HBD Milo Donaldson Appleman

Sunday was my grandfather's 160th birthday.  He was born January 11th 1866.

He was already 51 years old when my father was born in 1917.  And then my father was 42 years old when I was born in 1959.  So my grandfather was 93 years older than me, though he only lived to age 66.

He was Milo Donaldson Appleman, and I am his namesake.

Indirections

Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection, except of course for the problem of too many indirections. 

-- David John Wheeler (9 February 1927 - 13 December 2004), computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of Cambridge, PhD advisor to Bjarne Stroustrup

Deduced From Behavior

Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals.

-- Donella Meadows (1941 - 2001), American environmental scientist, teacher and writer, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008), Part one: systems structure and behavior, page 14

A Hero

I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can.  The others do not do it.

-- Romain Rolland (1866 - 1944), French writer, 1915 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Jean-Christophe (1904-1912), a novel in 10 volumes

Infamy

This is an attack on our democracy, our way of life, and not just by the criminals who assaulted our Congress today.  The good news is our Constitution is strong, and our people are overwhelmingly devoted to the rule of law.  What we need to do going forward -- what we have to do as a people -- not as Democrats, or Republicans, or independents, but as Americans, is to ask ourselves how did we ever get to this place.  We need to look infinitely harder at who we elect to any office in our land.  At the office seeker's character, at their morals, at their ethical record, their integrity, their honesty, their flaws, what they have said about women, and minorities, why they are seeking office in the first place, and only then consider the policies they espouse.

-- General John Kelly, USMC, retired (1950 -), former U.S. Marine Corps general who served as White House Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump from July 31, 2017, to January 2, 2019; he had previously served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, "Statement from General John Kelly, USMC (ret.)", at American Security Project (7 January 2021)

If You Think

If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.

-- Bjarne Stroustrup (30 December 1950 -), computer scientist and creator of the C++ programming language, Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: (2007 - present) 

Most Predictable Thing

It's weird how I am constantly surprised by the passage of time when it's literally the most predictable thing in the Universe.

-- Randall Munroe (1984 -), American cartoonist, author, and engineer, in xkcd 1477