contain things such as "I love you" or "Pick up dog food". We find it hard even to grasp the mathematician's or engineer's view of information as something devoid of content. How does the empty message come to be so full of urgent meaning? "Everything," Gleick says, "can be expressed in bits, but to say that everything in the world is fungible because it's all about bits isn't to say we are merely bits, it is to raise a question: how did the interesting, large-scale things we care about arise?"from Bryan Appleyard: from The Sunday Times: James Gleick Interview
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Occasionally, the the tabloids will balance the cultish adoration of youth with stories like that of Julia Roberts's 41-year-old fabulousness. But, of course, such stories make matters worse because what they are really saying is she doesn't look 41, she looks much younger. She is right to do so, she is virtuous to do so, this is an achievement. It takes effort, time, exercise, diet and, probably, yoga or pilates. She must be doing something right, she can't be allowed to be just lucky because, if it were just her genes, that would subvert the rationale of the same newspaper's health and fitness pages.
from Bryan Appleyard: from Unequal Ageing: You're Not Worth It
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