Always A Reason

There is always a reason to chicken out.

-- University of Richmond Economics Professor Dean Croushore, after the Federal Reserve postponed any increase in interest rates, New York Times, 18 September 2015

RIP Yogi Berra

It ain't over 'til it's over.

-- Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra (12 May 1925 - 22 September 2015), American baseball player, manager, and member of Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame, The Yogi Book (1998)

That No Other

And now let me tell you something that no other candidate for president will tell you.  And that is no matter who is elected to be president, that person will not be able to address the enormous problems facing the working families of our country.  They will not be able to succeed because the power of corporate America, the power of Wall Street, the power of campaign donors, is so great that no president alone can stand up to them.  That is the truth.  People may be uncomfortable about hearing it, but that is the reality.

-- Bernie Sanders, Clear Lake, Iowa, 14 August 2015

Called To Lead

Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive, conservative message can rise to the top of the field.  With this in mind, I will suspend my campaign immediately.

To refocus the debate on these types of issues will require leadership, I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same, so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive conservative alternative to the current front-runner.  This is fundamentally important to the future of the party and, more importantly, to the future of our country.

-- Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, announcing an end to his presidential run, 21 September 2015

A Movie Of The Past

We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.

-- Ken Kesey (1935-2001), American writer, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Ch. 11: The Unspoken Thing

Cool Clock

Cool clock, Ahmed.  Want to bring it to the White House?  We should inspire more kids like you to like science.  It's what makes America great.

-- President Obama, on Twitter, to Ahmed Mohamed, a Texas 14-year-old who was detained after taking a homemade clock to school, New York Times, 17 September 2015

Conscious Of Its Limitations

Before we can build a stable civilization worthy of humanity as a whole, it is necessary that each historical civilization should become conscious of its limitations and it's unworthiness to become the ideal civilization of the world.

-- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888 - 1975), Advaita Vedantist philosopher, first Vice President and second President of India, Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)

Eye Opener

This has to be an eye-opener on how messed up the situation in Europe is now.

-- Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, after 6,500 migrants, many from Syria, had reached his country, New York Times, 6 September 2015

Social Creation

The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect -- to help people work together -- and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.

-- Tim Berners-Lee (1955-), inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Weaving the Web (1999)

Flesh And Blood

Corporations can only commit crimes through flesh-and-blood people.  It's only fair that the people who are responsible for committing those crimes be held accountable.

-- Sally Q. Yates, deputy United States attorney general, on new policies that prioritize the prosecution of executives -- not just their companies, New York Times, 10 September 2015

A Certain Amount

It's like a certain amount of being a parent is realizing what an ass you were before you became a parent.

-- Ira Glass, This American Life, "Pink Slip", 14 August 2015

This Was A Mistake

That was a mistake.  I'm sorry about that.  I take responsibility.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her first direct apology for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, New York Times, 9 September 2015

Sock It To Me

Sock it to me!

-- Judy Carne (27 April 1939 - 3 September 2015), English actress, on Rowan & Martin's Laugh In

Martyrdom

Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, -- never the correctness of his thought.  Things are true or false in themselves.  Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom.  An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.

-- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), lawyer, Civil War veteran political leader and orator, The Great Infidels (1881)

Where Are The Eyes?

Where are the eyes in an autonomous vehicle?

-- John Lee, a University of Wisconsin professor  and expert in driver safety on the Google  self-driving car and concerns that it can't  interact with other drivers by making eye contact, New York Times, 2 September 2015

2019 Mindset List

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released its "mind-set list" to help faculty and administrators understand what a new class of freshmen have experienced and not experienced. Here is the list for the entering college class of 2019, most of whom were born in 1997. Among those who have never been alive in this group of students' lifetimes are Princess Diana, Notorious B.I.G., Jacques Cousteau and Mother Teresa.

Since these students have been on the planet:

• Hybrid automobiles have always been mass-produced.
• Google has always been there, in its founding words, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible."
• Kyoto has always symbolized inactivity about global climate change.
• The Lion King has always been on Broadway.
• Vote by mail has always been the official way to vote in Oregon.
• ... and there has always been a Beloit College mind-set list.

Origins To Cyber1

As you all are surely aware, NovaNET finally took the big sleep last night. It was a sad sight, and I'm sorry to see it go.

In February of 1981, I wrote my first note with the title "trvth" in =pad.  I was appleman / chanute at the time. Over the years, with breaks both short and long, I've posted more than 4700 notes with that title, in =pad. The most recent 2300 have been reposted, with accompanying images, at trvth.org

Two years ago, an area high school (Atwood-Hammond) was demolished after the school merged with Arthur-Lovington. The crowd that came to watch that demolition had a nostalgia that I felt again last night, when the room (=pad) was filled with veterans of 30 or more years of PLATO/NovaNET.

Final NovaNET backout

* sigh *

I Always Thought

I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
    I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.
    But I always thought that I'd see you again.

-- James Vernon Taylor (12 March 1948-). American singer-songwriter and guitarist, "Fire And Rain" (1970)



Point of trivia, my "cerl" records were created on his 27th birthday, 40 years ago this spring.

A Part Of Ourselves

What we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

-- Anatole France (1844-1924), French poet, journalist, and novelist, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, Part II, ch. 4 (1881)

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."