Tuesday, May 31, 2016

You Can Do It With Either Hand

I made a fist of my right hand -- you can do it with either hand, by the way -- and put my arms around her.

-- Dr Henry J Heimlich, 96, on using the Heimlich maneuver to save an 87-year-old woman who was choking at their senior residence community in Cincinnati, New York Times, 28 May 2016

Friday, May 27, 2016

Perspective

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

-- Alan Kay (17 May 1940 -), computer scientist

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Not Equal

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

-- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001), English author and satirist, The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Right At The Top

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style.

-- Fred Astaire (1899-1987), dancer, actor, singer, musician, and choreographer, in The Notorious Landlady, written by Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart (1962)

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

RIP Morley Safer

It makes me uneasy.  It is not natural to be talking to a piece of machinery.  But the money is very good.

-- Morley Safer (8 November 1931 - 19 May 2016), CBS television correspondent and mainstay of the network's newsmagazine "60 Minutes" for almost five decades, in a recent interview

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Faced With The Prospect

Obituaries & In Memoriam

NOLAND, MARY ANNE

NOLAND, Mary Anne Alfriend.  Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016

-- Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond, VA, 17 May 2016


http://www.richmond.com/obituaries/article_c21b60bc-1153-5abd-b3c8-268cfd32eb57.html

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

The Last Thing

The last thing a parent teaches a child is how to die.

-- John DeVore, The Moth podcast, May 2016

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

All Will Be Lost

We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

-- Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE (1889-1977), English comic actor and filmmaker, in The Great Dictator (1940)

Monday, May 16, 2016

Easier Than You Think

It's far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification.

-- Anonymous Congressman X, allegedly a sitting congressman, in The Confessions of Congressman X (2016)

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Because America

We are embarking on what should be the most patriotic summer that this generation has ever seen, with Copa America Centenario being held on U.S. soil for the first time, Team USA competing at the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

-- Budweiser Vice President Ricardo Marques, announcing that Budweiser is renaming its beer "America" through the presidential election in November, 9 May 2013

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

A Londoner

I'm a Londoner, I'm European, I'm British, I'm English, I'm of Islamic faith, of Asian origin, of Pakistani heritage, a dad, a husband.

-- Newly-elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan, New York Times, 30 April 2016

Friday, May 06, 2016

It Will Take Them

There are certainly areas within the city which have not been burned, but this fire will look for them, and it will take them.

-- Darby Allen, a regional fire chief in Alberta, Canada, on a rampaging wildfire that forced the evacuation of all 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray, Canada, New York Times, 5 May 2016

Wednesday, May 04, 2016

The Years Thunder By

The years thunder by,
    The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie
caked in dust on the shelves of patience.
    Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.      

-- Sterling Hayden (1916 - 1986), American actor, writer and seaman, Wanderer (1963) Book I: Man at Bay, Ch. 5

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

My Results

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.      

-- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, quoted in The Mind and the Eye (1954) by A. Arber

Monday, May 02, 2016

Obama Out

And with that I just have two more words to say: Obama out.

-- President Barack Obama ending his final White House Correspondents' Dinner with a mic drop, 30 April 2016