Post 3.7

A third week comes to a close. I have been a little lax this weekend for obvious reasons, but it occurs to me that some method of accounting for such trips will have to be implemented. I am headed to Seattle for a few days beginning October 19th...hopefully I'll have this resolved by then.

1. Author: Billy Joel, from his song An Innocent Man.
2. Author: Sam Waterston, as Jack McCoy, on Law & Order.
3. Author: Leo Tolstoy
4. Theme: Education, Author: Tracy Kidder, Aristotle, Woody Allen, Japanese Proverb, Aristotle, Aristotle
5. Theme: Mathematicians, Author: Alfred Adler, Robert Wilensky, Aristotle, Rene Descartes, John Nash, Pierre Simon de Laplace

Any surprises?

Post 3.6

Apologies on the late post. I was in Des Moines for most of the day, as most of you know. Great time. Wish I could've seen more of you. Hopefully the train will work out next time. Anyway...here's your daily dose:

1. Some people stay far away from the door if there's a chance of it opening up; they hear a voice in the hall outside and hope that it just passes by.
2. Men are heartless bastards and they should all rot in hell...unfortunately, that's not my jurisdiction.
3. Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own advantage. He was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom getting on had become a habit.
4. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
5. Read Euler: he is our master in everything.

Discuss.

Post 3.5

Looking forward to seeing some of you tomorrow in Osceola. To those I don't see, I hope to see you soon enough. I'm flying again (after my elbow injury sidelined me for a bit) and should be doing solo cross-country flights soon enough. I'm not sure Cedar Rapids is within my purview, but I'll get as close as I can. Anyway, here's your daily dose:

1. Some people run from a possible fight, some people figure they can never win.
2. The Oprah-fication of America ended when the Menendez brothers weren't convicted. The pendulum has swung, Adam. People don't care about why anymore, they just care about what.
3. It was an early Easter. Sledging was only just over; snow still lay in the yards; and water ran in streams down the village street.
4. Wit is educated insolence.
5. Except in mathematics, the shortest distance between two points is seldom a straight line.

Discuss.

Post 3.4

In an attempt to handle the poll results better, I decided to leave completed polls up for a day or so. Also, I have decided to run a 10k in January sometime...not sure of the exact date. I might keep you updated as to my preparation and its progression, if you don't mind. Anyway, here's your daily dose:

1. Some people sleep all alone every night instead of taking a lover to bed; some people find that it's easier to hate than to wait anymore.
   
2. If a defendant's culpable act shortens a person's stay on this planet, the law will not permit him to claim that his victim would have died anyway.
3. All the efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the city.
4. Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand.
5. In order to seek truth it is necessary once in the course of our life to doubt as far as possible all things.

Discuss. And, to the right is a new poll that requires some explanation. That question was recently posed to me. The intent was to ask whether a group of 4 students could answer a question no single member of the group could. Not split up the work of a multiple part question. Imagine a single line, straightforward question. Is there a group of 4 people in which no single member could answer the question correctly while the group can? In other words, is it possible for the measured collective intelligence of the group to be higher than any individual member's measured intelligence? Do we get smarter---literally---when we act together? I find it's a tough question to answer, and I'm wondering what you think.

Post 3.3

Here is your daily dose:

1. Some people say they will never believe another promise they hear in the dark because they only remember too well they heard somebody tell them before.
2. What she did was, perhaps, questionable. But she had only a few seconds to choose between being a lawyer and being human being. What would we all have thought if she'd made a different choice?
3. All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the street lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne over the city from the church towers, suggests the approach of morning.
4. I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.
5. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

Discuss.

Post 3.2

Here's your daily dose:

1. Some people hope for a miracle cure, some people just accept the world as it is.
2. There are real heroes out there...you don't have to settle for false ones.
3. Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist--I really believe he is Antichrist--I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you--sit down and tell me all the news.
4. Those who educate children well are to be more honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
5. We've all heard that a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true.

Discuss.

Post 3.1

My apologies for the coming to you so late with this. Lea is headed to San Francisco today and much of the morning was spent getting everything together and seeing her off. She'll be back in a few days, but I think absence (let alone abstinence) making the heart grow fonder is a bunch of crap. At all events, here's your daily dose:

1. Some people see through the eyes of the old before they ever get a look at the young.
2. Man has only those rights he can defend.
3. All happy families are the same; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
4. Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.
   
5. In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work, the less understandable it is.

Discuss.

Post 2.7

It seems that it is unavoidable that at least some effort will be spent trying to come up with authors or themes...and that's actually turning out to be fun. I hope not to disappoint you with either the obscurity or simplicity of my themes on occasion. At all events, here is a list of those credited with this week's quotes.

1. Author: C. S. Lewis, from his book Mere Christianity.
2. Author: Thomas Jefferson
3. Author: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
4. Theme: Final Movie Lines spoken by Morgan Freeman, Source: Se7en, Million Dollar Baby, Deep Impact, Unleashed, Shawshank Redemption, War of the Worlds
   
5. Theme: 1972 Billboard Chart Toppers, Artist/Song: Derek and the Dominos, Layla; Johnathon Edwards, Sunshine (Go Away Today); Don McLean, American Pie; The Eagles, Take It Easy; Carly Simon, You're So Vain; Neil Diamond, Song Sung Blue

I must admit that my favorite from this week is #4. I mean, these aren't the only six...they're just the six I think the best. Crazy that he has that many. Let me know what you think about all this. I'd like to know where to take this in future weeks.

Post 2.6

Here's your daily dose:

1. We are not given desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. If I find in myself a desire for which there is no satisfaction in this world, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
2. I cannot live without books.
3. When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
4. At the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges, for men do not live nor die in vain.
5. Funny thing, but you can sing it with a cry in your voice; and before you know it get to feeling good; you simply got no choice.

Discuss

Post 2.5

Happy Friday everyone. I hope it's a good one. I'll see some of you this evening. Until then, here's your daily dose:

1. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that, where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic, there is only one right answer to a sum and all other answers are wrong; but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.
2. A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
3. I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower, not a function of physical strength.
4. Get busy living or get busy dying. That's goddamn right. For the second time in my life, I'm guilty of a crime: parole violation. I doubt they'll toss up any roadblocks for that. Not for an old crook like me. I feel I am so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man as the start of a long journey who's conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend Andy again and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
5. You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht; your hat strategically dipped below one eye, your scarf it was apricot.
   

Discuss.

Post 2.4

By the way, here's something new that will be used from here on out. When the quote has been taken from a context in which it was interspersed with another speaker's words, the second speaker's words will appear in red. Here's your daily dose:

1. When you have reached your room, be kind to those who are still in the hall and to those who have chosen different doors. If they are wrong, they need your prayers all the more. And if they are you enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.
2. All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
3. Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.
4. That's you. Oh no, no, it's not me she's talking about. Someone who's life was quite literally saved by music. That's you my boy.
   
5. Well I'm standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...such a fine sight to see. It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed ford, slowing down to take a look at me.

Discuss.

Post 2.3

Not sure what the next poll will cover, but I'm looking forward to your answers. Here's your daily dose:

1. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers; it thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy occupied territory...that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
2. Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
3. Their are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn nonetheless for the latter.
4. Cities fall...but they are rebuilt. And heroes die...but they are remembered. We honor them with every brick we lay...with every field we sow...with every child we comfort and then teach to rejoice in what we have been regiven. Our planet. Our home. So now...let us begin.
5. And the three men I admire most; Father, Son , and the Holy Ghost; they caught the last train for the coast; the day...the music...died.

Discuss.

Post 2.2

Interesting to know that one of you either dislikes Polytheism that much or likes Mesopotamian cities famous for their glasswork that much. Or just appreciates humor. Here's your daily dose:

1. Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions or faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary.
2. The tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of patriots.
3. Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant.
4. Frankie didn't leave a note. No one knew where he went. I hoped he'd gone to find you. Ask you one more time to forgive him. But I don't think he had anything left in his heart. I just hope he found someplace where he could find some peace. But that's probably wishful thinking. No matter where he is, I thought you should know what kind of man your father really was.
5. He can't even run his own life. I'll be damned if he'll run mine.

Discuss.

Post 2.1

As we begin week 2 of this experiment, I must admit that I feel a tad justified...or perhaps smug. Tough to tell the difference. The bottom line is that this idea is working, if slowly. After all, we are discussing things. I like that. And I am learning about your viewpoints (and you, I suppose, about mine) and finding even more reasons to respect all of you. I hope this continues. Here's your daily dose:

1. Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance.
2. Question with boldness even the existence of God; for, if their be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
3. Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring universe that will save us from our childish mistakes and, in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist; therefore, He must exist.
4. Ernest Hemingway once wrote that this world was a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part.
5. Let's make the best of the situation before I finally go insane.

Discuss.

Post 1.7

Well, the week is at a close...at least, from the perspective of this blog. And, as promised, here is a list of those credited with this week's quotes.

1. Author: Richard Bach, from his book Illusions
2. Author: Abraham Lincoln
3. Theme: Love; Authors: Unknown, the Beatles, J. Geils Band, Incredible Hulk #384, John Gray, C. S. Lewis
4. Author: Albert Einstein
5. Theme: War; Authors: Anne Frank, Benjamin Franklin, Sun Tzu, C. S. Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Ronald Reagan

Any surprises?

Post 1.6

In answer to Dave's earlier comment, I have opted for a 7-day week...almost. In truth, my plan is to post quotes Monday through Saturday and to reveal their common authors and/or themes on Sunday. I hope this meets with your approval. Here's your daily dose:

1. In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
2. There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.
3. The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not bother wondering whether you love your neighbor...act as if you did.
4. Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
5. History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

Discuss.

Post 1.5

Let's see if you can guess any more of the authors. That was--and is--not my intent, but I suppose it's an obvious consequence of the setup. I just thought that not telling you might spark a different conversation than telling you would. Anyway, here we go:

1. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change.
2. Gentlemen, suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope, would you shake the cable, or keep shouting out to him—“Blondin, stand up a little straighter—Blondin, stoop a little more—go a little faster—lean a little more to the north—lean a little more to the south?” No, you would hold your breath as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government are carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the very best they can. Don’t badger them. Keep silence, and we’ll get you safe across.
3. You may wish to be loving-- you may even try with all your might--but your love will never be pure unless you are free from resentment. When we are free from resentment, loving is effortless. When we have to try hard to love, this is generally a sign that we are repressing our resentments.
4. A man sits with a pretty woman for an hour and it seems to go by in a minute. But tell that same man to sit on a hot stove for a minute and it seems to last for hours. That's relativity.
5. Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

Discuss. (By the way, almost all these quotes are coming from my memory. Thus, they are likely not completely accurate with regard to wording and grammar. Just wanted you all to know.)

Post 1.4

This is, as far as I can see, the only time I'll be posting twice in one day. I am not sure that justice is balance, but it's a good place to start looking for it.

1. The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
2. My friend, if this man had been guilty of the worst murder that can be conceived of, I might, perhaps, have pardoned him. You know the weakness of my nature — always open to the appeals of repentance or of grief; and with such a touching letter and such recommendations, I could not resist. But any man who would go to Africa and snatch from a mother her children to sell them into interminable bondage, merely for the sake of pecuniary gain, shall never receive pardon from me.
3. As much as people would like to believe otherwise, love incorporates more than just the spirit. People believe the outward appearance to be an accurate reflection of what's inside. Love isn't really blind...just selectively nearsighted.
4. Whatever your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you mine are still greater.
5. Ever since I served as an infantryman in the first World War, I have had a great dislike of those who, themselves in ease and safety, issue exhortations to men in the front lines. As a result, I have a great reluctance to say much about temptations to which I myself am not exposed. No man, I suppose, is tempted to every sin.

Discuss...again.

Post 1.3

And here we are again:

1. Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
2. Whenever I hear someone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong compulsion to see it visited upon them.
3. You love her, and she loves him, and he loves somebody else, you just can't win.
4. Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.
5. There are paths that are not taken; there is terrain for which one does not contend; there are orders from the high command that are not followed.

Discuss.

Post 1.2

Well, at least a few of you have expressed some interest, so I guess I should carry on and see where it takes us. Here's your daily dose:

1. The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the Master calls a butterfly.
2. A house divided against itself shall not stand.
3. All you need is love.
4. Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity...and I'm not sure about the universe.
5. There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Discuss.

Post 1.1

As I am sure only a select group of people are reading this, let me apologize to them for both my blatant attempt to join the swelling ranks of bloggers in our group and my hollow attempt to avoid actually blogging. What I'd like to do here, assuming any of you have interest in such things, is simple. Each day, for as long as I remember to do it, I plan to post five quotes. They will generally be short, will not be annotated in any way, and will come from everywhere and, quite possibly, nowhere. (If you, for some reason, require annotation for one of more, feel free to send me an email.) My goal is to see what discussion they generate from among us. I like reading what you all think...let's try expending said intellectual fuel on something that means almost nothing for a change.

A further word of apology...I dislike numbered lists as a rule, but it does seem to be the best way to ensure no one is confused about where one quote ends and the next begins. That may change once I get the hang of this.

Here's your list for today:

1. Argue your limitations, and sure enough they're yours.
2. If I were two-faced, do you think I'd be wearing this one?
3. Love is a verb.
4. To the extent that mathematics refers to the real world, it is not perfect. To the extent that mathematics is perfect, it does not refer to the real world.
5. Despite everything...I still believe in the inner goodness of man.
   

Discuss.