Category: Books by Quote

The ‘Bucks logo, again

The @Starbucks logo once again, in an unsuspected place. Like, this:
DSC_0048
[Haut Koenigsbourg castle indeed, in the Alsace]

Begging for some explanation. Why here, in/on a 190x rebuild of a medieval (origin) castle in the middle of (Western) Europe, no Norse sailor in sight? As previously mentioned, there’s more to it than some simple explanation. Hopefully.
E.g., any History grad student interested to write a thesis on this? Said coffee house might be found willing to provide a stipend …? ;-|

For this one’s exact location:
Bucks at Haut K
[I.e., in the very inner courtyard, where no Norseman ever arrived (back in the day)]

After last (mentioned, linked) post, the answer was inconclusive unless 50-50 is a conclusion… Let’s hope for better, this time…

Short Cross posting

… Not from anyone, not from anywhere. But crossing some book tips, and asking for comments.
Was reading the Good Book, when realizing that it, in conjunction with Bruce, could lead to some form of progress beyond the latter when absolutist totalitarian panopticon control frameworks might seem the only way out. In particular, when including this on the Pikettyan / Elyseym escape or not that serves only some but not the serfs. And then add some Mark Goodman (nomen est omen, qua author, and content?) and you can see where Bruce may have missed exponential crumbling of structures, and said escape might be by others than the current(ly known) 1% … Not all Boy Cried Wolfs will be wrong; on the contrary — Not Yet is very, very different from Never, but rather Soon Baby, Soon.

Not rejoicing, and:
DSC_0097
[Nope, not safe here (Haut Koenigsbourg) either.]

Last night a … saved me (updated)

As @swiftonsecurity (and of course @meneer of #ditchcyber fame) and others may improve since the rhythm is only almost perfect, already this:

[To the music but outdated lyrics of Indeep — but what style …
 (Hey @ESCIA is that you with the mic ..?)]

Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
Cause I was sittin’ there screen of death’d bored to death
And in just one breath he chatted said

You gotta reboot get up
You gotta reload get on
You gotta restore get down girl
You know you drive me #DIV/0! crazy baby
You’ve got me turning to another OS man
Called you on the VOIP phone

No one’s pinging back home
Baby why ya leave me all >dev/null alone
And if it wasn’t for the endless GitHub surfing music
I don’t know what I’d do

Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life from a broken pipe heart
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life with a patch song

You know I hopped into my notepad car
Didn’t need to leave the coffee shop get very far no
Because I had you on my stash of data-breached X-rated pics mind
Why only give you a ticket and secretly close it immediately be so unkind?

You’ve got your hapless users women all around
All around this AD town, boy
But I was trapped in the SLA from hell love with you
And I didn’t know what to do
But when I turned on my RTFManual radio
I found out all I needed to key in know
Run the diagnostics kit Check it out

Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life from a broken pipe heart
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life with a patch song

Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life from a broken pipe heart
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life with a patch song

Hey listen up to your local information risk / security management professional
You better hear what he’s got to type so fast you can’t keep track say
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
Cause I can do it in the rogue exploit suite mix
And if your crappy ol’ XP machine man gives you trouble
Just you step away from the keyboard move out on the double
And you don’t let it trouble your ‘brain’ brain
Cause away goes PEBKAC troubles
Down the drain
I said away goes PEBKAC troubles
Down the drain

Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
Cause I can do it in the rogue exploit suite mix
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
Cause I can do it in the rogue exploit suite mix

Last night an information risk / security management professional saved my desktop PC life
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
Cause I can do it in the rogue exploit suite mix
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
Cause I can do it in the rogue exploit suite mix

Quite an improvement indeedp … And leaving you with, of course:
Indeep

Miss Quote: Dice

Well, not really a misquote straight away, but on this Tuesday Miss Quote day (not), did not Einstein say

The Lord doesn’t play dice.

Which is often interpreted to have him say that the indetermination of the endless but not limitless (or was it the other way around?) number and times of quantum changes aren’t feasible and some deterministic model will eventually be found to be able to actually predict, no chance calculus or Schrödinger’s herd of cats probabilities, all of Nature’s developments as All is predetermined. Where E is made out as a … well, on this point simpleton unbeliever, proven wrong by quantum mechanics / dynamics / what-have-we.

Of course, this is the same E of the Time is that not all things happen at once — demonstrated to be at the core of just any religions’ deepest insights, closest as anyone can get to spiritual return/back-integration/solution (in)to one’s Maker. Even at a mundane level, he was brought to doubt his cosmological constant and then this happened. And this.
Hence, we are reminded that E’s dice game denial was, at the core, not fully original. Emerson’s Nature (ch VI, Idealism, line 37; 1904 edition) has:

God never jests with us, and will not compromise the end of nature by permitting any inconsequence in its procession.

Which I consider to be so similar that comparable interpretation is fully allowed, and the differences may be telling or not (insignificance). And with the disownment (yes that’s a word, since I use it) of the relevance to dunces’ quantum blah.

So, I’ll leave you with:
20140905_201557 - Copy
[Poor (understanding) man’s Infinity; Bergen-Noord]

Misquote: Eat this!

Let them eat cake

No. No, no, no, nonono. This wasn’t what Marie Antoinette said. She didn’t even say anything of the kind. Not even

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche

that Rousseau put in his memoires. And for those that suspect something akin was said by Merry Anthonia, there’s some more explanation of the miss in the quote here.

The more serious side of it all being that in its day, it might have been sound advice to eat brioche, for its nutritional value… If only the pesky 1% (rather even, 0,1%) like explained here, would have made that a challenge. … Very much like today’s USA … recognize and weep. And take heed of this.

Well, I’ll leave you to ponder, on a doughy note with:
DSC_0645
[Casual dining; Het Loo]

Misquote: The End(s)

The ends justify the means.

Attributed to Machiavelli (of course), who said:

One must consider the final result.

Going from the latter to the former, quite exposes your morality, no? But then, you’re not alone. Yet you’re so very, very alone. And make it more so by taking heed to the former not the latter.
The attributee even had morals (a lot!) but if you didn’t see that (before), you’ve been taken for a ride by … whatever I don’t even care. Just keep up the good misquoting …! And:
DSC_0465
[Symbol of the brevity of purity, beauty and life; Amstelveen — the symbol of your intelligence would be a blank or this ..?]

Rules for Writers

By popular demand:

  1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects
  2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with
  3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction
  4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive
  5. Avoid clichés like the plague (They’re old hat)
  6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration
  7. Be more or less specific
  8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary
  9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies
  10. No sentence fragments
  11. Contradictions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used
  12. Eschew obfuscation
  13. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos
  14. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous
  15. One should NEVER generalize
  16. Comparisons are as bad as clichés
  17. Don’t use no double negatives
  18. Avoid ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
  19. One-word sentences? Eliminate
  20. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake
  21. The passive voice is to be ignored
  22. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas
  23. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice
  24. DO NOT use exclamation points and all caps to emphasize!!
  25. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them
  26. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas
  27. Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed
  28. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘I hate quotations, tell me what you know’
  29. Resist hyperboles; not one writer in a million can use it correctly
  30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms
  31. Who needs rhetorical questions?
  32. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement
  33. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors
  34. Do not put statements in the negative form
  35. A writer must not shift your point of view
  36. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences of ten or more words, to their antecedents
  37. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided
  38. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is
  39. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing
  40. Always pick on the correct idiom
  41. The adverb always follows the verb
  42. Use the rite homonyms
  43. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out

Personally, I agree that to go from obedience to the rules resulting in mere mediocrity of the most boring kind, to greatness, one only has to break the rules.

Book by Quote: Chesterfield’s

Ah, there we are again, for once, after a long while of want: A Book By Quote. Again, not in the plain vanilla version of just jotting down some bon mots but again, wherever appropriate ..! annotated with some of my interpretations. Which may be biased, as they are of human thought made. You know who I compare myself with, here.
Without further ado then, from Lord Chesterfield’s Letters:

(On people’s thoughts) … if we take them upon trust, without examining and comparing them with our own, it is really living upon other people’s scraps, or retailing other people’s goods.
To add, the quote by Ford: “It is a poor business that only makes money” as this so neatly maps to banking business. But do keep on reading this post 😉

To know the thoughts of others is of use, because it suggest thoughts to one’s self, and helps one to form a judgement; but to repeat other people’s thoughts, without considering whether they are right or wrong, is the talent only of a parrot, or at most a player.
Hence the annotations… And the parrot/player part is where so many (most?) ‘consultants’ and ‘business advisors’ (have) end(ed) up.

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be well done without attention. It is the sure answer of a fool, when you ask him about any thing that was said or done where he was present, that ‘truly he did not mind it’.
Yes that’s the Original. And the surety of any answer of remark that you don’t particularly like (to receive), about the speaker. I feel a need to insert a just-found pic here:
ron-swanson-advice

If a man uses strong protestations or oaths, to make you believe a thing, which is of itself so likely and probable that the bare saying of it would be sufficient, depend upon it he lies, and is highly interested in making you believe it; or else he would not take such pains.
Ah, there we have all the bankers’ oaths, the quality (quod non) assurance (quod non) frameworks (quod non) of auditors, etc … In the style of Qui s’excuse, s’accuse — There should be a law against such things. Continue reading “Book by Quote: Chesterfield’s”

Plusquote: Be not a hampered herring but a free speedboat

Yes, again one in this series of quotes of my own making (predominantly), intended to be motivational. Just like www.despair.com… This time:

Be a free speedboat, no hampered herring

Which, for an explanation, starts at the back. Being about the choice between being a (hopefully growing into too) big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond. And, since the former is limiting by its ‘boundary’ condition already and the latter has grown to be to be a tiny fish in the world’s oceans all together, none are more than a suckers result in a Prisoners’ Dilemma match.
But then, the choice is a false one — no-one asked you to remain a fish, of set growth or flexibility. Turn into a speedboat! Do not want to be, to become, an oil tanker but keep agile, manoeuvrable, successful rather than doomed by size.

And yes, speedboats can go anywhere. May not be a survivable as a tanker in some storm, but being flexible enough in movement and destination hence travel routes, you’ll be able to not get caught in one in the first place; no fun so avoided almost naturally. Storms are for others to wither, you keep in nice weather.

Oh yes, there’s risk and danger, also caused by you e.g. running over some silly swimmers on onto rocks, by careless steering. But think of the upside …

Also:
130673480_moose_463656c
[Remember the moose though I have no clue why you should … ;-| ]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord