A Quote by Paul Laffoley

The tetrahedron was [ Buckminster Fuller's] big thing. He'd talk about it in the same way Plato talked about angles. — © Paul Laffoley
The tetrahedron was [ Buckminster Fuller's] big thing. He'd talk about it in the same way Plato talked about angles.
Architects in urban planning are talking about this but they're not talking about it yet I don't think at that level that [Buckminster] Fuller is talking about when he talked about putting a dome over Manhattan, which is to say an attempt at integrating all of these different technologies in a way that makes for a city that, without having an actual dome, thermodynamically manages the heat flow for that urban environment and therefore makes it so that it is a highly efficient machine for a living or a dwelling machine as he would have preferred in terms of thermodynamically optimizing it.
The interesting thing writing about [Buckminster] Fuller is really to attempt to resurrect all of that and to do so for a new generation that has not grown up with him.
The interesting thing was we never talked about pottery. Bernard [Leach] talked about social issues; he talked about the world political situation, he talked about the economy, he talked about all kinds of things.
For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms.
I would say that what the value of talking about and thinking about a dome over Manhattan is that [Buckminster] Fuller has identified a scale of action I think is actually really compelling.
Toad talked big about all he was going to do in the days to come, while stars grew fuller and larger all around them, and a yellow moon, appearing suddenly and silently from nowhere in particular, came to keep them company and listen to their talk.
To me, the reason to write about [Buckminster] Fuller is because I think that he has ideas that are incredibly pertinent.
Way back in the '70s, I was approached to talk about the story I'd write for a Spider-Man movie. They also talked to me about Batman. I had to think about it, but that was way, way back when.
When I began to think deeply about the metaphysics of love I talked with everyone around me about it. I talked to large audiences and even had wee one-on-one conversations with children about the way they think about love. I talked about love in every state, everywhere I traveled.
There were other auto manufacturers that were confabulating as much as [Buckminster Fuller] was, making claims about how cars resembled this or that aspect of nature.
Buckminster Fuller was one of those world historic geniuses who reminded us of the extraordinary things that are possible, and inspires all of us to set about doing them!
Acting has never been a thing that me and my dad have talked about. It's like footballers: when they get together, I bet the last thing they talk about is football.
I think that in the first place, why we can get excited about [Buckminster ] Fuller, why it's plausible that people might - why my publisher would publish this book [You belong to the universe] about it long after he's dead and irrelevant by many standards has to do with the fact that he was in a sense coming up with this job for himself that is the job that we now refer to when we speak about world change.
I would have private conversations with [Buckminster Fuller]. I once had an argument, for four hours, about the existence of the Mobius strip. Because he believed in the Klein Bottle, you see. And I said, "How in hell can you claim to believe in the Klein Bottle and think that the Mobius strip is dubious?" He said, "Well, it's a torus." I don't know what he had in his mind as a mathematical background, because I don't think he got topology. Because, in other words, the Mobius strip didn't have angles in it.
It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.
In opposing we always talk about freedom in the Western world, Muslims always talk about justice. Very often we mean the same thing. But what we do mean, what in the Western world we call human rights, in the Islamic world, they don't talk about rights. Now they do, but in the past they didn't. It wasn't part of their terminology. But really it's the same thing.
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