Proverbs, Chapter 5
My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding:
For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:
Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;
And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed,
And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;
[Heavily Edited From KJV]
Can't Say I Wasn't Warned
Russell's Teapot
But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
-Bertrand Russell, commissioned by Illustrated magazine, 1952
[Note: Russell's Teapot is the ancestor of the Flying Spaghetti Monster]
e.e.cummings On Priority
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
wshelley On The Conversation
[...] The final shots of Harry perfectly capture the ambiguous mood of the film's finale. Harry is sitting alone in his stripped down apartment looking exhausted, humiliated, and defeated. But if you look closely you will realize that he is indeed playing the saxophone to his own beat, for a change. At what costs do we accept the need for our responsibility to others?
Newman On Gentlemen
What is a Gentleman?
It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself.
His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them.
The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause ajar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast; -- all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at their case and at home.
He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring.
He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best.
He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.
He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blunder.
-John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (1852)
Gary Chapman On Love Languages
There are five languages, Chapman says: words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. “Most couples don’t speak the same one,” he explains, “but feeling loved is the deepest emotional need we have.”
James Nicoll On Engineer's Syndrome
It's generally agreed that the mind of an engineer is a delicate thing, particularly the minds of Electrical Engineers.
Engineers Syndrome may be caused by the habit of some schools to use Lies for Engineers, models that are wrong but good enough for their purposes. There is also a tradition amongst some engineers to see their profession as the best one in the world, certainly much harder than mere open heart surgery, managing a nation-state's monetary system or being a Hindu god.
When they notice the fact that Lies for Engineers are flawed the reaction is often _not_ "Oh, they simplified that [foo model] for engineering undergrads" but rather "Those guys over in [foo] don't know their stuff. I'd better invent my own version of [foo] and since I know regular old [foo] is wrong, because my Lies for Engineers course shows me this, I won't bother to check Foo For Fooists to see if the flaws I have noticed LFE are addressed in FFF."
When Foo-ologists notice Shiny New Foo by an Engineer [SNFbaE] they may well point out that their standard model produces better results or that SNFbaE requires that the Earth be composed entirely of pudding. many engineers do not take this as proof that SNFbaE is wrong but that Foo-ologists are even more incorrect than the engineer thought. A few cycles of this (particularly the bit where the Foo-ologists fail to
fall to their knees in worship but instead act as though their discipline was a real job like engineering) and you may get to see Secondary Engineer's Syndrome where not only do they see Foo-ologists as wrong but as an active conspiracy to suppress SNFbaE.
Tertiary Engineer's Syndrome is to that stage as Tertiary syphilus is earlier forms. Every other profession is seen as un-engeerish and therefore flawed and wrong. It's just a matter of looking for the mistakes you know are there.
Engineer's Syndrome interacts oddly with the idea what humans want must be possible. I don't seem to have come up with/remembered a snappy term for that way of thinking but it definitely exists. It's handy when it leads to locomotives but not so much when it leads to the quest of the Hole at the North Pole.
The Hebrew Calculation Of Pi
The common [Hebrew] word for circumference is qav. Here, however, the spelling of the word for circumference, qaveh, adds a heh (h).
[...]The Hebrew alphabet is alphanumeric: each Hebrew letter also has a numerical value and can be used as a number.
The q has a value of 100; the v has a value of 6; thus, the normal spelling would yield a numerical value of 106. The addition of the h, with a value of 5, increases the numerical value to 111. This indicates an adjustment of the ratio 111/106, or 31.41509433962 cubits. Assuming that a cubit was 1.5 ft., this 15-foot-wide bowl would have had a circumference of 47.12388980385 feet.
This Hebrew "code" results in 47.12264150943 feet, or an error of less than 15 thousandths of an inch! (This error is 15 times better than the 22/7 estimate that we were accustomed to using in school!) How did they accomplish this? This accuracy would seem to vastly exceed the precision of their instrumentation. How would they know this? How was it encoded into the text?
-Chuck Missler
StCredZero On IBM's Support Of Open Source
All's fair in love & war. Sometimes business is like war. IBM was the Microsoft of its day. They've got a longer history of dirty tricks than just about anybody out there.
So how do you destroy a competitor, legally, soaking up goodwill from the programmer community all the while? Commodify your Competition's Product! Sun was pushing Java big-time for awhile. So why would IBM help it by funding Eclipse? Because by doing so, they commodify Java development environments, eliminating a potential revenue stream for Sun. Eclipse is a weapon against Sun! Why do you think they named it "Eclipse!?" What does an Eclipse do?
It's one thing to pull dirty tricks. It's another thing to be able to pull dirty tricks on the dirty tricksters. It's yet again another thing to do all that, and win the goodwill of the community at the same time! So, by opposing OOXML [Microsoft's document standard], IBM is hurting Microsoft, opening up a potential market for consulting services (There has been a fair bit of money to be made in automated document processing for government!) and winning kudos from us Open Source community to boot.
MightyMartian On Smiting
You know how I know there's no God. Because if there was, a lightning bolt would come from the sky and blast this guy to smithereens.
News Report Annotated By A Monger
11 men arrested for solicitation of prostitution
The Manatee County Sheriff's Office today released the results of a (reverse reverse) reverse prostitution sting operation conducted in the 3300 block of 14th Street West, Bradenton, on Nov. 17 by its (very tricky) Tactical Unit.
The operation was conducted from 4 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. on a Friday night. (Or was that afternoon, evening, and night? Hard to tell! They're so tricky!)
Eleven males were charged with solicitation for prostitution. In addition to the solicitation charge, two persons were also charged with having no valid drivers' license and one was charged with obstruction, for not giving his name. (So was that eleven total? Or THIRTEEN!? Who can tell? The tactical unit is SO TRICKY)
Four other persons were charged with attempted purchase of rock cocaine. One of those was also charged with battery.
(What does THAT make the total? Fifteen? Or seventeen? My word, the tactical unit can make people DISAPPEAR with their tricky numbers! FEAR THE TRICKY TACTICAL UNIT OF MANATEE COUNTY, FLORIDA, AYEEEEE!)
Those arrested ranged in age from 20 to 63. (Oh, dear lord, the possible numerical combinations are infinite! What dark tricky craft is practiced by the tactical unit and their reverse reverse reverse sting operation!?) (Review # 16771)
Harburg Discusses Lydia
Lydia, The Tatooed Lady
Oh Lydia, Oh Lydia
Now have you met Lydia
Lydia the tattooed lady
She has muscles men adore-so
And a torso even more-so
Oh, Lydia, Oh Lydia
Now have you met Lydia
Lydia the queen of tattoo
On her back is the battle of Waterloo
Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus too
and proudly above waves the red white and blue
You can learn a lot from Lydia
There's Grover Walen unveilin' the Trylon
Over on the West Coast we have Treasure Island
There's Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon
And Lady Godiva--but with her pajamas on
She can give you a view of the world in tattoo
If you step up and tell her where
Mon Paree, Kankakee, even Perth by the sea
Or of Washington crossing the Delaware.
Oh Lydia, Oh Lydia, now have you met Lydia
Lydia the queen of them all
She has a view of Niagara which nobody has
And Basin Street known as the birthplace of jazz
And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz!
You can learn a lot from Lydia!
--Lydia the queen of tattoo!
Lydia, oh Lydia, have you met
Lydia, the queen of them all!
She once knocked an admiral off of his feet,
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat.
And now the old man is in command of the fleet,
For he went and married Lydia!
- E.Y. Harburg
Air Force Cadence
Irene's her name
She's one of the best.
So every night
I give her the test.
She looks so pretty.
So sleek, so slim.
The moon is bright
the lights are dim.
I've seen her stripped.
I've seen her bare,
I've felt her over everywhere.
I handled her just as gentle as I could.
And when I got in her
I knew she was good.
I rolled her over on her side
Then on her back I also tried.
She's just one big thrill
the best in the land.
She's an F-16
in the Air Combat Command.
Mauss On Gift-Giving
In a gift economy, however, the objects that are given are inalienated from the givers; they are "loaned rather than sold and ceded". It is the fact that the identity of the giver is invariably bound up with the object given that causes the gift to have a power which compels the recipient to reciprocate. Because gifts are inalienable they must be returned; the act of giving creates a gift-debt that has to be repaid. Gift exchange therefore leads to a mutual interdependence between giver and receiver. According to Mauss, the "free" gift that is not returned is a contradiction because it cannot create social ties.
Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) On The Afterlife
So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock.
So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking.
So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one -- big hitter, the Lama -- long, into a ten-thousand foot crevice, right at the base of this glacier. And do you know what the Lama says?
Gunga galunga...gunga -- gunga galunga.
So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says,
Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consiousness.
So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
The Colour Of Perfect Darkness
Eigengrau is perceived as lighter than a black object in normal lighting conditions, because contrast is more important to the visual system than absolute brightness. For example, the night sky looks darker than eigengrau because of the contrast provided by the stars.
-Edited from Wikipedia
Erica Barnett On Single-Gear Bicycles
After trying a few different fixed-gear bikes, I eventually graduated to the Bianchi Pista—a stunningly gorgeous silver bike with one fixed gear, no brakes, and handlebars so low you have to look up to see the street.
"You might want to try this one on the sidewalk," Tamura told me. It was by far the scariest bike I've ever ridden—the experience of stopping by pushing back against the pedals is the most counterintuitive thing a longtime free-wheel biker could ever experience—but the power and control was indescribable.
I have to admit it—I want one. But I also know that, for riders like me (those who don't have lightning-quick reflexes and quads of steel) they're incredibly dangerous.
Gil Scott Heron On Change
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
- From The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
erikh On Small-L Libertarians
I'm a social libertarian. What that means is that I believe government and authority should act only to counter the forceful tyranny that would exist in their absence. As a libertarian, I believe that governments should leave people alone to do what they will.
Unlike big-L Libertarians, though, I also believe that the tendency of power, and more specifically money, to collect in the hands of pompous greedy nazi warlords should be controlled.
aarthur001 On Mortal Sins
Provided that you are a Christian, you can only go to hell if you commit a mortal sin and don't repent of it.
A mortal sin has 3 parts, all of which have to be present in order for it to be a mortal sin. If any one of the three is missing, then it is venial (less serious) sin or no sin at all. The 3 parts are as follows:
1. The act in itself has to be a grave matter I.e. something that violates the ten commandments (as outlined and expanded in the Gospels). This is what most people mean when they say 'that's a mortal sin.'
2. You have to have knowledge that the act is a mortal sin and have sufficient time for reflectiontion (a second can be enough time depending on the action).
3. You have to have full consent of your will. No one can be forced to commit a mortal sin, they have to choose to do it. If they don't, then it's a venial sin or no sin at all. You can't be held responsible for the mortal sin if your will is impared.
Note: There can also be other mitigating factors that lessen the gravity of an action in particular circumstances; There could be psychological factors to consider as well as the habitual nature of some grave sins.
Only things that meet all of the above criteria can cause people to go to hell. Furthermore, no sin is unforgivable except refusing to accept God's mercy and forgivness. (Jesus refers to that phenomenon as 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.') People can repent of any sin at any time in their life, even at the moment of death.
Drinking Was Involved
Jason: Is that French? What language are you speaking?
Peter: I'm speaking English. Why, what language are you hearing?
Henry James On Priority
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.
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