Timing

You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.

-- George McGovern (19 July 1922 - 21 October 2012), American historian, author, US Representative and Senator, 1972 Democratic presidential nominee

Not The Kernel

For money you can have everything it is said.  No, that is not true.  You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace.  The shell of all things you can get for money.  But not the kernel.  That cannot be had for money.

-- Arne Garborg, (1851-1924) Norwegian writer

Rest In Peace Joe Seeley

For those of you who know Joe Seeley, I heard tonight that he passed away this past weekend.

http://joes-blasts.blogspot.com/2012/10/rest-in-peace-joe-seeley.html

Ask The Young

Ask the young. They know everything.

-- Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), French moralist and essayist

Way Harder

It was way harder than I expected.  ... Sometimes you have to get up really high to know how small you are.

-- Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner, 43, on his 10-minute fall after jumping from a height of 24 miles, setting altitude and speed (833.9 mph) records for skydiving, 14 October 2012

10/11/12

What, it's up to me to point out that today is 10/11/12?

Only About Myself

Two years ago, I was approached by U.S. federal investigators, and more recently by USADA, and asked to tell of my personal experience in these matters.  I would have been much more comfortable talking only about myself, but understood that I was obligated to tell the truth about everything I knew.  So that is what I did.

-- Retired professional cyclist George Hincapie on the US Anti-Doping Agency's case file against Lance Armstrong in which Hincapie and 10 other Armstrong teammates testified about a culture of organized doping centered around Armstrong, 10 October 2012

72 IF

Christ said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that. We're all God. I'm not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine -- and potentially evil. We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you'll see it.

-- John Lennon (9 October 1940 - 8 December 1980), singer, songwriter, and political activist, The Beatles Anthology (2000), p 226

Answers

Can you live without answers?  All of you, ask that of yourself.  Can you live without answers?  Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you.  And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart.

-- Steven Erikson (7 October 1959-), pseudonym of Steve Rune Lundin, Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist, & novelist Toll The Hounds (2008)

Antidote

Learn to control ego.  Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic!  But we all need criticism.  Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

-- David Brin (6 October 1950-), American scientist and award-winning science fiction author, interview at ActuSF.com, March 2008

Cycling 100

I did a little better than I hoped.  However, the going was tough in the last few kilometers.

-- French centenarian cyclist Robert Marchand (26 November 1911-), as he set a record for fastest 100-year-old to cover 100km (4:17:27, 14.3mph avg speed), Lyon, France, 28 September 2012


http://tinyurl.com/8npknek

Pension

This is my pension.

-- Victor Victorio, 67, who forages for fruits and vegetables in the garbage at a market in Madrid, New York Times, 25 September 2012

We Would Have

We would have killed many of them already, but our commanders are cowards and don't let us.

-- Abdul Hanan, an Afghan soldier, on American military advisers, New York Times, 26 September 2012

Parent

Parent is a verb.  Do it.

LEGO Great Ball Contraption (GBC)

A conspiracy to destroy the productivity of the United States (or something like that).

LEGO Great Ball Contraption (GBC) Layout 2012.9

So here's this video that someone posted a week ago (I recommend the video).  It runs 7 minutes long.  And it was watched 3 million times during the first week.  So that's 21 million minutes (35,000 hours (14,500+ days (~40 years))) spent watching that video, in just the first week.  That's an average of 2000+ people viewing this video at any given time throughout the week.  That's +100,000 views since I first watched the video earlier today.

And according to the video, it took ~600 hours to produce the Rube  Goldberg device in the video.  So that's a viewing payback of almost 60:1 in  just the first week.

I don't pay more [taxes] than are legally due, and, frankly, if I had paid more than are legally due, I don't think I'd be qualified to become president.

-- Mitt Romney to ABC News regarding his 2010 taxes, July 2012, prior to releasing his 2011 tax returns on which he deliberately overpaid to avoid having a ~10.5% income tax rate

Crooked Papyrologists

It's hard to construct a scenario that is at all plausible in which somebody fakes something like this. The world is not really crawling with crooked papyrologists.

-- New York University's Roger Bagnall, on a scrap of papyrus that has Jesus uttering the words "my wife", New York Times, 19 September 2012

As the certainty that legislation violates the U.S. Constitution increases, so does the probability of predictions that severe harm or death will come to Americans if the proposal is not swiftly enacted.

-- Declan McCullagh, US journalist, programmer, and photographer, McCullagh's Law of Politics, cnet.com, 11 October 2007


http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9795316-38.html

I think the reward for conformity is everyone likes you but yourself.

-- Rita Mae Brown (1944-), American writer, Bingo (1988)

Machines

Machines which ape people are tending to encroach on every aspect of people's lives, and that such machines force people to behave like machines.  The new electronic devices do indeed have the power to force people to "communicate" with them and with each other on the terms of the machine.  Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use.  The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable.  Observations of the sickening effect of programmed  environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical.  The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.

-- Ivan Illich (1926-2002), Austrian-born Christian anarchist & author, Silence Is A Commons (1982)

The Success Of Others

Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.

-- Jules Renard (1864-1910), French author

Communication

In countries and epochs in which communication is impeded, soon all other liberties wither; discussion dies by inanition, ignorance of the opinion of others becomes rampant, imposed opinions triumph. ...  Intolerance is inclined to censor, and censorship promotes ignorance of the arguments of others and thus intolerance itself: a rigid, vicious circle that is hard to break.

-- Primo Levi (1919-1987), Italian chemist and author, holocaust survivor, The Drowned And The Saved (1986)

Second Place

The political spirit is the great force in throwing the love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place.

-- John Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838-1923), British statesman, writer, and newspaper editor, On Compromise (1874)

Childhood Bedrooms

College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they  can move out and get going with life.

-- Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan at the Republican National Convention, 29 August 2012

Ease And Security

Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others.  Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.

-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher, logician, and mathematician, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935)

Snob

The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

-- John Buchan (1875-1940), Scottish novelist, poet, and politician, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, Pilgrim's Way: An Essay in Recollection (1940)

An Engineer

A century hence, 2000 may be viewed as quite a primitive period in human history.  It's something to hope for. ...  I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer -- born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.  As an engineer, I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.

-- Neil Alden Armstrong (5 August 1930 - 25 August 2012), test pilot and astronaut, commander of Apollo 11, first man to walk on the moon, in "The Engineered Century", remarks delivered during National Engineers Week on behalf of the National Academy of Engineering at the National Press Club, 22 February 2000

Judge Nutter Speaks

He is going to do what he wants to do.  Now what do you think he is going to try to do in this next term?  One of the things, my opinion.  One of the things is he's going to try to give the sovereignty of the United States away to the United Nations.  What do you think the public is going to do when that happens?  We are talking civil unrest, civil disobedience, possibly, possibly civil war, OK?  Now what happens?  What happens?  Now I'm not talking just talking riots here and there.  I'm talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms, get rid of the dictator.  OK, what do you think he is going to do when that happens?  He is going to call in the UN troops, personnel carriers, tanks and weapons.

-- Lubbock County, TX Judge Tom Head, on the Drive Home on FOXTalk 950 with Jeff Klotzman, 20 August 2012

Going Forward

Going forward, I am going to devote myself to raising my five beautiful (and energetic) kids, fighting cancer, and attempting to be the fittest 40-year old on the planet.

-- Lance Armstrong (1971-), retired US professional cyclist, 7-time winner of the Tour de France, announcing that he will not take part in USADA arbitration nor respond to assertions that he doped during his years of winning the Tour de France; U.S. Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart says the agency will ban Lance Armstrong from cycling for life and strip him of his seven Tour de France titles for doping, 23 August 2012

Creation Of The Human Brain

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. ... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

-- Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943), Serbian American physicist, inventor, and electrical engineer, quoted in Marconi and Tesla:  Pioneers of Radio Communication (2008) by Tim O'Shei

Headache

As human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache.

-- Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn, which has more than a million employees worldwide but is using a growing number of robots, New York Times, 19 August 2012

The Traveler

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience.  The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him.  He goes "sightseeing."

-- Daniel J. Boorstin (1914-2004), American historian and writer, "The Image: A Guide to Psuedo-Events in America", (1961)

Humble Genius

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.

-- Oscar Levant (1906-1972), American pianist, composer, author, comedian, and actor, as quoted in "On the 8th Day -- God Laughed" (1995) by Gene Perret, pg 95

I Am Legend

I'm now a legend. I'm also the greatest athlete to live.

-- Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt (21 August 1986-), the first athlete to win the 100 meters and 200 meters at consecutive Olympics, New York Times, 10 August 2012

Whyness

The isness of things is well worth studying; but it is their whyness that makes life worth living.

-- William Beebe (1877-1962), American naturalist, explorer, and author, as quoted in On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz (1963)

Silly Things

If people did not do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian-born philosopher, Culture and Value (1980)

Almost Enough Time

Forty-eight years is almost enough time to hold a record.

-- Larisa Latynina, a gymnast whose career record of 18 Olympic medals was surpassed by Michael Phelps, who won gold in swimming the anchor leg in the 4x200 freestyle relay, New York Times, 1 August 2012

Spark

You're only given a little spark of madness.  You mustn't lose it.

-- Robin Williams

Waiting

When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen.

-- Sally Kristen Ride (26 May 1951 - 23 July 2012), American physicist, first American woman and youngest American (1983) to enter space, interview at Scholastic's Web site, 20 November 1998

Move Along

The sooner we can separate salvageable skeptics from self-righteous absolutists, the sooner we can move along.

-- Sheri S. Tepper (1929-), author, The Small God in Ch. 44: The Visitor

To The Utmost

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.

-- Richard Phillips Feynman (1918-1988), American physicist, The Character of Physical Law (1965)

Get Your Facts First

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

-- Mark Twain (1835-1910), Rudyard Kipling, An Interview with Mark Twain, p. 180, From sea to sea: letters of travel, (1899)

Culture

Such dread was a large part of the post-9/11 decade.  A culture of fear had created a culture of spending to control it, which, in turn, had led to a belief that the government had to be able to stop every single plot before it took place, regardless of whether it involved one network of twenty terrorists or one single deranged person.  This expectation propelled more spending and even more zero-defect expectations.  There were tens of thousands of unsolved murders in the United States by 2010, but few newspapers ever blared this across their front pages or even tried to investigate how their police departments had to failed to solve them all over the years.  But when it came to terrorism, newspaper and other media outlets amplified each mistake, which amplified the threat, which amplified the fear, which prompted more spending, and on and on and on.

-- Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, in "Top Secret America:  The Rise of the New American Security State", Chapter 3

Great Need

There's a great need in our government right now for honesty.  I speak my mind.  You might not always like what you hear, but you're gonna hear it anyway.  I call it like I see it; I tell the truth.  And if I don't know something, I'll say so.  Then I'll try to find the answer.

-- James George Janos (15 July 1951-), AKA Jesse Ventura, American politician, actor, US Navy UDT veteran, retired professional wrestler, talk show host, teacher, 38th Governor of Minnesota, "I Ain't Got Time To Bleed: Reworking the Body Politic from the Bottom Up" (1999)

35

Tonight I hung out at my 35th high school class reunion for a while.  High school is really getting to be a long time ago.

Courage

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

-- Nelle Harper Lee (1926-), American novelist, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960)

To control and sort young people for the sake of institutional efficiency is to crush the human spirit.

-- Ron Miller, author, editor, and publisher, What Are Schools For? pg. 145 (1990)

Delighted

But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness -- each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked -- each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.

-- Herbert Butterfield (1900-1979), British historian and philosopher of history, "Christianity, Diplomacy and War" (1953), p 43

Freedom Of Movement

The right to travel enables the free exercise of the other rights we most cherish. We should not have to check our constitutional freedoms at the curb simply because we decide to leave the house. Sadly, freedom of movement has been one of the most disparaged rights throughout human history, and our country is no exception. If we are ever to be truly free, then we must possess an absolute, uninhibited right to travel throughout America and the world free from interference by government.

-- Judge Andrew Napolitano, Reason.com, 19 December 2011

Fun

It's a triumphant day for fundamental physics.  Now some fun begins.

-- Nima Arkani-Hamed, physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, on the discovery of a new subatomic particle hoped to be the Higgs boson, New York Times, 5 July 2012