Creative Edge

  Steve Jobs’ Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish Speech at Stanford (2005) When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me. And since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. Th...

  Philip Wollen   King Lear, late at night on the cliffs asks the blind Earl of Gloucester “How do you see the world?” And the blind man Gloucester replies “I see it feelingly”. Shouldn’t we all? Animals must be off the menu – because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of Despair. I heard the screams of my dying father as his body was ravaged by cancer that killed him. And I realised I had heard these screams before. In the slaughterhouse, eyes stabbed out and tendons slashed, on the cattle ships to the Middle East and the dying mother whale as a Japanese harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf. Their cries were the cries of my father. I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals. And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear. . . . . . is a boy. Meat is the new asbestos – more murderous than tobacco.   CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide from the ...

Sir Isaac Newton Isaac Newton, a name that may still be seen today cut into the wood of a window sill at King’s School, Grantham, where he studied Grammar and Latin. At first, Isaac Newton seemed to be rather a dull boy, and not very good at his lessons. But he used to use his hands and used to make little machines such as windmills. He caught mice and compelled them to drive some of his little machines.   One day at school, Newton was kicked by a bigger boy who was higher up in the class than he was himself. The kicking made Newton very angry and he turned on the bigger boy and gave him a good beating. He also decided to beat him at lessons, and this made him start to work harder. After that, he improved at his studies, and so perhaps the big boy who kicked Newton did a service to the world.   Newton went to Cambridge University where he studied Mathematics and Science. He started to make discoveries in Mathematics while still at college. However, Newton did not c...