It was David Foster Wallace’s birthday yesterday. He nailed it when he said:
“To be, in a word, unborable…. It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.” – The Pale King (2011)
Month: February 2013
Thumb rule for using hyperlinks
In an excellent article Robert Cottrell makes a smart point about online writing:
It helps, too, that when you’re writing online, there’s no need to introduce and source every person, place and fact you mention, and no need to fill in the backstory for those new to the subject. You can link out to the source document or the related story – or just assume your reader knows how to use Google and Wikipedia.
It is very annoying to read articles that have too many hyperlinks. I think a thumb rule for hyperlinks should be: use no more than 1 hyperlink per 200 words.
PS: In case you can’t read the linked FT article, try this.
The role of religion
Ever since I took the time to explore my own religious views, I’ve been rewarded with more and more questions about life. One that haunted me for quite sometime was: how to explain (concisely) the role of religion in our society?
So I tried. This is what I came up with: some people find it too hard to find meaning in life. Religion gives them one. And then they find meaning may be from scriptures, idols, stories, community or something else that being religious provides.
This is perhaps too simplistic an explanation. While I came to this conclusion on my own, I am not the first one to do so. Here’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow:
As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they sooner or later face an increasingly nagging question: “Is this all there is?” ……Traditionally, the problem of existence has been most directly confronted through religion, and an increasing number of the disillusioned are turning back to it, choosing either one of the standard creeds or a more esoteric Eastern variety.
Akshat Rathi 