Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[ibanezmonster]

Charles Babbage, the English mathematician who developed the programmable computer, wrote to the young poet Tennyson. "In your otherwise beautiful poem," he said, "one verse reads,
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.
" ... If this were true," he went on, "the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest [that the next edition of your poem should read:"
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 1/16 is born.
"Strictly speaking," Babbage added, "the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry."

Babbage would have been right if he were talking about modern day Russia, and I think the 1/16 figure would be close to reverse in Japan.

[Mirror Image]

"Never to suffer would never to have been blessed." - Edgar Allan Poe

[Parsifal]

Too hard, as well, to imagine that a mathematician would be unaware that words have some non-quantifiable readings 

To hard, as well, to imagine that a mathematician might have a sense of humor.

[Florestan]

John Stuart Mill --- Considerations on Representative Government, 1861

Obedience to a distant monarch is liberty
itself compared with the dominion of the lord of the
neighboring castle; and the monarch was long compelled by
necessities of position to exert his authority as the ally rather
than the master of the classes whom he had aided in affecting
their liberation. In this manner a central power, despotic
in principle, though generally much restricted in practice,
was mainly instrumental in carrying the people through a
necessary stage of improvement, which representative government,
if real, would most likely have prevented them from
entering upon. There are parts of Europe where the same
work is still to be done, and no prospect of its being done by
any other means. Nothing short of despotic rule or a general
massacre could effect the emancipation of the serfs in the
Russian Empire.

[springrite]

"Never to suffer would never to have been blessed." - Edgar Allan Poe

One of my all-time favourite quotes!

[Wakefield]

89. Mrs. George Reece

TO this generation I would say:   
Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.   
It may serve a turn in your life.   
My husband had nothing to do   
With the fall of the bank—he was only cashier.            
The wreck was due to the president, Thomas Rhodes,   
And his vain, unscrupulous son.   
Yet my husband was sent to prison,   
And I was left with the children,   
To feed and clothe and school them.    
And I did it, and sent them forth   
Into the world all clean and strong,   
And all through the wisdom of Pope, the poet:   
"Act well your part, there all the honor lies."

-- Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology (1916)

[North Star]

Aguaxima (natural history)
Brazilian plant.

That is all this article says about it. And I wonder who such a description is made for. It can't be for people who live in Brazil, because they know what aguaxima is, and that it grows in their region. It would be as if you told a Frenchman pears grow in France. It's not for us either, because what do we care that there is a plant in Brazil called aguaxima.
This article leaves ignorant people just as ignorant as they were before. It teaches us nothing. And so, if I have decided to mention this plant, it is just to indulge certain kinds of readers who would rather find nothing of interest in an article in a dictionary, or indeed something perfectly stupid, than not find the word in a dictionary at all.

Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

[Sef]

Monty Python:

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart
"I drink, therefore I am"

Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker
But a bugger when he's pissed

[Florestan]

http://www.panarchy.org/spooner/letter.html[/u]]http://www.panarchy.org/spooner/letter.html

Yes, yes and yes --- a thousand times yes ! ! ! Valid not only for the US Constitution, but for each and every Constitution, everywhere, past, present and current! 

[ibanezmonster]

Also, from a writer from the Orlando Sentinel:

"Sure, as they say, having a miserable job is better than having no job, but having one arm is better than having no arms, right?"

[Wakefield]

These days I'm reading Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. A stimulating reading indeed, which leaves few doubts about Mr. Smith's opinion on rich people:

The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

I know, reality is overwhelmingly less poetic, but what a beautiful line: "[...] the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for."

[Octave]

Thanks for that; Smith was a lion.

[Wakefield]

Thanks for that; Smith was a lion.

No doubt: He was essentially a decent man, with strong moral concerns. 

[kyjo]

I've chosen a simple yet profoundly true quote from Nadia Boulanger for my signature:

"Nothing is better than music.... It has done more for us than we have the right to hope for."

[The Six]

Egger: Heres the history of our medicine.
       "I have a sore throat."
       2000 BC : "eat this root"
       1200 AD : "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
       1500 AD : "That prayer is superstition, drink this elixir."
       1800 AD : "That elixir is snake oil, Take this pill."
       1900 AD : "That pill is ineffective, Take this antibiotic."
       2000 AD : "That antibiotic is artificial, Here why dont you eat this root."

[Florestan]

E. F. Schumacher

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

If greed were not the master of modern man--ably assisted by envy--how could it be that the frenzy of economism does not abate as higher "standards of living" are attained, and that it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic advantage with the greatest ruthlessness? How could we explain the almost universal refusal on the part of the rulers of the rich societies--where organized along private enterprise or collective enterprise lines--to work towards the humanisation of work? It is only necessary to assert that something would reduce the "standard of living" and every debate is instantly closed. That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of of "bread and circuses" can compensate for the damage done--these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence--because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.

Anything that we can destroy but are unable to make is, in a sense, sacred, and all our 'explanations' of it do not really explain anything.

Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation to man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be "uneconomic" you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.

The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing.

Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control and therefore increases existential fear.

What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another-- here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature? If we do so, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, because that normally is the time it takes from the birth of an idea to its full maturity when it fills the minds of a new generation and makes them think by it.

Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live.

[E]verything can be learned about [man] except that which makes us human.

[W]hile the higher comprises and therefore in a sense understands the lower, no being can understand anything higher than themselves.

[springrite]

I've chosen a simple yet profoundly true quote from Nadia Boulanger for my signature:

"Nothing is better than music.... It has done more for us than we have the right to hope for."

Love this one!

[Karl Henning]

Thanks, Andrei!

[Florestan]

Thanks, Andrei!

You're welcome, Karl!

[Florestan]

Ivan Illich

People need new tools to work with, rather than new tools that work for them.

n a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

The habitual passenger cannot grasp the folly of traffic based overwhelmingly on transport. His inherited perceptions of space and time and of personal pace have been industrially deformed. He has lost the power to conceive of himself outside the passenger role. Addicted to being carried along, he has lost control over the physical, social, and psychic powers that reside in man's feet. The passenger has come to identify territory with the untouchable landscape through which he is rushed. He has become impotent to establish his domain, mark it with his imprint, and assert his sovereignty over it. He has lost confidence in his power to admit others into his presence and to share space consciously with them. He can no longer face the remote by himself. Left on his own, he feels immobile.
The habitual passenger must adopt a new set of beliefs and expectations if he is to feel secure in the strange world where both liaisons and loneliness are products of conveyance. To "gather" for him means to be brought together by vehicles. He comes to believe that political power grows out of the capacity of a transportation system, and in its absence is the result of access to the television screen. He takes freedom of movement to be the same as one's claim on propulsion. He believes that the level of democratic process correlates to the power of transportation and communications systems. He has lost faith in the political power of the feet and of the tongue. As a result, what he wants is not more liberty as a citizen but better service as a client. He does not insist on his freedom to move and to speak to people but on his claim to be shipped and to be informed by media. He wants a better product rather than freedom from servitude to it. It is vital that he come to see that the acceleration he demands is self-defeating, and that it must result in a further decline of equity, leisure, and autonomy.

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.

Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.

During the late sixties I had a chance to give a dozen addresses to people who were concerned with education and schooling. I asked myself, since when are people born needy? In need, for instance, of education? Since when do we have to learn the language we speak by being taught by somebody? I wanted to find out where the idea came from that all over the world people have to be assembled in specific groups of not less than fifteen, otherwise it's not a class, not more than forty, otherwise they are underprivileged, for yearly, not less than 800 hours, otherwise they don't get enough, not more than 1,100 hours, otherwise it's considered a prison, for four-year periods by somebody else who has undergone this for a longer time. How did it come about that such a crazy process like schooling would become necessary? Then I realized that it was something like engineering people, that our society doesn't only produce artifact things, but artifact people. And that it doesn't do that by the content of the curriculum, but by getting them through this ritual which makes them believe that learning happens as a result of being taught; that learning can be divided into separate tasks; that learning can be measured and pieces can be added one to the other; that learning provides value for the objects which then sell in the market.
And it's true. The more expensive the schooling of a person, the more money he will make in the course of his life. This in spite of the certainty, from a social science point of view, that there's absolutely no relationship between the curriculum content and what people actually do satisfactorily for themselves or society in life.


    The latent function of schooling, that is, the hidden curriculum, which forms individuals into needy people who know that they have now satisfied a little bit of their needs for education, is much more important... The idea that people are born with needs, that needs can be translated into rights, that these rights can be translated into entitlements, is a development of the modem world and it's reasonable, it's acceptable, it's obvious only for people who have had some of their educational needs awakened or created, then satisfied, and then learned that they have less than others. Schooling, which we engage in and which supposedly creates equal opportunities, has become the unique, never-before-attempted way of dividing the whole society into classes. Everybody knows at which level of his twelve or sixteen years of schooling he has dropped out, and in addition knows what price tag is attached to the higher schooling he has gotten. It's a history of degrading the majority of people.

Increasingly people live in an artifact and become artifacts themselves, feel satisfied, feel fit for that artifact insofar as they themselves have been manipulated.