Welcome to the 2019 November issue of ‘The Notebook’.
This is a list of books, movies, blog posts, interviews, video clips and other stuff I found interesting and feel worth sharing. I hope you’ll like some of the stuff I am sharing.
If you have any feedback, please drop me a line…
Here it goes…
A Book Worth Sharing:
“The Art of Creative Thinking” by Rod Judkins
Do you know Jørn Utzon’s iconic design for the Sydney Opera House was inspired by a cut-up orange he had for lunch? And Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train is modelled on the kingfisher’s aerodynamic beak?
This little book is a gem. And I am rereading it.
A Movie Worth Sharing:
“Gerry” by Gus Van Sant
Have you ever watched a film where two people just walk, walk and walk? Well, here it is…
“A movie like this doesn’t come along every day. I am glad I saw it. I saw it at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, where a fair number of people walked out. I would say half. I was reminded of advice once given me by the veteran Chicago movie exhibitor Oscar Brotman: “Roger, if nothing has happened by the end of the first reel, nothing is going to happen.” If I were to advise you to see “Gerry,” you might have a good case on your hands for a class-action suit.
And yet, and yet–the movie is so gloriously bloody-minded, so perverse in its obstinacy, that it rises to a kind of mad purity. The longer the movie ran, the less I liked it and the more I admired it.”
Read Roger Ebert’s complete review here…
An Idea Worth Sharing:
“Am I Fooling Myself?” by Peter Attia“This story serves to remind me that we are not wired to think scientifically. Full stop. It is the quintessential human flaw. But scientific thinking is a skill to be practised and improved upon.”
A Quote Worth Sharing:
“You have to spend the time to sort through the junk to find the treasure. There is no shortcut…. I like to try to apply this spirit of crate-digging to everyday life. The only way to find the good stuff, the special stuff, the genuine moments and the true inspiration, is to first engage with the everyday, the mundane, the seemingly useless, the things nobody else seems to care about. So engage. There is no shortcut; there is no algorithm. If all you do is track what’s trending, then all you’ll ever know is exactly what everyone else already knew. To discover, you have to dig.”
(Source: Digging and Scratching – Austin Kleon)
Random Stuff:
A team of Canadian researchers has warned that tea drinkers are swallowing microplastics shed from the new teabags and cautioned that the health effects of these plastics on humans isn’t yet known. To look into the amount of plastic released from the new teabags, the team removed the tea leaves from four different commercially available teas and washed the plastic bags. They then heated the teabags in water to simulate brewing conditions. Using electron microscopy, the researchers found that a single plastic teabag heated this way released about 11.6 billion microplastic and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles into the water, amounts they reported are thousands of times higher than those found earlier in other foods. They also tested the teabags in water containing water fleas and found that while the animals survived, they exhibited anatomical and behavioral abnormalities. The investigators called for more research to help determine if the plastics emitted from teabags could have deleterious effects on human health.
Thanks for reading.
krishnendu sarkar 