we identify that our lover is contributing sorrows above and beyond those that belong to love in general, when aspects of their character are embittering life far more than the normal rules of relationship mandate, and when we can see that the hurts we are facing don't belong anywhere even on the dark and long list of woes provided by the Romantic Realist. It is then that we should accept that we aren't simply being mature; we are unnecessarily ruining our lives.

Yet if, after an honest audit of our troubles, we come to suspect that our many griefs simply cannot be laid at the door of our partner but are the work of that less blameful entity, life itself, we should make our peace and stay put. We will know that we are encountering the misery of existence in the company of one particular person, but not - as it is so easy to presume - because of another person.

We will know we are sad not because love has gone wrong, but because it has gone exactly as it was always meant to go.

The Sorrows of Love

Being right is based upon knowledge and experience and is often provable. Knowledge comes from the past, so it's safe. It is also out of date. It's the opposite of originality. Experience is built from solutions to old situations and problems. The old situations are probably different from the present ones, so that old solutions will have to be bent to fit new problems ( and possibly fit badly ) . Also the likelihood is that, if you've got the experience, you'll probably use it.

This is lazy. Experience is the opposite of being creative. If you can prove you're right, you're set in concrete. You cannot move with the times or with other people.

Being right is also being boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant. Arrogance is a valuable tool, but only if used very sparingly. Worst of all, being right has a tone of morality about it. To be anything else sounds weak or fallible, and people who are right would hate to be thought fallible.

So: it's wrong to be right, because people who are right are rooted in the past, rigid-minded, dull and smug. There's no talking to them.

Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. You're no longer trying to be infallible. You're in the unknown. There is no way of knowing what can happen, but there is more chance of it being amazing than if you try to be right.

Of course, being wrong is a risk. People worry about suggesting stupid ideas because of what others will think. You will have been in meetings where new thinking has been called for, at your original suggestion. Instead of saying, 'That's the kind of suggestion that leads us to a novel solution', the room goes quiet, they look up to the ceiling, roll their eyes and return to the discussion.

Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up by having more. Some risks have a future, and some people call them wrong. But being right may be like walking backwards proving where you've been.

Being wrong isn't in the future, or in the past. Being wrong isn't anywhere but being here. Best place to be, right?

"It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be" by Paul Arden

PL
     - Wsłuchaj się w cichość - mówi Małgorzata do Mistrza, a piasek chrzęści pod jej bosymi stopami. - Słuchaj... napawaj się tym, czego nie zaznałeś w życiu: ciszą. Patrz, oto stoi przed tobą twój wieczysty dom, twoja nagroda. Widzę już okno weneckie i pnącza winorośli sięgające samego dachu. Oto twój dom, twój wieczysty dom. Wiedz, że jeszcze dziś wieczorem przyjdą do ciebie ci, których kochasz i których jesteś tak ciekaw. Nie będziesz się ich bał. A oni będą ci grali, śpiewali, i zobaczysz, jak piękne może być światło, gdy w domu płoną świece. Będziesz zasypiał w swej nieodłącznej, wymiętej czapce i zaśniesz z uśmiechem na ustach. Sen da ci siłę i obdarzy mądrością. I już nie będziesz mnie od siebie odpychał. A ja będę strzegła twego snu.

     Tak mówi Małgorzata, idąc wraz z Mistrzem do ich wieczystego domu, i wydaje się Mistrzowi, że słowa Małgorzaty płyną niczym ten szemrzący strumień, który dopiero co minęli. I pamięć Mistrza, jego niespokojna, boleśnie pokłuta pamięć, zaczyna przygasać. Ktoś daje mu wolność, tak jak i on uwolnił przed chwilą stworzonego przez siebie bohatera. Bohater ów odszedł w bezkres, odszedł bezpowrotnie, dostąpiwszy przebaczenia w noc przed zmartwychwstaniem - syn króla astrologa, okrutny piąty prokurator Judei, rzymski ekwita Poncjusz Piłat.

EN
     "Listen to the silence," Margarita was saying to the Master, the sand crunching under her bare feet. "Listen and take pleasure in what you were not given in life — quiet. Look, there up ahead is your eternal home, which you've been given as a reward. I can see the Venetian window and the grapevine curling up to the roof. There is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evenings people you like will come to see you, people who interest you and who will not upset you. They will play for you, sing for you, and you will see how the room looks in candlelight. You will fall asleep with your grimy eternal cap on your head, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will begin to reason wisely. And you will never be able to chase me away. I will guard your sleep."

     Thus spoke Margarita as she walked with the Master toward their eternal home, and it seemed to the Master that Margarita's words flowed like the stream they had left behind, flowed and whispered, and the Master's anxious, needle-pricked memory began to fade. Someone was releasing the Master into freedom, as he himself had released the hero he created. That hero, who was absolved on Sunday morning, had departed into the abyss, never to return, the son of an astrologer-king, the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the knight Pontius Pilate.

The Master and Margarita

PL
Pozostań wierny swoim ideałom, pamiętaj, że dbając o własne szczęście, spokój ducha i spełnienie, musisz przyczyniać się do pomyślności innych ludzi. Harmonia części jest harmonią całości, całość jest bowiem obecna w części, a część w całości. Naszym bliźnim jesteśmy dłużni tylko miłość, a miłość jest spełnieniem prawa zdrowia, szczęścia i spokoju umysłu.

EN
Remain true to your ideal. Know definitely and absolutely that whatever contributes to your peace, happiness and fulfillment must of necessity bless all men who walk the earth. The harmony of the part is the harmony of the whole, for the whole is in the part, and the part is in the whole. All you owe the other is love, and love is the fulfilling of the law of health, happiness and peace of mind.

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind / Joseph Murphy

In a number of respects the US now resembles an emerging country more than the advanced economy it was some decades ago. Its industrial base is largely gone, sold off or off-shored, and its public infrastructure is in visible disrepair. Because of the severity of the real estate collapse, parts of its housing stock are being abandoned and once-thriving neighbourhoods are now slums.

Like Britain, whose global position became untenable long before it was destroyed in the course of the Second World War, America continues to act as if it can lead the world while its power is inexorably leaking away.

The days of the dollar as the world's reserve currency are numbered.

Among recent experiments in engineering the free market in late twentieth-century conditions, those in Britain, New Zealand and Mexico are particularly notable. [...] Kelsey summarizes the upshot of the New Zealand experiment by observing 'The result of a decade of radical structural adjustment was a deeply divided society.' More generally, she comments that 'In less than a decade, New Zealand had gone from a bastion of welfare interventionism to a neo-liberal's paradise. Real economic and political power had shifted outside the realms of the central state. In this process of what might be termed "privatization of power", citizens were reduced to consumers in the economic rather than the political market-place.' There is much evidence to support these assessments. One estimate put 17.8 per cent of the New Zealand population under the poverty line in 1991.

The destruction of Chinese traditions in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution went in tandem with the degradation of China's natural environment. In a characteristically hubristic Maoist programme designed to eradicate all pests, war was declared on China's sparrows. The sparrows were exterminated, resulting in a plague of the insects the sparrows had controlled, and consequent damage to crops.

The spread of new technologies throughout the world is not working to advance human freedom. Instead it has resulted in the emancipation of market forces from social and political control. By allowing that freedom to world markets we ensure that the age of globalization will be remembered as another turn in the history of servitude.

False Dawn. The delusions of global capitalism - John Gray

PL
[GUSMAN] Naprawdę nie wiem, jaki to musi być człowiek, by móc postąpić wobec nas tak podle [...]
[SGANAREL] Ja to rozumiem bez trudu; i gdybyś znał tego pana, zobaczyłbyś, że to dla niego dość łatwe. [...] powiem ci inter nos, że widzisz w Don Juanie, moim panu, największego łajdaka, jakiego ziemia nosiła, szaleńca, diabła, Turka, heretyka, który nie wierzy ani w Niebo, ani w piekło, ani w wilkołaka, który to życie pędzi jak prawdziwe bydlę, jak prosię Epikura, jak prawdziwy Sardanapal, który zamyka uszy na wszelkie chrześcijańskie napomnienia, jakie mu się robi, i ma za bzdury wszystko, w co wierzymy. Mówisz, że poślubił twoją panią: wierz mi, że zrobiłby więcej dla swej żądzy i razem z nią poślubiłby jeszcze ciebie, jej psa i jej kota

EN
[GUSMAN] T' is true I don't know what sort of man he may be, if he can have done us this wrong [...]
[SGANARELLE] I have no great trouble in conceiving it, I can tell and, if you knew the fellow, you would find thing simple enough for him. [...] I 'll tell you, inter nos, that you have in my master Don Juan the greatest scoundrel the earth ever bore, a madman, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic, who believes neither in Heavean or Hell nor Hobgoblin, who spends his life like the beasts that perish, a swine of Epicurus, a very Sardanapalus, who stops his ears to all the remonstrances that can be made, and treats all we believe in as old wives' tales. You say he has married your mistress; believe me, he would have done more than that for his passion, and with her would have married you too, and her dog and her cat.
Molier - Don Juan

[KING] Now, Hamlet, where is Polonius?
[HAMLET] At supper.
[KING] At supper! Where?
[HAMLET] Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms that are eating on him. Your work is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots; your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service - two dishes. but to one table. That's the end.
[KING] Alas, alas!
[HAMLET] A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
[KING] What dost thou mean by this?
[HAMLET] Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus / William Ernest Henley

Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild.

Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.'

Just So Stories / Rudyard Kipling