Category: Books by Quote

Obviously today: Elk, Moose, Reindeer

As an intermission: Would you know which is which, of the above/below …?
And then, there’s continental differences …
First up, the Elk:
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Servus Canadensis, the wapiti indeed. Next up, the Elk:
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know as such in Eurasia including those tinny pebbles off the coast called the British Isles. Looks suspiciously like the Alces Alces that is the Canadian (oh well, and US, yes, whiners) Moose, doesn’t it?
Because it is…! But you moose’ent confuse the two with each other nor with the reindeer a.k.a. caribou:
reindeeris5
Rangifer Tarandus, since this one’s for Saami and Santa.

Are you feeling elky now ..? Or move to the Caribouan; you’ll never have problems with the above there …

Plusquote: R&R

Never let a good opportunity for R&R go to waste

Which goes on the back of ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ which s true, but negative as it relies on crises to turn up as the best (not the only …) opportunities to get change done. But now, tries to turn it to the positive, (truly hedonistic with an epicurean twist) enjoyable by way of the proper mix of carpe diem due to memento mori. As one doesn’t know when one will die; a great many being caught short of having lived as they postponed all purpose of life by ‘saving’ that for later, always for later. Hence the balance will need to be tried, not wasting, not spending it all but also not shirking from opportunities to enjoy.
Hence a side remark that the plusquote is quite absolute whereas its application needs some ‘risk management’ balancing (including personal quality perception/prediction) but hey, that takes the fun out of the shorthand.

Oh; some may not have gotten the memo that R&R (R ‘n R) isn’t about rock and roll or so, but about Rest and Recreation. Or Rest and Restoration, whatever floats your boat.

Talking about boats … (??):
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[Ship not boat! Not too much for pleasure, originally …; Baltimore again]

Miss Quotes: Free Hegel

The quotes, of motivational nature or other, that you meet every time again — but aren’t, since they are garbled versions of the original. And the original had much more profound wisdom, or was even true where the misquote isn’t.

Yet another one in a series, a rather old one:
“There’s nothing sure in life except death and taxes.“

… …

For one, “The only thing you can be sure of, so the saying goes, are death and taxes — but don’t be too sure about death.” (Joseph Strout) — before but on the Kurzweillian strain of thought (more on that elsewhere on this blog) that ‘humans’ may leave their biological medium (‘substrate’) and live forever — probably on tape or 5″ floppy disks though that angle Ray discusses [satisfactory, for once] too. But whether Ray’s scenario turns out to be true (where would religion go …? Betraying his/his father’s roots?), or the Spinozaic or anthropomorphic deity would allow to be overruled in v1.1 of the Design, it would be short-sighted to take dying as inescapable.

For another, [skipping lazy evaluation of the And clause that would already render the quote a miss] David Graeber already proved that in the history of humanity, almost no-one ever paid taxes, the above is just an order by the receiving end put onto the paying end to suppress any even the slightest inkling of an idea for revolt. Whereas the Dutch started their war of independence officially because of an income tax levy of 10% — the outrage! and practice was ‘slightly’ different, very probably. So, no score here, either.

QED.

And the Hegel of the title: Search my earlier posts on that.
And:
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[This beauty however may not last forever ..? Bibliothèque Vanderbilt, Reims]

Quick Note: Big Data or ..?

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing with pebbles on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me” [I. Newton]

Whence my feeling when reading this, that I was looking into Big Data ..? Maybe Big Data could be made to work when set loose on the world’s major problems. So, no petty process analysis or what have we; onto serious fruition!

But then, it turns out that such problem solving, in particular such problem solving, needs no more data but can be solved, as shown throughout history, to be solvable without it and where data was available (yes, far more commonly available in the heads of otherwise decent much less looking-away kind of people) it wasn’t used properly or even in opposition.
Apart from the applications where it is used fully wherever more comes available and still not bringing us much closer to eternal humanitarian bliss.

For the humanity’s departure:
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Plusquote: You’re not perfect

Even at the Computer History Museum most of the devices on display stopped functioning many years ago.
This time, not one of my own but quoted from Ray. Pointing out that it’s not that bad if you fail at having the perfect IT management (systems/operations) in the universe — even if you’d had forever you wouldn’t succeed so take it easy on the minor non-compliancies.

So, this in a series inspired by this here Expert, some more of my own (heh) personal ramblings which I would dare to call motivational soundbites but you would consider to be as typically as this sentence to be my interpretation of brief, not necessarily positively motivational but that’s (yes I do use abbreviations to shorten the sentence even further) because that remains your interpretation but that’s not necessarily the right one being the one I intended.

Capice? And:
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[Once – not forever – the newest, carved in / out of stone; Reims]

New category: Miss Quotes

Quite literally, literally. The quotes, of motivational nature or other, that you meet every time again — but aren’t, since they are garbled versions of the original. And the original had much more profound wisdom, or was even true where the misquote isn’t.

Heard often, lately, lame defense for some that utter the most ridiculous lies:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
(“Je désapprouve ce que vous dites, mais je défendrai à la mort votre droit à le dire”)

Which commonly is attributed to Voltaire (no surname needed), and refers to freedom of speech and democracy at large, even to the point of complete breakdown of ethics when falsely claiming Purple Hearts etc. But then, what Voltaire actually said was
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.
(Essay on Tolerance)

Which is something else entirely. E.g., it starts with ‘Think’ — that so many don’t do, most by not being able to. And, ‘for yourselves’ which has the element of ‘and keep the results to yourselves as well, no need to blabber and reveal your thinking was garbage’. And, it’s a privilege. Nowhere does it say that you have the right to disturb anyone’s peace with you failure of logic. See the above link on false claims, and also refer to current-day elections politics in some global backwater…

I’m off to some wine tasting (business, not volume..!), so I’ll leave you with:
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[Remark-wise, related. At Condoníu]

Plusquotetime

Diversity is joy and riches.

Another one in the series inspired by this here Expert, this here post continues the somewhat hopefully new series — with my own personal ramblings which I would dare to call motivational soundbites but you would consider to be as typically as this sentence to be my interpretation of brief, not necessarily positively motivational but that’s (yes I do use abbreviations to shorten the sentence even further) because that remains your interpretation but that’s not necessarily the right one being the one I intended.

The above might even require some exepelenaisijuhn. Where some approach diversity, of any kind, with fear, I consider diversity to be an asset at the mundane level, e.g., through creation of (evolution-enabling) robustness by partial pre-readiness against the chaotic changes in the (any def. of) environment. That some of the group however defined, will survive and no mass extinction is the effect of the previous perfected adaption (by definition), in itself should create calmth. All-individuals’ survival was never on the program (on the contrary, everything so certainly human life(s) will come to an end — trace the stories describing the utter horror and boredom of living forever…), and now, continuity can be guaranteed when diversity is cherished. One can even see the value to society of having some with less perfected adaptation to modern life that should be cared for as our hope for the future when we (?) ‘normals’ will be the misfits and the tough get going.
Also, uniformity is boring. Utterly boring. Think sheeple following $AAPL. Diversity, especially in society and the superset, art, has riches and value in itself. In flip image, those that oppose diversity-through-immigration often do so for an unconscious subliminal fear of being found out to be overly shallow… [Yes one can learn of other cultures from afar, certainly latter days, but meeting F2F in the others’ environment is still much preferred for its full-all-senses experience. To keep the world a better place, one of course then needs not flatten all culture to some happenstantial low(er/est) common denominator. That one doesn’t take over another one’s culture doesn’t mean one disses or dismisses it let alone one would (feel the need to) rate it lower — on the contrary, one could enjoy the diversity. And/or learn where others are in fact esthetically and ethically superioir, within losing one’s own peculiarities — again the fear of being found out to in fact be the lower life and having to give up one’s (implicitly, now exposed) inferior and/or underserved position.

I rest my case. And:
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[‘My house in the ‘burbs must by law be exactly like yours’ — said no one ever. BarÇa again.]

In support of TED ..?

A certain, distinguished ( ? ;-| ) R. Kurzweil in The Singularity Is Near has some off the cuff remarks about becoming pets, Ted style. (p.32)
Which is a sligh against (later!) sages of the Musk, Gates and Hawkins class — and fully unjustified. Since the ‘Theory of Technology Evolution’ is a quasi(sic)religious circular argument paraphrasing Hegel with apparently quite carefully selected and probably redacted statistics and some ontological Technology-defeatism in the undertow.

And the rest is consumable but only when considering these initial ails as foundations hence only a particular Kuhnian discourse. Interpuncted (Eldredge/Gould style) with badly under- or misinformed remarks. E.g., regarding chaotic processes resulting in smooth exponential trends being not a coincidence but an inherent feature of evolutionary processes (p.73) — based on a misunderstanding of evolution, probably, since numerous times, the latter is made to appear like some purposeful decision making by individual instances of, or species as actors instead of happenstance sheer survival-luck. How much of the overwhelming evidence must one disregard to arrive at the smoothness!

The list goes on. But I will not. (Nevertheless…) read the darn thing and smile! Naivety is a good read, too. And:
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[Yes, take your meds. No need to swallow just the blue pill that the above book might be, though. Barça, of course]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord