Primary Purpose

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.

-- Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986), essayist and drama critic

NPCF

Weight                  : >683,000 pounds

Number of processors    : >49,000 AMD CPUs, +3000 NVidia GPUs

Number of CPU cores     : >380,000

Memory (RAM)            : 1,500,000GB (1.5 petabytes)

Data storage            : >25,000,000GB (25 petabytes)

External network speed  : 100,000Mbps

-- National Petascale Computing Facility facts about the Blue Waters supercomputer at the University of Illinois, open house handout, March 2013

The One

Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania
Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth, and one way.

-- Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843), German lyric poet, "The Root of All Evil" as translated by Michael Hamburger

Make 'Em, Amuse 'Em

You make 'em, I amuse 'em.

-- Theodor (Dr.) Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), American writer, poet, and cartoonist, statement about children, as quoted in Enter, Conversing (1962) by Clifton Fadiman, p. 108

Saint Patrick

I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop.  I am certain in my heart that "all that I am," I have received from God.  So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God.

-- Saint Patrick (c. 385 - 17 March 462, 492, or 493), Christian bishop and missionary, and patron saint of Ireland, Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c.450?)

Conclusions

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

-- Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), English poet, novelist, and writer on gardening, In Your Garden Again (1953), p. 71 of 2004 edition

W00t! AnaLeigh

Welcome into the world, AnaLeigh Lillian Schum, born today, 14 March 2013, at 1:03pm to my eldest daughter Tia and her husband Joe at 7 pounds 12 ounces and 19 1/2 inches.  AnaLeigh has two older brothers, and is my 6th grandchild.

W00t!

Pope Francis

Brothers and sisters, good evening.

-- Newly ordained Pope Francis (17 December 1936-), formerly Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio, speaking for the first time as the 266th Pope, St. Peter's Square, The Vatican, 13 March 2013

Trvth Upgrade

Ahhhhh ... 16GB, 3.8GHz, quad-core goodness, running from SSD.  Smooth like butter.

Mutually Satisfying Weirdness

You want my opinion?  We're all a little weird.  And life is a little weird.  And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness -- and call it love -- true love.

-- Robert Fulghum (1937-), American author, True Love (1998)

Business Of The Future

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

-- Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), British born American mathematician and philosopher, Science and the Modern World (1925) Ch. 13: Requisites for Social Progress

Debate

I believed if the public -- in particular the American public -- had access to the information [in hundreds of thousands of military incident reports], this could spark a debate about foreign policy in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan.

-- Pfc. Bradley Manning (17 December 1987-), confessing in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, 28 February 2013

Bicyclists Are Actually Polluting When They Ride

Also, you claim that it is environmentally friendly to ride a bike.  But if I am not mistaken, a cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration.  That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider.  Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.

-- Washington State Representative Ed Orcutt (R-20), in an email to a constituent defending a proposed tax on bicycles, 25 February 2013

Psalm Of Life

Life is real! Life is earnest!
    And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
    Was not spoken of the soul.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1881), American poet, A Psalm of Life (1839), St 2

Candle

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Milay

Thank you

Rest in peace, Herbert Stanley Appleman (24 April 1917 - 21 February 2013)

My Dad was a WW II veteran, a meteorologist, and the father of 4 boys, and he will be missed.

The World Is Moved

The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

-- John Richard Green (1837-1883), Life and Letters of John Richard Green, Leslie Stephen, Ed (1901)

Cuts Both Ways

We did not see (as a result of brain scans of partisan loyalists) any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning.  What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.  None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones. ...  The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data.

-- Drew Westen, Director of Clinical Psychology at Emory University, regarding a study using fMRI, NBC News, 24 January 2006

Something Of The Youth

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so am I no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth.  He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

We All Like Our Own

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

-- Jane Austen (16 December 1775 - 18 July 1817), English novelist, Persuasion (posthumous, 1818)