Monday, November 30, 2015

The Same Individual

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

-- Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), Hungarian-British author and journalist, Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955-1967 (1967)

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Thanksgiving

For each new morning with its light,
    For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
    For everything Thy goodness sends.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet, Thanksgiving

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

The Message Is Clear

The message to the West is clear: We have bought their buildings, we have bought their companies, and now we are going to buy their art.

-- Liu Yiqian, Chinese billionaire who made the winning bid at auction for a Modigliani portrait at $170.4 million with fees, New York Times, 18 November 2015

Monday, November 23, 2015

Almost Dead

Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today.

-- Robert Jordan (1948-2007), American fantasy author, Lord Of Chaos (1994)




Friday, November 20, 2015

Acnestis

acnestis:

The part of an animal's skin that it cannot reach to scratch itself, usually the space between the shoulder blades.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Not Something To Aspire To

Normal is not something to aspire to, it is something to get away from.

-- Jodie Foster (19 November 1962-), two-time Academy Award-winning American actress, director, and producer,  as quoted in Diamonds, Pearls & Stones : Jewels of Wisdom for Young Women from Extraordinary Women of the World (2004) p. 6

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

A Crown

The man who is well wears a crown that only the sick can see.

-- Sir William Osler, (1849 - 1919), Canadian physician

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Half The World

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

-- Robert Frost, attributed

Monday, November 16, 2015

Ego Says

Ego says, "Once everything falls into place, I'll feel peace."  Spirit says, "Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place."

-- Marianne Williamson (1952-), American spiritual teacher, author, and lecturer, on Twitter as @marwilliamson, 10 August 2013

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Life Is A Shipwreck

Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

-- Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) (1694-1778), quoting the character Bottiglia, in Candide (1759)

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Made Entirely Of Flaws

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

-- Augusten Burroughs (1965-), American writer, Magical Thinking: True Stories (2004)

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Edmund Fitzgerald

On this date (10 November) in 1975, forty years ago, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, sank in Lake Superior with the loss of 29 lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald

Monday, November 09, 2015

Knack Of Flying

The knack of flying lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ...  Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.

-- Douglas Adams (1952-2001), English author and satirist, Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), Chapter 9

Thursday, November 05, 2015

Arbitration

This amounts to the whole-scale privatization of the justice system.  Americans are actively being deprived of their rights.

-- Myriam Gilles, law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, on businesses bypassing the legal system with arbitration, New York Times, 2 November 2015

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

With Curious Art

With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought:
Constant attention wears the active mind,
Blots out our powers, and leaves a blank behind.

-- Charles Churchill (1731 – 1764), English poet and satirist, Epistle to William Hogarth (July 1763), line 645




Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Telescopium

Here's something I learned today --

Telescopium is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, one of twelve created in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. Its name is a Latinized form of the Greek word for telescope. Telescopium was later much reduced in size by Francis Baily and Benjamin Gould. The brightest star in the constellation is Alpha Telescopii, a blue-white subgiant with an apparent magnitude of 3.5, followed by the orange giant star Zeta Telescopii at magnitude 4.1. Eta and PZ Telescopii are two young star systems with debris disks and brown dwarf companions. Telescopium hosts two unusual stars with very little hydrogen that are likely to be the result of merged white dwarfs: HD 168476, also known as PV Telescopii, is a hot blue extreme helium star, while RS Telescopii is an R Coronae Borealis variable. RR Telescopii is a cataclysmic variable that brightened to magnitude 6 in 1948 as a nova.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescopium

Monday, November 02, 2015

RIP Fred Thompson

My daddy always said that a man who walks around with a smile on his face all the time can't possibly know what's going on.

-- Fred Dalton Thompson (19 August 1942 - 1 November 2015), American politician, actor, US Senator (R-TN) 1994-2003, Teaching The Pig To Dance (2010)