The World Is Round

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

-- Ivy Baker Priest (1877-1965), Treasurer of the United States (1953-1961), Parade Magazine, 1958

No Real Ending

There is no real ending.  It's just the place where you stop the story.

-- Frank Herbert (1920-1986), American science fiction writer, interview, 3 February 1969, California State College, Fullerton

Gains For All Our Losses

There are gains for all our losses,
There are balms for all our pain:
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.

-- Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903), American critic and poet, The Flight of Youth

The Road

Where you end up isn't the most important thing.  It's the road you take to get you there.  The road you take is what you'll look back on and call your life.

-- Tim Wiley

The Only Thing You Take

The only thing you take with you when you're gone is what you leave behind.

-- John Allston

The Art Of Ending

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American poet, one of the five Fireside Poets, Elegiac Verse, stanza 14 (1879)

One Minute At A Time

This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

-- Narrator in the film Fight Club (1999)

The Past

The past is never where you think you left it.

-- Katherine Anne Porter (1890 - 1980), American journalist, essayist, and novelist, Ship of Fools (1962)

Use The Redline

We tuned the car to preserve the engine and increase longevity. Use the redline when you feel it's necessary for win. Good luck

-- Scion Forums senior member Teseo, aka Scion FR-S Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada, in the thread "How often can I reach red line ?", 20 April 2015

This Is How It Works

This is how it works --
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
until their dying breath.

-- Regina Spektor (1980-), Soviet-born American singer-songwriter and pianist, "On the Radio", Begin to Hope (2006)

See It All Perfectly

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations -- one can either do this or that.  My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this:  do it or do not do it -- you will regret both.

-- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

And You've Done It

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end.  It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it.

-- Variously attributed to Margaret Thatcher or Lord Acton

Fragments

A composer's job involves the decoration of fragments of time.

-- Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993), American musician and composer

Tightrope

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.

-- Maya Angelou (1928-2014), African-American poet, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Ch. 34

A Force For Good

Every day, in every community in America, scouting is changing lives -- teaching young people skills and leadership, and helping them build character and integrity.  As I said during our national annual meeting in May, due to the social, political, and legal changes taking place in our country and in our movement, I did not believe the adult leadership policy could be sustained. ...

The best way to allow the BSA to continue to focus on its mission and preserve its core values was to address the issue and set our own course. And that's what we've done.

For far too long this issue has divided and distracted us.  Now it's time to unite behind our shared belief in the extraordinary power of scouting to be a force for good in a community and in the lives of its youth members.

-- Boy Scouts of America National President and former Defense Secretary Dr. Robert M. Gates, in a statement on the end of Scouting's national ban on gay adults in scouting, 27 July 2015

Traditional Values

It is a strong argument for democracy that governments regulated by principles of accountability, respect for public opinion and the supremacy of just laws are more likely than an all-powerful ruler or ruling class, uninhibited by the need to honour the will of the people, to observe the traditional duties of Buddhist kingship.  Traditional values serve both to justify and to decipher popular expectations of democratic government.

-- Aung San Suu Kyi (1945-), Burmese opposition politician, "Freedom From Fear And Other Writings", (1991)

Science And Art

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart.  The first of these is science, and the second is art.  Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber.  Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.  The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

-- Raymond Thornton Chandler (23 July 1888 - 26 March 1959), American novelist and screenwriter, Great Thought" (19 February 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

Fastest And Cheapest

If we want to reduce poverty, one of the simplest, fastest and cheapest things we could do would be to make sure that as few people as possible become parents before they actually want to.

-- Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution, who supports programs, like one in Colorado, that provide access to long-acting birth control, New York Times, July 2015

A Single Ray Of Light

A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature.  In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.

-- Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), physicist, inventor, and electrical engineer, "On Light And Other High Frequency Phenomena", a lecture delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (24 February 1893)

Toy Store

I don't think any one of us could have imagined that this could have been a better toy store.

-- S. Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto, on the images it has captured, New York Times, 16 July 2015

Reservoir Of Trust

We have to reflect on what these issues mean, and when we have a controversial case -- and a very difficult case like (same-sex marriage) -- we draw down on a capital of trust, a deposit of trust.  We spend that capital of trust, and we have to rebuild that capital.  We have to put new deposits, new substance into this reservoir of trust.

-- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (23 July 1936-), on the effect of controversial rulings, in remarks at the 9th Circuit Judicial Conference, 15 July 2015

A Room

Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.

-- James Paul McCartney (18 June 1942-), English singer-songwriter, composer, and founding member of The Beatles, Interview in Playboy (1984)

Guns, Knives, And Clubs

Java is C++ without the guns, knives, and clubs.

-- James Gosling, co-inventor of Java; Cited in: David Parsons (2001) Object Oriented Programming with C++. p. 19

Valid?

Retribution is a valid societal interest.

-- Dale Cox, the acting district attorney in Cadda Parish, LA, and one of the most prolific seekers of the death penalty in the nation, New York Times, 8 July 2015

The Road To Wisdom

The road to wisdom?
    Well, it's plain and simple to express:
Err
    and err
    and err again
but less
    and less
    and less.

-- Piet Hein (1905-1996), Danish mathematician, scientist, inventor, and poet, Grooks (1966), "The Road to Wisdom?"

Outboard Brain

I love this business of having an outboard brain.  Just as having a calculator liberates you from being a shitty human spreadsheet and allows you to do real math, having the Internet liberates you from being a shitty human encyclopedia and allows you to do real synthetic thought.  Every interesting thing that crosses my transom, and there's a seemingly infinite number of them, I turn into a post that explains to strangers why it's interesting.  This is powerfully mnemonic, it joins a kind of super dense cloud of fragmentary ideas that kind of knock around in my subconscious and eventually two of them glom together and nucleate and turn into novels, or speeches, or essays.  It's wonderful to not have to bother yourself with the minutiae and be able to look at bigger, more synthetic questions

-- Cory Efram Doctorow (17 July 1971), Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author, Intelligence Squared, 1 July 2015

Rat Czar

Anybody who's in charge of eradicating rats in New York knows exactly what Sisyphus felt like.

-- Joseph J. Lhota, once designated the New York "rat czar," on the city's longtime rodent problem, New York Times, 25 June 2015

Firewall In Our Brain

All of us have a natural firewall in our brain that keeps us from bad ideas.  They look for weaknesses in the wall, and then they attack.

-- Nasser Weddady, a Middle East expert, on the effort the Islamic State makes to indoctrinate recruits, New York Times, 28 June 2015

Long Train

Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.  But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
-- Thomas Jefferson, in the US Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

Tick Tick Tick

In the International System of Units (SI), a second is defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium-133 atom, specifically (per the International Bureau of Weights and Measures), that many "periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."

Leap Second

At the very end of the day today, the clock read 11:59:60 Universal Time or 7:59:60 pm ET.

Astronomers at the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Paris decided earlier this year on the extra tick of the clock at the end of June 30th, just before midnight -- the 26th time that's happened since the world started using atomic clocks.

Merry-Go-Round

I think we are just getting started on this merry-go-round. ...  The whole thing is an absolute nightmare.

-- Raoul Ruparel, economist and co-director of London-based research group Open Europe, on the breakdown in negotiations to resolve the Greek financial crisis, New York Times, 28 June 2015

Equal Dignity In The Eyes Of The Law

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.  In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.  As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.  It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.  Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves.  Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions.  They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.  The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.

-- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 majority in Obergefell v Hodges, declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right, 26 June 2015

King v Burwell Affirmed

In a democracy, the power to make the law rests with those chosen by the people.  Our role is more confined -- "to say what the law is." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803).  That is easier in some cases than in others.  But in every case we must respect the role of the Legislature, and take care not to undo what it has done.  A fair reading of legislation demands a fair understanding of the legislative plan.

Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.  If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter. Section 36B can fairly be read consistent with what we see as Congress's plan, and that is the reading we adopt.

The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is Affirmed.

-- US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the 6-3 majority in KING v. Burwell, endorsing premium subsidies for Obamacare buyers in all markets, 25 June 2015

Say It Ain't So, Jack

I must admit I was appalled to hear of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's decision last week to demote Alexander Hamilton from his featured position on the ten dollar bill. ...  Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, would qualify as among the greatest of our founders for his contributions to achieving American independence and creating the Constitution alone.  In addition to those accomplishments, however, Hamilton was without doubt the best and most foresighted economic policymaker in U.S. history.

-- Ben S. Bernanke, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, on his blog, 22 June 2015

Unsuspecting Air Molecules

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

-- Frank Vincent Zappa (1940-1993), American musician, composer, and satirist, The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989) p. 162

What Lit The Fire

What lit the fire under this was the tragic death of my friend and his eight parishioners.  It took my buddy's death to get me to do this.  I should feel ashamed of myself.

-- Norman D. Brannon, Republican South Carolina state representative, who plans to file a bill to remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds after the massacre of nine African-Americans at a church, including their pastor, Clementa Pinckney, New York Times, 22 June 2015

The Best We Can Do

"Kindness" covers all of my political beliefs.  No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.  To make others less happy is a crime.  To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.  We must try to contribute joy to the world.  That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances.  We must try.  I didn't always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

-- Roger Joseph Ebert (1942 - 2013), American film critic and screenwriter, first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 53 : My Last Words.

Snark

Today, Donald Trump became the second major Republican candidate to announce for president in two days.  He adds some much-needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward to hearing more about his ideas for the nation.

-- DNC national press secretary Holly Shulman in a statement, 16 June 2015

To None

To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice.

-- Clause 40 of The Magna Carta, Latin for "Great Charter", literally "Great Paper"), also known as 'Magna Carta Libertatum, English charter limiting the power of English Monarchs, specifically King John, from absolute rule, 15 June 1215

Stanley Cup

Blackhawks win!

In My Living Room

There are dead fish in my living room.

-- Sheriff Steve Prator of Caddo Parish, La., which has experienced the worst flooding of the Red River since 1945, New York Times, 12 June 2015

Just Torture

I'm just glad it's done.  That's the closest I'll ever come to knowing what it's like to have a baby.  It was just torture.

I was constantly looking at the clock, counting down the minutes.  I'm relieved it's done now, it's been such a long build-up since the Paris-Roubaix (race in April) and we've been through a lot as a team.

My wife and children know more about air pressure now than anyone!

When you're out there, you never think it's going to come to an end but it's done now.

-- 35-year-old British cyclist Bradley Wiggins, after setting a new hour record of 54.526 kilometres in London, beating the old world record of 52.937km set by compatriot Alex Dowsett in May.  Extremely high air pressure in London could have cost him as much as one kilometre according to experts, 7 June 2015

Headless Topless

Vincent Musetto, a retired editor at The New York Post who wrote the most anatomically evocative headline in the history of American journalism -- HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR (15 April 1983) -- died on Tuesday in the Bronx.  He was 74.

-- New York Times obituary, 9 June 2015

Related To My Limitations

Out of respect for things that I was never destined to do, I have learned that my strengths are a result of my weaknesses, my success is due to my failures, and my style is directly related to my limitations.

-- William Martin "Billy" Joel (1949-), American piano player and singer/songwriter

Don't Sell This Horse

Sell your house, don't sell this horse.

-- Jeff Seder, an expert on racehorses, on how he urged Ahmed Zayat not to sell American Pharoah, long before the horse became a Triple Crown contender, New York Times, 5 June 2015

To Know And To Dare

To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers - or both.

-- Elizabeth Charles (1828-1896), English writer

Populations Rather Than Individuals

It's not that every intelligence agency is evil.  It's not that they never do any good at all.  We want to have some level of intelligence-gathering. We want to be able to investigate criminals; we want to be able to respond to military threats.  But that's a very far cry from watching everyone in society without regard to their guilt or innocence -- to the mass surveillance of entire populations rather than individual people.

-- Fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in a Q&A session with a London audience set up by Amnesty International, 2 June 2015

Cannot Afford To Make A Mistake

When you get in situations where you cannot afford to make a mistake, it's very hard to do the right thing.  So if you're trying to do the right thing, the right thing might be to eliminate the cost of making a mistake rather than try to guess what's right.

-- Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (26 May 1949-), computer programmer, inventor of the first wiki, (WikiWikiWeb, now called WardsWiki), and pioneer of software design patterns and Extreme Programming, "Collective Ownership of Code and Text : A Conversation with Ward Cunningham" Part II (1 December 2003), interview by Bill Venners

Security Plus

I see no reason why you can't have security and the Constitution at the same time.

-- Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), in his successful filibuster against Patriot Act renewal, 20 May 2015