by Roedy Green ©2008-2009 Canadian Mind Products“First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.”
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49)
“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49)
“One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
~ Woody Allen (born: 1935-12-01 age: 73)
“A deficit is a tax compounded with interest for late payment.”
~ Anonymous
“Bring me a bowl of coffee before I turn into a goat.”
~ Johann Sebastian Bach (born: 1685-03-31 died: 1750-07-28 at age: 65)
“It isn’t premarital sex if you have no intention of getting married.”
~ Matt Barry (born: 1962 age: 47)
“It’s not what you don’t know that will bite you; it’s what you don’t know that you don’t know.”
~ William Brody (born: 1944-01-04 age: 65)
“Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:”
~ Robert Browning (born: 1812-05-07 died: 1889-12-12 at age: 77) Grow old along with me
“If people become accustomed to lying, they will unconsciously commit every possible wrong deed. Before they can act wickedly, they must lie, and once they begin to lie they will act wickedly without concern.”
~ Gautama Buddha (born: 563 BC died: 483 BC at age: 80)
“And clenching your first for the ones like us
Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty.”
~ Leonard Cohen (born: 1934-09-21 age: 74) Chelsea Hotel
“You are not responsible for what your friends do, but you will be judged by the company you keep.”
~ Leonard Cole
“You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.”
~ Joseph Conrad (born: 1857-12-03 died: 1924-08-24 at age: 66)
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
~ Calvin Coolidge (born: 1872-07-04died: 1933-01-05 at age: 60)
“We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re certain it wasn’t a fish.”
~ John Culkin (born: 1928 died: 1993-07-23 at age: 65)
“A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.”
~ Charles Darwin (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1882-04-19 at age: 73)
“Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable.”
~ Charles Dickens (born: 1812-02-07 died: 1870-06-09 at age: 58) David Copperfield
“Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.”
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher
“Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.”
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher
“The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.”
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher
“Natural selection is engineering; sexual selection is art.”
~ What Females Want and Males Will Do PBS Nature Documentary
“I have 600 channels in my house and 400 of them are selling Bow Flex. The other 200 are mostly selling Jesus. What happened to diversity?”
~ Phil Donahue (born: 1935-12-21 age: 73)
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
“Force always attracts men of low morality.”
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
“If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
“It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”
~ George Eliot (born: 1819-11-22 died: 1880-12-22 at age: 61) (Mary Ann Evans)
“Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.”
~ George Eliot (born: 1819-11-22 died: 1880-12-22 at age: 61) (Mary Ann Evans)
“We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.”
~ George Eliot (born: 1819-11-22 died: 1880-12-22 at age: 61) (Mary Ann Evans)
“A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (born: 1803-05-25 died: 1882-04-27 at age: 78)
“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (born: 1803-05-25 died: 1882-04-27 at age: 78)
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (born: 1803-05-25 died: 1882-04-27 at age: 78)
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (born: 1803-05-25 died: 1882-04-27 at age: 78)
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (born: 1803-05-25 died: 1882-04-27 at age: 78)
“Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller (born: 1895-07-12 died: 1983-07-01 at age: 87)
“I don’t look like Halle Berry. But chances are, she’s going to end up looking like me.”
~ Whoopi Goldberg (born: 1955-11-13 age: 53)
“Don’t worry about where you are. Watch the first derivative.”
translation:
“Don’t worry about how things are. Watch where they are headed.”
~ Fred Green (born: 1913-07-12 died: 1992-04-10 at age: 78) (my Dad, an electrical engineer)
“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
~ J.B.S. Haldane (born: 1892-11-05 died: 1964-12-01 at age: 72)
“Neurons that fire together wire together.”
~ Donald Hebb (born: 1904-07-22 died: 1985-08-20 at age: 81) (on the biology behind Pavlovian conditioning)
How well do you know Canada?~ Mel Hurtig (born: 1932-06-24 age: 77) , stats from The Truth About Canada: Some Important, Some Astonishing, and Some Truly Appalling Things All Canadians Should Know About Our Country
Statistics about Canada % statistic % statistic 0 percent improvement in child poverty since 1989. 56 percent drop in foreign aid since 1975. 0 percent increase in middle class income, inflation-adjusted income since 1980. 76 percentage of print and TV media in Vancouver BC owned by one company. 0.75 percent of Canadians who donated to any political party in 2006. 80 percent of Canadians who have never belonged to any political party. 2.4 percent of direct foreign investment that created new jobs, 97.6% was for takeover of existing companies which diverted the profits to offshore tax havens. 100 percent increase in GDP since 1989. 21 percent of jobs that are paid too low to provide food, shelter and heat. 8-12% is typical in Europe. 400 percent increase in share of the economic pie by taken by investors at the expense of workers since 1992. 55 percent foreign takeovers financed by Canadian banks.
How well do you know Canada? You might imagine it is an overtaxed, innovative, prosperous, generous, socialised, well-educated country. Here is how it rates relative to other countries.~ Mel Hurtig (born: 1932-06-24 age: 77) , stats from The Truth About Canada: Some Important, Some Astonishing, and Some Truly Appalling Things All Canadians Should Know About Our Country
Canada’s International Ranking rank criterion rank criterion 17 foreign aid as a percentage of GNP. Half of what it was in 1980. 27 corporate taxes. 20 per capita investment in new equipment. 30 patents. 21 per capita taxation. 40 income equality. 22 elimination of poverty. 54 U.N. peacekeeping. 22 per capita financial aid to the unemployed. 54 doctors per capita. 25 per capita social services spending. 57 per capita spending on education. 25 research and development investment.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69) Proper Studies 1927
“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)
“Heisenberg might have slept here.”
~ sign on a Bavarian inn
“It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region through which they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”
~ William James (born: 1842-01-11 died: 1910-08-26 at age: 68) , Varieties of Religious Experience
“’The only flower known to have wings is the butterfly; all others stand helpless before the destroyer.”
~ Okakura Kakuzo (born: 1862-02-14 died: 1913-09-02 at age: 51) , The Book of Tea
“’Tis said that Chowmushih slept in a boat so that his dreams might mingle with those of the lotus.”
~ Okakura Kakuzo (born: 1862-02-14 died: 1913-09-02 at age: 51) , The Book of Tea
“A thing hasn’t been said until its been said a thousand times.”
~ Ring Lardner (born: 1885-03-06 died: 1933-09-25 at age: 48)
“If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.”
~ Weinberg’s Second Law (born: 1933 age: 76)
“In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits.”
~ Dr. John Lilly (born: 1915-01-06 died: 2001-09-30 at age: 86)
“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”
~ John Locke (born: 1632-08-29 died: 1704-10-28 at age: 72) 1795-04-20
“To prejudge other men’s notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eye.”
~ John Locke (born: 1632-08-29 died: 1704-10-28 at age: 72) 1795-04-20
“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”
~ John Locke (born: 1632-08-29 died: 1704-10-28 at age: 72) 1795-04-20
“The fluttering of a butterfly’s wing in Rio de Janeiro, amplified by atmospheric currents, could cause a tornado in Texas two weeks later.”
~ Edward Lorenz (born: 1917-05-23 died: 2008-04-16 at age: 90)
“A man sufficiently gifted with humor is in small danger of succumbing to flattering delusions about himself, because he cannot help perceiving what a pompous ass he would become if he did.”
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (born: 1903-11-07 died: 1989-02-27 at age: 85)
“The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.”
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (born: 1903-11-07 died: 1989-02-27 at age: 85)
“We do not take humor seriously enough.”
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (born: 1903-11-07 died: 1989-02-27 at age: 85)
“My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;”
~ Andrew Marvell (born: 1621-03-31 died: 1678-08-16 at age: 57) To His Coy Mistress
“Almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching.”
~ Terje Mathisen
“The violinist must possess the poet’s gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within.”
~ Yehudi Menuhin (born: 1916-11-22 died: 1999-03-12 at age: 82)
“Men do not desire to be rich, only to be richer than other men.”
~ John Stuart Mill (born: 1806-05-20 died: 1873-05-08 at age: 66)
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
~ Jonathan Miller (born: 1934-07-21 age: 74)
“Whenever a new discovery is reported to the world, they say first, ‘It is probably not true,’ Then after, when the truth of the new proposition has been demonstrated beyond question, they say, ‘Yes, it may be true, but it is not important.’ Finally, when sufficient time has elapsed to fully evidence its importance, they say, ‘Yes, surely it is important, but it is no longer new.’”
~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (born: 1533 died: 1592 at age: 59)
“‘We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their flaws.”
~ John Myers played by Rupert Evans in Hellboy.
“When you encounter obstacles, you know what you are doing is important.”
~ Gottfried Johannes Müller (born: 1914-04-10 age: 95)
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
~ Sir Isaac Newton (born: 1642-12-25 died: 1727-03-20 at age: 84)
“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
~ Isaac Newton (born: 1643-01-04 died: 1727-03-31 at age: 84)
“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
“Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.”
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.”
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
~ Plato (born: 428 BC died: 348 BC at age: 80)
“Do not then train boys to learning by force and harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds.”
~ Plato (born: 428 BC died: 348 BC at age: 80)
“Never discourage anyone… who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
~ Plato (born: 428 BC died: 348 BC at age: 80)
“Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue.”
~ Linux prompt
“When you were a child your parents taught you not to take money from strangers and not to take money from your friends. Who does that leave? Known enemies!”
~ Sondra Ray
“There is no end to what can be accomplished if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
~ Art Rennison
“Almost nobody reads books written by dead people. The exposure to their work is limited to quotations. So, if you want to have legacy influence, you need to express your ideas in concise, self-contained, quotable paragraphs.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Complementary medicine is something you do in addition to the usual scientific medicine to make people feel better, e.g. home-made chicken soup. Alternative medicine is something you do in place of scientific medicine, e.g. homeopathy — something not yet shown to work. As soon as it is shown to work, it becomes scientific medicine. This suggests that any alternative therapy that has been around for decades and still has not been shown to work, almost certainly doesn’t.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Consider how many crucial life skills are not taught in high school:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- How to compute income tax.
- How to register to vote.
- How to get a passport.
- How to recognise a con.
- How mortgages work.
- How to deal with car dealers and car repairmen.
- How to buy insurance.
- All the ways to avoid catching HIV.
- How to handle being dumped.
- Marriage and divorce.
- How to detect the catches in an advertisement.”
“Did you ever notice that the people you like and the people you want to have sex with are not necessarily the same people? When you are horny, even if you are gay, at some level you are working out the genetics of the imagined offspring and the odds your partner will be useful in raising them. That is why opposites attract — to compensate. Not many people want to have sex with you when you are old because, on an unconscious level, they are worried you will die before raising the offspring.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Females have males cowed into feeling guilty for even dating more than one female at a time. So long as there is no broken promise of fidelity, I see no moral problem.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Geologists can tell us how often rivers will flood and how bad the flooding will be. They can also warn us about earthquakes and volcanoes. They can tell us of the effects of CO2 emissions, but we don’t do anything to protect ourselves until the floodwaters are inches from breeching the levies. Then we bleat what innocent victims we are. We are as innocent as a lunatic who pitches his tent on a freeway.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“HDTV’s greatest gift will be making it easier to through the deception of informercials.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“How come some people have unruly hair, but no one has ruly hair? If they did, what are the rules?”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61) (after the manner of Don Ferguson’s confused philosopher character the Royal Canadian Air Farce)
“Humans have lost their survival instinct. They have plenty of money for oversized cars, video games and drugs, but none for cleaning up global warming, clean water and clean air.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Humans will spend a fortune to impress their friends, but won’t spend an extra 5% for poison-free, non-manufactured food for their children.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“If a salesman with a gold tooth says ‘If you invest in my company you will only lose 50% of your investment if you get out early enough’, would you snap at the opportunity? Oddly, when the salesman works for a casino, millions of people say ‘yes!’.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“If an alien species wanted to distract humans from attending to their survival, all they needed to do was introduce the video game.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“If golfing were some how necessary to tend the lawn, then you would immediately see the invention of all manner of labour-saving machines to reduce the time you had to spend doing it.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“If you don’t constantly refactor and improve your code as you maintain it, it will deteriorate.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“If you want to serve your species, you must be willing to fail. People who want personal glory pursue safe mainstream success. But the most valuable discoveries are off the beaten track, and most of that prospecting will not pan out. There is no glory for all by a handful of those who devote themselves to this most valuable exploration.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“In ancient China, fathers gave their sons opium to make them sober, tend the family business and avoid chasing women. This suggests our current societal problems with opiates stem from how we treat them, not something inherently destructive. I suspect Christian Puritanical beliefs cloud our thinking about the best way to handle them.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“It is too obvious to mention, but… If there are several different ways of doing something, one of them is probably noticeably better. If you do something more than once a day, it is probably worth a little experiment and a few moments contemplating the advantanges and disadvanteges of doing it each way. Then you can put your choice on automatic.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Maturity is primarily a matter of broadening loyalty. It starts with self absorption, then loyalty to the family, then loyalty to the neighhourhood, then the state, then to the human species, then to all life on earth, then to the cosmos.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Most of what I have said in my life soap box can be summed up in a few sentences:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- Play fair, especially with those weaker than you.
- Whomever makes a mess should be obligated to clean it up.
- We should not tolerate lying, because, as Gautama Buddha said, ‘If people become accustomed to lying, they will unconsciously commit every possible wrong deed. Before they can act wickedly, they must lie, and once they begin to lie they will act wickedly without concern.’
- Echoing Gandhi: ‘An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.’
- Again echoing Gandhi: ‘Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.’
“Much of the appeal of music is its repetition and predictability. People come to appreciate a piece the more they hear it. The repetition fosters the illusion that the universe is a safe, predictable place.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Never underestimate the power of a foot massage, backrub, hug or breakfast in bed to keep a relationship warm. First and foremost, we are mammals.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Nothing can prepare you for the shock of waking up one day, and seeing an old person staring back at you in the mirror.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“One of the main themes in television is hunches, superstition and religion are more reliable than logic, sponsored by corporations who would have you believe that buying a different brand of dusting cloth will bring fresh love into your life.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“One of the odd things about growing old is my past actions seem much more embarrassing than they did at the time and my past angsts seem much ado about nothing.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“One the pleasant things about growing older is your clothes last much longer.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Only Apple has such marketing cachet that they can release a device who primary effect is to make the user go deaf, and it is hailed as the innovation of the century.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“People like to ridicule, condemn and threaten me. It is not so much that I am out of step with popular opinions; it is just that I am a few decades ahead of most people. For example:It seems it is only a matter of time until most people come around to my point of view.”
- In 1960 I started debunking Christianity.
- In 1965 I protested nuclear testing in Amchitka.
- In 1968, before Greenpeace was officially founded, I sent them (2.5 months room and board at the time). They told me it was the biggest donation they had ever received.
- In 1969 I was preaching strict gay equality when even gays were still opposed to it.
- In 1975 I gave away my 3 year old car and thereafter walked, used a bicycle or public transportation.
- In 1976 my Christmas tree was lit with LEDs.
- In 1977 my house was controlled by a thermostat that automatically turned down the heat when people went out or went to sleep saving me 50% on my gas bill.
- In 1986-10 I published an article in Byte magazine about why computer languages should have what today we call large standard class libraries, to handle problems such as sorting, dealing with the calendar and international zip codes.
- In 2000 I opposed the Bush presidency.
- On 2001-09-11 I expressed doubts about Bush’s story of what happened on 9-11.
- In 2000 I protested the Makah Whale hunt.
- In 2001 I opposed the Afghan war.
- In 2002 I opposed the Iraq war, before it even started.
- In 2003 I started harassing politicians to get on with solving homelessness.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Quaker advertises its chocolate bars have half the sugar of the competition. How do they do it? Their bars are half the size!”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Smokers know that every cigarette shortens life. They dismiss the loss by saying, ‘who wants extra years as a senile nonagenarian anyway?’ But the years are stolen from your teens, twenties and thirties.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Superman’s double identity is a metaphor for how gays have to hide in the closet, working hard to avoid attracting attention. The blue tights and dramatic cape symbolise a flamboyant personality usually kept carefully under wraps.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“The cruelest myth that we teach our children is that everyone has one true soul mate. It is a doubly cruel lie — that their exists a perfect effortless partner, and that if your ‘true love’ dumps you, you are doomed.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“The more channels of TV there are, the worse your odds are of finding something interesting to watch. This is because the fixed advertising-funded programming budget pie is spread thinner over more channels. To improve program content, we need funding to come from the viewers based on what they actually watch, possibly delivered a program at a time through the Internet.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“The most frustrating thing about getting old is your to-do list grows at least a 100 times longer than your done-list.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“The most important think women need to know about men is that the male ego extends to cover everything he endorses, either explicitly or implicitly. In other words, when you are less than enthusiastic about something a male recommends, or the car he drives, or the cell-phone service he chose…, he takes this as a personal insult.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“The most universally appealing clothing, hairstyle, makeup, jewelry and adornment is nothing at all.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“The question people commonly ask themselves is ‘why did he/she leave?’ One answer is the hormone PEA that creates a mania people mistake for true love. Your brain secretes it only at the start of a relationship to help you over the hump of adjusting to each other. Your partner was seeking another hit of it. It is not that the competition was any better than you, just newer.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“The reasons older people appear much less interested in sex are:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- They are embarrassed about their decrepit bodies.
- Fellow oldsters, the population of possible sex partners, are have little more appeal as sex partners than they do to anyone else.
- Hormones stop their relentless pushing.
- Embarrassment over performance.”
“What causes humans to lose interest in their own survival, to withdraw from all human contact, to stop sleeping, to avoid sunlight? The video game!”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“When a rat philosopher heads down a tunnel and finds no cheese, he does not say to himself ‘Rats! I failed’. He says, ‘I have learned something. I now know one more place where the cheese isn’t.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“When Shakespear referred to life as a ‘brief candle’, he meant it.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“When you are old, it feels as if you should be able to do all the things you did at 30, if only you can get it together.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“When you are six, a month takes an eternity of subjective time. When you are sixty, a year whips by like a chase in a Mack Sennett silent film.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Why are you here? for your personal pleasure or for the general benefit? If comfort is not your goal, there is no need to fret or panic when life becomes uncomfortable. You are free to procrastinate personal pleasure.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“Your sex life ends, not when your plumbing fails, but when the intersection of the set of people you find sexually appealing and the set of people who find you sexually appealing dwindles to the null set.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“‘Going forward’ is the new ‘um’.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“‘The problem with good weather is it brings out mosquitos, leaf blowers and road pavers.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“‘Travel when you are young, ideally in the year after high school before you go to university. Why?
- There is nothing better to show you on a deep level there is more than one way to do something.
- It is cheaper to travel when you are young.
- You will have more adventure travelling while you are young.
- Later in life, your finances, health or energy may restrict you.
- It will be much harder to get away later with ties of family, job, home, pets and community.
- Life is over so fast, if you don’t do it now, you may never find time.
- Many of the most interesting places on earth are being McDonaldised. This is your last chance to see.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97) The History of Western Philosophy
“It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won’t go.”
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)Russell is not counseling apathy, just not getting your tail in a knot while you take rational action to oppose life’s idiots.
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
~ Arthur Schopenhauer (born: 1788-02-22 died: 1860-09-21 at age: 72)
“Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t. ”
~ Pete Seeger (born: 1919-05-03 age: 90),
“The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
~ William Shakespear (born: 1564-04-23 died: 1616-04-23 at age: 52) Julius Caesar Act II scene ii
“All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.”
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
“Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children!”
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
~ Upton Sinclair (born: 1878-09-20 died: 1968-11-25 at age: 90)
“A coincidence is a trend we’ve decided not to take seriously.”
~ Philip Slater (born: 1927 age: 82),
“Every invention creates new needs, but the biggest needs are not for new and more advanced versions of the last invention but for solutions to the social problems the last invention created.”
~ Philip Slater (born: 1927 age: 82),
“Many people would object that most women don’t want careers. I suspect that women themselves would agree, but I also wonder if deep inside they don’t feel the kind of puzzled uneasiness that we always experience when obliged to accept a formulation that makes us lose either way…. When we say ‘career’ it connotes a demanding, rigorous, preordained life pattern, to whose goals everything else is ruthlessly subordinated — everything pleasurable, human, emotional, bodily, frivolous… Thus when a man asks a woman if she wants a career, it is intimidating. He is saying, are you willing to suppress half of your being as I am, neglect your family as I do, exploit personal relationships as I do, renounce all personal spontaneity as I do? Naturally, she shudders a bit and shuffles back to the broom closet. She even feels a little sorry for him, and bewails the unkind fate that has forced him against his will to become such a despicable person…A more effective (revolutionary, confronting) response would be to admit that a ‘career’, thus defined, is indeed undesirable — that (now that you mention it) it seems like a pernicious activity for any human being to engage in, and should be eschewed by both men and women.”
~ Philip Slater (born: 1927 age: 82),
“Motors make noise, and that tells you about the feelings and attitudes that went into it. Something was more important than sensory pleasure — nobody would invent a chair or dish that smelled bad or that made horrible noises — why were motors invented noisy? How could they possibly be considered complete or successful inventions with this glaring defect? Unless, of course, the aggressive, hostile, assaultive sound actually served to express some impulse of the owner.”
~ Philip Slater (born: 1927 age: 82), The Wayward Gate: Science and the Supernatural
“The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself.”
~ Joseph Sobran (born: 1946-02-23 age: 63)
“The pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.”
~ Robert Louis Stevenson (born: 1850-11-13 died: 1894-12-03 at age: 44) Escape at Bedtime
“The deeper the sorrow the less tongue it hath.”
~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus (born: 56 AD died: 117 AD at age: 61)
“The desire for gold is the desire to make others do what they do not want to do.”
~ Emile de Tocqueville
“Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.”
~ Ivan Turgenev (born: 1818-11-09 died: 1883-09-03 at age: 64)
“Consider well the proportion of things. It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.”
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)
“Invention is the mother of necessity.”
~ Thorstein Veblen (born: 1857-07-30 died: 1929-08-03 at age: 72)
“It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community”
~ Thorstein Veblen (born: 1857-07-30 died: 1929-08-03 at age: 72)
“If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshiping country like America, painfully brief.”
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 83)
“Stephen Harper is 300 pounds of condemned beef.”
~ Mary Walsh (born: 1952-05-15 age: 57)
“Knowledge keeps no better than fish.”
~ Alfred North Whitehead (born: 1861-02-15 died: 1947-12-30 at age: 86)
“All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.”
~ Walt Whitman (born: 1819-05-31 died: 1892-03-26 at age: 72)
“Imagine this butterfly, exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful.”
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein (born: 1889-04-26 died: 1951-04-29 at age: 62)
“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.”
~ Virginia Woolf (born: 1882-01-25 died: 1941-03-28 at age: 59)
“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
~ Frank Zappa (born: 1940-12-21 died: 1993-12-04 at age: 52)
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