Damek.

Talent is not enough.
Also, however, sometimes neither is attitude.
Both together? Good. But still not the whole picture. The magic of other people is as important: help, trust, advice, support. Also clashing egos, objectives, and fears.
And finally, there’s good old-fashioned luck and chance. That can come along and give everything else [...]

A once-faint comet has made a sudden leap from obscurity to center stage. Comet 17P/Holmes, now visible to northern hemisphere residents, increased its brightness by a factor of one million this week, going from magnitude 17 to 2. This makes it visible to the unaided eye as well as binoculars and telescopes, offering a unique [...]

Finally reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest book, Sixty Days and Counting, the end of his climate change/science in politics trilogy. I’m not quite as worshipful of him as I used to be, and this trilogy isn’t some of his best writing, but I’m still enjoying it. He can surprise me, crystallizing in words [...]

I was in California last weekend to visit a friend. Good times, bad times, you know I’ve had my share. Also some pictures. I put them up on Flickr. Here’s a sample:

From a friend:
ATTITUDE
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of
attitude
on life.
Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.
It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. [...]