Dark Energy in Science News:

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were somehow weak and helpless.

Yann Martel, The Life of Pi

In Europe and America [modernity] had two main characteristics: innovation and autonomy (the modernizing process was punctuated in Europe and America by declarations of independence on the political, intellectual, religious and social fronts). But in the developing world, modernity has been accompanied not by autonomy but by a loss of independence and national autonomy. Instead of innovation, the developing countries can only modernize by imitating the West, which is so far advanced that they have no hope of catching up. Since the modernizing process has not been the same, it is unlikely that the end product will conform to what the West regards as the desirable norm.

Karen Armstrong, in Islam: A Short History

Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get when you don't.

Pete Seeger as quoted by Jim and Tim (The Duct Tape Guys)

What strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known, are better than the things which we have known.

Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell.

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.

Rev. Maxwell to James Boswell.

...(S)o many objections might be made to every thing, that nothing could overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

Samuel Johnson to Rev. Maxwell, as quoted by James Boswell.

Every man, at last, wishes for retreat; he sees his expectations frustrated in the world, and begins to wean himself from it, and to prepare for everlasting separation.

Samuel Johnson to Rev. Maxwell, as quoted by James Boswell.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

Samuel Johnson in a letter to his servant, Francis Barber, as quoted by James Boswell.

Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch.

unknown

Ain't no use in preachers preaching
When they don't know what they're teaching
The weakest man be strong as Samson
When you're being held to ransom

From As Strong as Samson, Keith Reid

The peninsular Arabs of pre-Islamic and early Islamic times lived and sang in the heroic style -- tribal, nomadic, warlike, obsessed with battle and vengeance, honor and shame, death and destiny, and personal, family and tribal pride. Their poetry and legends mirror the conceptions and preoccupations of a heroic age. Muhammad, the greatest of them all, was not only a prophet; he was also an Arab hero and a warrior of noble birth.

Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that nature has given him something peculiar to himself.

Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell

Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together.

Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell

The ancient Greeks, it has been said, were too reasonable to ignore the intoxicating power of the unreasonable. They worshiped Dionysus, the god of excess and ecstasy, and they admired tragedy -- an art form that shows that human feelings are far too intense and varied to be contained by the narrow strictures of rational self-interest. Explosions of passion -- romantic and destructive, cruel and self-sacrificing, among nations as among individuals -- not only are to be expected but are central to the human spirit.

Robert D. Kaplan, The Atlantic Monthly (May 2003)

If the abuse be enormous, Nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell

Democracy and the free market have proven enduringly compatible only under historically unusual conditions of prosperity, or else in protected domestic settings and typically at the expense of third parties somewhere else.

Tony Judt in "America and the World", The New York Review (April 30, 2003)

Only in America By Norman Mailer

General truths are seldom applied to particular occasions.

Samuel Johnson to Joseph Baretti, as quoted by James Boswell

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

Samuel Johnson to Joseph Baretti, as quoted by James Boswell

War and Its Consequences

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

Samuel Johnson to a young friend, as quoted by James Boswell

Cosmic Doomsday

...recent experiments showed that a patient's sense of pain can increase threefold when his or her spouse is in the room.

The New Yorker, January 20, 2003, pg. 55.

When the radical idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their own nature collateral?

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary as quoted by James Boswell

Pepys Online Diary

I shall rejoice to hear from you, till I can see you, and will see you as soon as I can.

Samuel Johnson to a friend, as quoted by James Boswell

It has been long observed, that men do not suspect faults which they do not commit.

Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation.

Samuel Johnson to his former patron, Lord Chesterfield, as quoted by James Boswell

I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so proportioned, that the one can bear all which can be inflicted on the other, whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul well principled will not be sooner separated than subdued.

Samuel Johnson as quoted by James Boswell

North Korea Nuts

A man who writes a book, thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct or amuse them, and the publick to whom he appeals, must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions.

Samuel Johnson as quoted by James Boswell

Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misperception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain….extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves….We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood…it will not be impolite to say “I’m an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush.”

Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic Monthly, March 2003

It sounds to me like it's all your fault.

Patrick, on the occasion of Sponge Bob seeking absolution from guilt.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be
saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any
immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however
virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is
quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint.
Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History quoted in The Atlantic Sept 02 by David Brooks

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

Philo of Alexandria, as quoted in the Washington Post Book World of 2/2/2003

We could do that but it would be wrong.

Richard Nixon

No matter where you go, there you are.

Buckaroo Banzai

Get over it.

Marion Barry

If all you want to say is "Yes, yes, continue conducting yourself in this bad manner and you will see what I will do to you," then you're going to need "head raised and bent forward several times, with the eyes narrowed and menacing." If, however, the situation is more grave, if what you mean is "Wait, or give me time, so that a favorable occasion might turn up and then I will make you see if I know how to avenge myself for the wrong you do to me," then "palm held facing downwards and oscillated slowly up and down" is the ticket.

From Joan Acocella "The Neapolitan Finger", being a NYRB review of Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity by Father Andrea de Jorio.

How sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men’s lives,
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disorder’d string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

Shakespeare, Richard II

The Man who knew no bounds

Title of a lost work

It might feel good,
It might sound a little something,
But fuck the game
If it ain’t saying nothing.

Public Enemy - He Got Game

"Mom, I wish there was no bath."

From a young boy overheard in a coffe shop.

"The first thing wrong was that it was a bad investment."

An executive of a large American energy company on an investment in a
South American country that had lost several hundred million dollars so
far.

Presented with two ruthless, pandering men who believe expressly in God
and necessarily in Mammon, each of whom must be overcompensating
drastically for something in his childhood, we ought to vote for whichever
one strikes us as marginally more likely, by dint of personal verve or
party affiliation, to slow down or speed up the nation’s drift toward
wherever we fear or hope it is heading…. If there is a third party
candidate for whom we would rather vote, we should vote for our second
choice…. If you are going to vote for [the third party] because he or she
is right, you might as well vote for yourself.

From Roy Blount Jr., "Relativism as Teflon: How Clinton kept us from
getting his goat" in the February, 2001 Atlantic Monthly

Captain William Clark was one of the most defiant, as well as most
inventive, spellers ever to attempt to use the English language. He may
be said to have invented the concept of windchill when he described a
forty-below Dakota day with the wind blowing as "Breizing."

From a review by Larry McMurty in the February 8, 2001 NYRB of The Journal
of the Lewis and Clark Expedition ed. By Gary E. Moulton.

"When a man with a gun knocks on your door at 11 at night wanting food and
a place to sleep, he becomes your landlord."

A Colombian farmer who survived a paramilitary attack in the town of
Chengue as quoted in the Washington Post of January 28, 2001.

And I imagined (because it did not occur to me to ask him) that what he
had to teach me concerned the beauty in labor that remains, at the end of
the job, hidden, and that no one except the worker will see or understand
or even necessarily appreciate.

From, "Black Mountain, 1977" by Donald Antrim in the December 25, 2000 -
January 1, 2001 New Yorker.

Deep and abiding cynicism is the portal to true idealism.


From a Washington life.

"When they mistake you for dead, its time to move on."


Overheard at Foggy Bottom.

The contingency of the world is fourfold. First, the laws of physics
themselves appear to be contingent. Second, the cosmological initial
conditions could have been otherwise. Third, we know from quantum
mechanics that “God plays dice” - i.e., there is a fundamental statistical
element in nature. Finally, there is the fact that the universe exists.
After all, however comprehensive our theories of the universe may be,
there is no obligation for the world actually to instantiate that
theory….In my own mind, I have no doubts at all that the arguments for a
necessary world are far shakier than the arguments for a necessary being…

The Mind of God by Paul Davies.

Political parties who accuse the one in power of gobbling the spoils etc,
are like the wolf who looked in at the door & saw the shepards eating
mutton & said --
"Oh certainly, it's all right as long as it's you, but there'd be hell to
pay if I was to do that!"


Mark Twain, from his journals as quoted by Roy Blount, Jr. in The Atlantic
Monthly, July/August 2001.

When we consider that all quanta have interacted at some point in the
history of the cosmos … and that there is no limit on the number of
correlations that can exist between these quanta, this leads to [a]
dramatic conclusion -- nonlocality is a fundamental property of the entire
universe….The indivisible whole whose existence is inferred … cannot be
measured or observed, we confront here an "event horizon" of knowledge
where science can say nothing about the actual character of this reality.

From a discussion of a 1997 experiment suggesting communication between
two points at faster than the speed of light in The Non-local Universe:
The New Physics and Matters of the Mind by Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos.

Hence this life of your which you are living is not merely a piece of the
entire existence, but is, in a certain sense, the whole; only this whole
is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.

Erwin Schrodinger as quoted in The Non-local Universe by Robert Nadeau and
Menas Kafatos.

What is Oedipus' hamartia then? Obviously it is not bad temper,
suspiciousness, hastiness in action -- for his punishment does not fit
these crimes; not ignorance of who his parents are -- for ignorance of
this type is not culpable; still less murder and incest -- for these
things are fated for him by the gods. No, Oedipus' blind spot is his
failure in existential commitment; a failure to recognize his own
involvement in the human condition, a failure to realize that not all
difficulties are riddles, to be solved by the application of disinterested
intellect, but that some are mysteries, not to be solved at all, but to be
coped with only by the engagement, active or passive, of the whole self.

Richmond Y. Hathorn as quoted in Asides: the Shakespeare Theatre 2001-2002
Season Issue

To be perpetually talking sense runs out the mind, as perpetually
ploughing and taking crops runs out the land. The mind must be manured,
and nonsense is very good for the purpose.

Boswell, as quoted by Richard Holmes in the New York Review of Books ,
September 20,2001

I wish I could remember what is said at this table.

Bob Homme, a regular at the Friday Misbackian.

There's nothing you can do when you're the next in line.

Genesis, from The Last Domino.

The Man, sing to me Muse of the wily man
Who wandered much after he sacked the holy citadel of Troy,
Who saw many cities and learned of the mind of men
Who suffered on the sea much grief in his heart
While striving for his soul and the return of his comrades.

Odyssey - my translation of first five lines.

Have you ever started a path? No one seems willing to do this. We don't mind using existing paths, but we rarely start new ones. Do it today. Start a path. Even if it doesn't lead anywhere.

George Carlin