Quotes

I want either less corruption, or more chance to participate in it. - Ashleigh Brilliant

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not. - Twain

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. - Charles Bukowski

How St Petersburg in Florida got its name.

Pyotr Alexeyevitch Dementyev was born to a wealthy family in the Tver Oblast of Russia. He left Russia following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881.

After settling in the United States he changed his name to Peter Demens. He lived in New York briefly before moving to Florida and entering the lumber business.In 1885 Demens was supplying railroad ties to the Orange Belt Railway when he took over their charter because they couldn't pay him. Demens extended the Orange Belt Railway 120 miles to the Pinellas Peninsula. On June 8, 1888 the first train pulled into the terminus in southern Pinellas county with 1 passenger. The area had no official name and no real streets or sidewalks.

Demens named the city Saint Petersburg after the one in Russia.

Worthless Predictions

1. "That idea [that airplanes could sink battleships by dropping bombs on them] is so damned nonsensical and impossible that I'm willing to stand on the bridge of a battleship while that nitwit tries to hit it from the air." ...
US Secretary of War Newton Baker in 1921 reacting to Brigadier General Billy Mitchell's claims that airplanes could sink battleships.
2. "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." ...
Lord Kelvin - British mathematician, physicist, and president of the British Royal Society, c. 1895.
3. "Reagan doesn't have the presidential look." ...
A United Artists executive - dismissing the idea that Ronald Reagan be offered the starring role in the 1964 movie, THE BEST MAN.
4. "A severe depression like that of 1920-1921 is outside the range of probability." ...
The Harvard Economic Society - a weekly letter on November 16, 1929.
5. "We know on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years, the world did not exist." ...
Martin Luther [1483-1546] - German leader of the Protestant Reformation.
6. "[It would be] impossible! [that Cassius Clay could last six rounds in his upcoming bout with World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston in 1964.]" ...
Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder - odds maker.

How to Speak Postmodern

Stephen Katz excerpt-

First, you need to remember that plainly expressed language is out of the question. It is too realist, modernist and obvious. Postmodern language requires that one uses play, parody and indeterminacy as critical techniques to point this out. Often this is quite a difficult requirement, so obscurity is a well-acknowledged substitute.

For example, let's imagine you want to say something like, ``We should listen to the views of people outside of Western society in order to learn about the cultural biases that affect us''.

This is honest but dull. Take the word ``views''. Postmodernspeak would change that to ``voices'', or better, ``vocalities'', or even better, ``multivocalities''. Add an adjective like ``intertextual'', and you're covered. ``People outside'' is also too plain. How about ``postcolonial others''? To speak postmodern properly one must master a bevy of biases besides the familiar racism, sexism, ageism, etc. For example, phallogocentricism (male-centredness combined with rationalistic forms of binary logic). Finally ``affect us'' sounds like plaid pajamas. Use more obscure verbs and phrases, like ``mediate our identities''.


So, the final statement should say, ``We should listen to the intertextual, multivocalities of postcolonial others outside of Western culture in order to learn about the phallogocentric biases that mediate our identities''. Now you're talking postmodern!

Abe quotes

Abraham Lincoln was once accused of being two-faced. "If I were two-faced," he retorted, "would I be wearing this one?"

Abraham Lincoln commented on an undisciplined speaker. "He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas better than any man I ever met."

Abraham Lincoln was once called in to settle a dispute by two men who had been arguing about the correct proportion of the length of a man's legs to the size of his body. Lincoln listened with care to both sides before speaking. He said,
"It is my opinion, all side issues being swept aside, that a man's lower limbs, in order to preserve harmony of proportion, should be at least long enough to reach from his body to the ground."

One day during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was told by an admirer that in his home state the welfare of the nation was said to depend on 'God and Abraham Lincoln.'
Lincoln said, "You are half right!"

Fashion wars in asthma inhalers?

Perhaps it's an omen for our environmental future, but there's been a rising number of products aimed at asthma sufferers on the market lately. Still, who would have thought that inhalers would become fashion items?

Singing the Subprime Mortgage Blues

from this real estate thread:

1. You spend your closing cost money on a motorcycle 2 days before closing.
2. Your FICO score and total assets are the same number.
3. You go to McDonald before the signing. The first credit card you try gets rejected because you're over the limit.
   
4. You were upside down on the first house you bought, so you bought a couple more, just to be sure.
5. When asked for your last 2 tax returns, you produce the 2001 and 2004 .You have not finished the other ones yet.
6. You ask the real estate broker if you can borrow "just a couple hundred dollars."

Fructose Culprit In the Obesity Epidemic ?

"According to an interview with Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology from the University of California, San Francisco, fructose, once touted as diabetic-friendly because it doesn't raise insulin levels directly, could be a major culprit for the obesity epidemic, high blood pressure, and elevated blood levels of LDL in Americans and others worldwide as they adopt American-style diets. Fructose comprises 50% of table sugar and up to 90% of high-fructose corn syrup, both ingredients found in copious quantity in most American prepared foods."

People with moles age more slowly than others

A study of twins found a striking correlation between high numbers of moles and a biological marker for slow aging.As a result, people with a lot of moles might be expected to live longer than those who have very few, despite facing a greater risk of skin cancer.

Dr Veronique Bataille, from the Twin Research Unit at King's College London, who led the study said: "The results are very exciting as they show, for the first time, that moley people who have a slightly increased risk of melanoma [skin cancer] may, on the other hand, have the benefit of a reduced rate of aging.

"This could imply susceptibility to fewer age-related diseases such as heart disease or osteoporosis, for example. Further studies are needed."

"absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

One member of the House Of Representatives made a mistake or two while being interviewed about the PE tax issue.

Paraphrasing, he said there was no evidence the tax increase would do harm to the economy. He couldn't see how increasing the tax on millions of dollars of income would effect the actions of Private Equity. Thus, he was in favor of the increase in taxes.

The first error is called 'Argument from ignorance.' Not having evidence for a particular proposition is not proof of anything; it is simply lack of evidence, and nothing more.

The second error is called the 'Argument from incredulity.'
A proposition is not wrong because one is unable or unwilling to fully consider that it might be true.

‘I’m a schmuck?’

From interview with Bob Toll of Toll Brothers:

“Q: Some analysts think new-home prices would have fallen even further if not for all the incentives that builders are offering.”

“A: When you start selling homes for $400,000 that were $500,000, all the homeowners who paid $500,000 are going to be in your sales office complaining, saying, ‘Why are you doing this to me? Why don’t you just put a sign on my lawn saying, ‘I’m a schmuck?’ ‘So you’ve got to give incentives instead of lowering prices because you don’t want to be rude, crude and barbaric to your clients.’”

Phone companies behaving badly

From http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

Verizon is taking out the local copper for FIOS customers and, according to this Associated Press article, in many cases not telling them about it. For customers, that means they no longer have the assurance that they can make calls in a power outage, and they are locked into a higher cost service. While a Verizon spokesman said they would "restore" copper if a customer insisted, one can imagine that they wouldn't make the process easy.

In some respects, this shouldn't be surprising. Verizon has announced it intends to retire large sections of its copper network. But it was supposed to manage the transition in a way that didn't unduly damage competitors, and that clearly isn't happening. Verizon is required to lease its copper network and its central office ports to competing internet service providers (ISPs), but no such requirement exists for fiber optic networks. AT&T and Quest are going through the same transition to fiber optic, but are not yanking out the copper infrastructure as fast as they can.

As a Verizon customer, and having friends who have run ISPs and have had to contend with Verizon's high handedness, none of this is surprising.

Eccentric or just plain crazy

Martin Gardner's classic description of the crank scientist in the first chapter of his Fads and Fallacies. Gardner's list of the "five ways in which the sincere pseudo-scientist's paranoid tendencies are likely to be exhibited."

1. He considers himself a genius.
2. He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads. Everyone is out of step except himself.
3. He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against.
4. He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein in the name of Newton.
5. He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.

Housing Bubble - Swimming In Mosquitoes

A glut of vacant, unsold homes with swimming pools is contributing to a glut of mosquitoes in the West. An untended pool means stagnant water, a breeding ground for mosquitoes to lay eggs that can produce thousands of mosquitoes in a couple of weeks. Luis Navarro, a mosquito-control officer in Maricopa County, says mortgage foreclosures have brought him more business this year. David Brown, manager of the Sacramento and Yolo County, Calif., mosquito-control office, says growing concern over the mosquito-borne West Nile virus is prompting expanded efforts to identify problem pools.

usa today link

Happy July 4

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Dr Johnson


Boswell tells us that Samuel Johnson made this famous pronouncement on the evening of April 7, 1775. He doesn't provide any context for how the remark arose, so we don't really know for sure what was on Johnson's mind at the time.
However, Boswell assures us that Johnson was not indicting patriotism in general, only false patriotism.

http://www.samueljohnson.com/refuge.html