Author: Matthew Westphal

How Exactly Does The Human Brain Pay Attention To Something?

“Every moment, our brains are bombarded with information, from without and within. The eyes alone convey more than a hundred billion signals to the brain every second. … How do our brains select the relevant data? How do we decide to pay attention to the turn of a doorknob and ignore the drip of a leaky faucet? How do we become conscious of a certain stimulus, or indeed ‘conscious’ at all?”

America’s Most Pliable, Pernicious, Persistent Myth: The Self-Made Man, From Ben Franklin To Nasty Gal

“The self-made mythology has evolved in its 200 years: from an exuberant celebration of opportunity in the young republic to a stern admonition against excess in the antebellum years; from a naive story of pluck rewarded in the post-Civil War-era, to a brazen defense of money-getting in the Gilded Age; from a beacon to the great wave’s huddled masses, to a pep talk for the young women of the digital age.”

Jessye Norman On How To Deal With Critics

“Oh, they might write it, but, darling, I don’t read it. I don’t need it. I know whether or not I have done onstage what I intended to do that night. … And if it doesn’t suit somebody who is sitting there, not having paid for their ticket to be there, and they find it not to their liking – what does it matter? Who are they?” (video)

The Destruction Of Mecca

“The dominant architectural site in the city is [no longer] the Sacred Mosque, where the Kaaba, the symbolic focus of Muslims everywhere, is. It is the obnoxious Makkah Royal Clock Tower hotel … The city is now surrounded by the brutalism of rectangular steel and concrete structures – an amalgam of Disneyland and Las Vegas.”