The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

— George Burns

The Pizza Man Always Rings Twice: true tales of debauchery, rage, and revenge from six veterans of the pie-delivery trade.

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

[…]

You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Jacob Schick, inventor of the electric razor, allegedly believed that men could live to the age of 120 if they shaved “correctly”.

Schick died at the age of 49.

“This is a person that single handed ruined three of America’s biggest and most innovative tech companies.

“Carly managed to actually decrease by a statistically significant sum the net innovation and tech strength of an entire country.”

Seen in a MetaFilter discussion about this week’s departure of Carly Fiorina from HP which includes several comments from current and former HP/Compaq/Digital employees and customers.

Fortunately for her, her severance package alone totals more than $21 million.

For the last eight years, Edge has published an annual “big” question for scientists, futurists, and other thinkers.

For 2005, the question is “What do you believe is true even though you can’t prove it?”.

Many of the responses are fascinating, and I think it’s fun for a layperson to read some of the brightest minds in academe and industry giving their personal take on a question that doesn’t have to be answered with rigor.

One in particular by Robert R. Provine leapt out at me because it’s something I’ve personally been thinking about a lot lately. In his short essay, Mr. Provine posits that human behavior is unconsciously controlled. It starts:

Until proven otherwise, why not assume that consciousness does not play a role in human behavior? Although it may seem radical on first hearing, this is actually the conservative position that makes the fewest assumptions. The null position is an antidote to philosopher’s disease, the inappropriate attribution of rational, conscious control over processes that may be irrational and unconscious. The argument here is not that we lack consciousness, but that we over-estimate the conscious control of behavior. I believe this statement to be true. But proving it is a challenge because it’s difficult to think about consciousness. We are misled by an inner voice that generates a reasonable but often fallacious narrative and explanation of our actions. That the beam of conscious awareness that illuminates our actions is on only part of the time further complicates the task. Since we are not conscious of our state of unconsciousness, we vastly overestimate the amount of time that we are aware of our own actions, whatever their cause.

The rest of his essay can be found here.

Check out this video on iTunes for a great Interpol song.