Mastery

Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity.

-- Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS (1925 - 2016), British mathematician known for his work in geometric topology and singularity theory, in From Human to Robot and Back Again: The Process of Rehearsing and Performing, p. 1

Silly Putty

I don't think there is a single person in that room that can get 217 votes.  People are starting to realize that Kevin McCarthy kept this thing together with duct tape and silly putty.  And it's not as easy as they think.

-- Representative Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) on the difficulties the Republican party is having electing a new Speaker of the House of Representatives, which office has now been vacant for 16 days, Politico.com, "House GOP drowning as crisis reaches breaking point", 19 October 2023

Managed To Conceal

I have managed to conceal my madness fairly effectively, and as far as I know it hasn't hurt anybody badly, for which I am grateful.

-- William Saroyan (1908 - 1981), Armenian American author, My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Limited Amount Of Damage

There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people.  For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.

-- Thomas Sowell (1930 -), American economist and political commentator, Orange County Register, 30 September 2009

No Need

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006), Canadian-American economist and author, Economics, Peace and Laughter (1971), p. 50

Yanking Its Tail

A dragon’s inertia is not shifted by yanking its tail.

-- Glen David Brin (1950 -), American science fiction author, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, former NASA consultant and physics professor, Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 551)

Without An Eraser

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

-- John William Gardner (1912 - 2002), President of the Carnegie Corporation and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) under President Lyndon Johnson, as quoted in Matthew M. Radmanesh, Cracking the Code of Our Physical Universe, p. 269

Calisthenics

There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit.  Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.

-- Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967), American writer, poet, and critic, Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)

From Minds Profound

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.

-- Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967), American writer, poet, and critic, "The Little Hours" in Here Lies (1939)

Pardelas

Saw pardelas and a green rush near the vessel.  The crew of the Pinta saw a cane and a log; they also picked up a stick which appeared to have been carved with an iron tool, a piece of cane, a plant which grows on land, and a board.  The crew of the Nina saw other signs of land, and a stalk loaded with rose berries.  These signs encouraged them, and they all grew cheerful.

-- Christopher Columbus (1451 - 1506), Italian explorer and navigator who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas, Journal of the First Voyage, 11 October 1492

Quite So Flexibly

Do American faces so often look so lost because they are most tragically trapped between a very real dread of coming alive to something more than merely existing, and an equal dread of going down to the grave without having done more than merely be comfortable?  If so, this is the truly American disease.  And would account in part for the fact that we lead the world today in insanity, criminality, alcoholism, narcoticism, psychoanalysm, cancer, homicide and perversion in sex as well as in perversion just for the pure hell of the thing.  Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder.  Never has any people lived so hygienically while daily dousing itself with the ritual slops of guilt.  Nowhere has any people set itself a moral code so rigid while applying it quite so flexibly.

-- Nelson Algren (1909 - 1981), American novelist, essayist, and short story author, Nonconformity (1953/1996)

Not At All The Same

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 - 1936), British writer, A Short History of England (1917)

National Alert

National Alert

THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert system.  The purpose is to maintain and improve alert and warning capabilities at the federal, state, local, tribal and territorial levels and to evaluate the nation's public alert and warning capabilities.  No action is required by the public.

-- Text of the most recent, triennially mandated test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System, 4 October 2023

Vacant

On this vote, the Yea's are 216, the Nay's are 210, the resolution is adopted.  Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.  The office of the Speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.  

-- Representative Steve Womack (R-Arkansas), tallying the vote on House Resolution 757, "Declaring the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant", as Kevin McCarthy (R-California) became the first House Speaker in history to lose a vote of no confidence, 3 October 2023

A Convert's Enthusiasm

A convert's enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born into it.

-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 - 30 January 1948), Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, in his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics, vol. I, p. 144

RIP Dianne Feinstein

I truly believe that there is a center in the political spectrum that is the best place to run something when you have a very diverse community.  America is diverse; we are not all one people.  We are many different colors, religions, backgrounds, education levels, all of it.

-- Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein (born Dianne Emiel Goldman; 22 June 1933 – 28 September 2023), American politician serving as the senior United States senator from California, previously Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988, "Sen. Dianne Feinstein's rise: How one badass woman fought to keep going" by Dana Bash, CNN (9 August 2017)

By Practice

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

-- Confucius (551 B.C. - 479 B.C.), Chinese social philosopher, The Confucian Analects, Vol. I of Legge's Chinese Classics (1861)

Fists Clenched

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

-- George Jean Nathan (1882 - 1958), American drama critic and editor, The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness, Volume 69 "Undeveloped Notes" (August 1922)

As A Thing

If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.

-- John Brunner (1934 - 1995), science fiction author, The Shockwave Rider (1975), Book 3, Ch. "Like They Say, It's Bounce Or Break"

OSIRIS-REx

We've got a busy week ahead of us.

-- Dante Lauretta, planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and leader of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, after the successful recovery of samples taken from asteroid Bennu in a mission that launched in 2016, 24 September 2023