Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Relevant Vs. Irrelevant

Amusing Ourselves to DeathWe no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives.

-- Neil Postman (1931 - 2003), American educator, media theorist and cultural critic, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

What Change Looks Like

An assortment of United States coins, including quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies.This legislation will not fix everything that ails our healthcare system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction. This is what change looks like. In the end, what this day represents is another stone laid firmly in the foundation of the American Dream. Tonight we answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge; we overcame it.

-- President Barack Obama, regarding the new healthcare bill, Democracy Now, 22 March 2010

Monday, March 22, 2010

Spring

Daffodils and tulipsSpring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"

-- Robin Williams (1952-), American actor and comedian

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Only More So

scolding womanIn today's online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.

-- Harold Abelson, MIT computer science professor, on personal information that can be gleaned from social networking sites, NY Times, 17 March 2010

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Not Equal

The male salmon which goes upAll 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), British author and satirist, The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Walking And Bicycling

 Japanese road sign 'Bicycles And Pedestrians Only'The DOT policy is to incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities into transportation projects. Every transportation agency, including DOT, has the responsibility to improve conditions and opportunities for walking and bicycling and to integrate walking and bicycling into their transportation systems. Because of the numerous individual and community benefits that walking and bicycling provide -- including health, safety, environmental, transportation, and quality of life -- transportation agencies are encouraged to go beyond minimum
standards to provide safe and convenient facilities for these modes.

-- Secretary Ray LaHood, in the US Department of Transportation Policy Statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation Regulations and Recommendations, 11 March 2010

Monday, March 15, 2010

When

American philosopher and educator: John Dewey We only think when we are confronted with problems.

-- John Dewey (1859-1952), American philosopher, educator

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Books

some old books, Lin Kristensen from New Jersey, USABooks say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never our own.

-- Julian Barnes (19 January 1946-) British novelist and short story writer, Flaubert's Parrot, p 168

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

No Moral Precept

Portrait of Denis Diderot, by FragonardThere is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

-- Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784), French philosopher and chief editor of the historic project to produce L'Encyclopidie, as quoted in Dictionary of Foreign Quotations (1980) by Mary Collison, Robert L. Collison, p. 235

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Amateurs

Coding HorrorSoftware is an incredibly young discipline. Everything in software is so new and so frequently being reinvented that almost nobody really knows what they are doing. It is amateurs who make all the progress.

-- Jeff Atwood, 29 May 2008, Coding Horror Blog,
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001124.html

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Crosses The Line

The Facebook ManWhen it works, it's amazingly impactful, but when it doesn't work, it's not only creepy but off-putting. What a marketer might think is endearing, by knowing a little bit about you, actually crosses the line pretty easily.

-- Tim Hanlon of Riverview Lane Associates of Chicago, on advertising aimed at Facebook users, New York Times, 4 March 2010

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Worst Sin

State of an indifferent systemThe worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish literary critic, playwright and essayist, 1925 Nobel Laureate in Literature, The Devil's Disciple, Act II (1901)

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Aladdin's Lamp

Aladdin's Lamp, Neon Museum at the Fremont Street ExperienceYes! Ready money is Aladdin's lamp.

-- Lord George Gordon (Noel) Byron, 6th Baron Byron 22 January 1788 - 19 April 1824), Anglo-Scottish poet and leading figure in Romanticism, Don Juan (canto XII, st. 12), 1823

Monday, March 01, 2010

What People Want

1950's televisionWhen you're young, you look at television and think, "There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down." But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.

-- Steve Jobs (24 February 1955-), Chairman and CEO of Apple Inc., Interview in WIRED magazine, February 1996

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Wolves

Wolves in KolmardenWe have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest -- which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves.

-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third US president, architect and author, in a letter to Edward Carrington

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Another Flaw

An enlargement of the triangle in the upper right corner of the 1999 edition of New Taiwan Dollar $1000 note, showing the 45 degree angle labled as 60 degrees.Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Ethics v Morals

Steve SolomonEthics versus Morals. Ethical behavior may be defined as acting after thinking about what would produce the greatest good for the greatest number affected. Morals are a codification of prior ethical decisions, simplified into easy-to-grasp rules. Morals exist because most people are very uncomfortable with the uncertainties of attempting to figure out what the right course of action might be, and most and are reluctant to take responsibility for having made mistakes. Being ethical means making decisions based on inadequate data and acting anyway. Ethical actions frequently work out badly; the actor has no one to blame for the results but themselves. Acting ethically while still desiring certainties means being uncomfortable. Moral acts also often work out badly. The apparent advantage to being moral is that when a moral act works out badly no one is to blame because the actor did what was supposed to be done. Being moral is comfortable because a moral person always knows what should be done, did it and is not to blame for the outcomes.

-- Steve Solomon, "The Wisdom of Solomon",
www.soilandhealth.org/05steve'sfolder/0502wisdomofsol.html

Monday, February 22, 2010

Theater

Donald BainIt's a kind of theater. Sometimes, a car will fly by in the air.

-- Juma Gul, who works beside a mountainous stretch of the Afghan national highway that is famous for accidents, New York Times, 8 February 2010

Friday, February 19, 2010

Any Little Change

dsm-ivAnything you put in that book, any little change you make, has huge implications not only for psychiatry but for pharmaceutical marketing, research, for the legal system, for who's considered to be normal or not, for who's considered disabled.

-- Dr. Michael First, professor of psychiatry at Columbia, on proposed changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, New York Times, 10 February 2010

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Something Different

Austin plane crash siteI saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)
02/18/2010


-- Closing paragraphs of a blog entry posted by Joseph Andrew Stack III just before he crashed an aircraft into the Austin office of the IRS, 18 February 2010