Thursday, May 31, 2012

Knowledge And Wisdom

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

-- Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), essayist, Essais, Book 1, Chapter 25

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Not The Same

It is two years after, but I will never forget this tour it has been a very good tour. ...  It is not the same as to take the jersey on a podium in the tour.  You don't have the podium girls, everything around is different.

-- Tour de France winner Andy Schleck, on receiving the 2010 Yellow Jersey after Alberto Contador was disqualified for doping, 29 May 2012

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Boring

Somebody's boring me.  I think it's me.

-- Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), Welsh poet and writer, quoted in Rayner Heppenstall's "Four Absentees" (1963)

Monday, May 28, 2012

Weighted

The tax code is weighted toward the ultra-wealthy and ultra-wealthy corporations, and has created an offshore aristocracy of people who can afford to hire an army of accountants and lawyers.  This shifts the tax burden to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and others.  I don't want to see taxes go up on any hardworking American.  We need a simpler, fairer tax code.

-- Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), who after signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge during his first four runs for Congress, defied Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform and decided not to sign this time around, in an interview with Rod Dreher, 13 May 2012

Thursday, May 24, 2012

To Be Governed

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

-- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), French mutualist political philosopher, The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century, 1851

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Things Turn Out

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.

-- John Wooden (1910-2010), American basketball coach, as quoted by Art Linkletter in "Yes, you can:  How to succeed in business and life" page 52 (1979)

Monday, May 21, 2012

W00t!

Congratulations to my #2 daughter, Sheena, and her new husband Cody Schwartz on their wedding this past Saturday 19 May 2012.  They've been together for more than 7 years, have 2 kids together, and they decided to make it official.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Mystical

The most important of my achievements, if you want to call them that, was that I successfully introduced mystical ideas into pop culture, ....  I wanted to save our culture from the stupidity and the bigotry and the ignorance that threatened it.

-- Donovan (10 May 1946-), Scottish singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Grip Interview (1997)

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Up All Night

Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.

-- Casey Stengel (1890 - 1975), American baseball player and manager, BBC "The Myths of Sex Before Sport" (Jennifer Quinn), 12 August, 2004

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Stupid Doesn't Mean

I don't know.  Just because we are stupid doesn't mean everybody else was.

-- JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, arguing against increased regulation as a response to his company's $2 billion loss, in a conference call, 10 May 2012

Monday, May 14, 2012

Someone Else Decide

When you've driven race cars, and when you've jumped out of airplanes, cars are on fire, when you've been upside down at two hundred miles per hour waiting for your head to hit the ground, when you've been in Africa with a wounded Cape buffalo six feet in front of you, chargin' ya, I'll let someone else decide what the most dangerous thing I've ever done is.

-- Carroll Shelby (11 January 1912 - 10 May 2012), American automotive designer, racing driver, and entrepreneur

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Comfortable

bed with pillowsI am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.

-- Vice President Joseph R. Biden, on NBC's "Meet the Press", quoted in the New York Times, 7 May 2012

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Vision

A great teacher never strives to explain her vision: she simply invites you to stand beside her and see for yourself. -- Reverend R. Inman

Friday, May 04, 2012

HBD To Me

Birthday cake
The truth is a trap; you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

-- Soren Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 - 11 November 1855), Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialist thought and Absurdist traditions, The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard (1954)


 19590505 has 2 representations as a sum of 2 squares:
19590505 = 572**2 + 4389**2 = 3091**2 + 3168**2

 May 5, 1959 was ...
The 125th day of the year (126th, this year)
2765 weeks and 3 days ago
19,358 days ago
53 years ago
... and, my birthday.

Thursday, May 03, 2012

Seventeen And Crazy

Lighting a match
I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane. -- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

First Places Taken

Frontispiece of Moral Maxims
It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last. -- Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), French author and moralist, Reflections; Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665)