Kyle's Experimental Blog

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 241

2009-08-24T08:33:00.001-07:00

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." --Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 240

2007-05-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

"[I]f a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in run-down ones . . . one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares." --James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling's famous essay "Broken Windows"

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 239

2007-04-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

In honor of the passing of a great writer, one of his gems...

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops." --Kurt Vonnegut

Kyle=

Math and Life: Indexed

2007-02-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

This blog site, indexed, is wonderful, irreverent, and geeky. Check it out.

indexed

Kyle=

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 238

2007-02-13T07:43:00.001-08:00

"Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television."
--David Letterman

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

iTunes and Radio News Updates

2007-02-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

I thought this was a really neat hack for iTunes to give you news updates, even while listening to your music library.

Read Wil Wheaton's Listen While You Work

It's pretty neat, but I won't be trying it yet because my computer here at work, where I'd get the most use out of it, will soon change... because my job will be changing.

Kyle=

Cut the Cord!

2007-01-30T08:07:00.000-08:00

Get off more junk-mail lists and help protect your privacy!

New York Times Article: Don't Call, Don't Write!

Some are old-news, others are new and helpful!

Check 'em out.

Also try: 41 Pounds-- Reclaim your mailbox!

Kyle=

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 237

2007-01-17T06:57:00.000-08:00

Sir Winston Churchill on quotations:

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. "

Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 236

2007-01-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.” --Howard Thurman

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 235

2007-01-08T05:52:00.000-08:00

More David Livingstone, a similar theme from the last post about Dr. Livingstone, this time from The Life and Labors of David Livingstone, 1875.

"There are names that live, and should live. Like the men who make them honorable, there are names which do good, carrying light and strength. There are names about which systems, and histories, and ideal realms of wondrous beauty are; which incite mankind to lofty enterprise, and impart confidence and fortitude and zeal. There are names which honor a world's remembrance. It is well and creditable for the world that some men are never forgotten. But of all, there is no life-work brighter and truer and loftier than that in the service of humanity, and the service of humanity is perfected ill the dignity of Christian effort. Among the securest favorites of history, the worthiest arc those who lived for others, and loved and labored under the impulses of the gospel.

"Such a man was David Livingstone. His child-life was at Blantyre, by the beautiful Clyde, above Glasgow, in Scotland. He was born there in the year 1813. The humble home entertained some proud traditions, treasured through eight generations of the family. The young David listened with bounding heart and growing spirit, while his grandfather told the histories and legends of the olden time.

"Culloden was in the story. His great-grandfather fell there, fighting for the old line of kings; and 'Ulva Dark,' the family
home, had been there. Old Gaelic songs trembled off the lips of his grandmother, beguiling the social hours. There was the spirit of heroism in the home. And among the traditions there were those of singular virtue and integrity. He classed the dying precept of a hardy ancestor the proudest distinction of his family: that precept was, 'be honest.' Honesty is a matchless birthright; he claimed it; he was not proud of anything else. His father was a man of 'unflinching honesty,' and was employed by Montieth & Co., proprietors of Blantyre Works, in conveying very large sums of money from Glasgow, and by the honorable kindness of their firm his integrity was so rewarded that his declining years were spent where he had lived, in ease and comfort. He was a man who kept the hearts of his children. His kindness and real love were sweeter to them than all that wealth sometimes bestows as its peculiar gift. He brought his children up religiously; it was in connection with the Kirk of Scotland. It is a beautiful tribute of his illustrious son:

"'My father deserved my lasting gratitude and homage for presenting me from my infancy with a continuously consistent pious example. I revere his memory.' The mother of the man appears only, and passes from the public view. She was a quiet, loving, industrious, self-denying, praying mother. God knows how to choose mothers for the chosen men. This mother was the mother of a great and good man. She was a women who, by her virtue and modesty, and fortitude and courage, could bear a hero and inspire him for his destiny. 'An anxious house-wife, striving to make both ends meet,' found time and place to exert a true woman's singular and mighty influence upon her little boy. We will not presume to estimate the magnitude of that influence. We will not say how much his home had to do with the singular thoughtfulness and distinguished precocity of the child that toiled all day long in the mill with tbe hundreds who worked there. David Livingstone was only ten years old when he was put into the factory. People ought not to despise little factory-boys. He worked from six in the morning until
eight at night; that makes fourteen hours a day, and a child just ten years of age. There were very good schools at Blantyre; the teachers were paid twenty-five pounds a year. The schools were free to the children of the working people. David had been in one of these schools."

--The life and labors of David Livingstone, LL. D., D.C.L., covering his entire career in Southern and Central Africa. Carefully prepared from the most authentic sources ... The whole rendered clear and plain by a most accurate map of the whole region explored and the routes clearly indicated by J E Chambliss

Humans, Animals, and the Future

2007-01-08T05:48:00.000-08:00

Delancey Place on Humans, Animals, and the Future.

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 234

2007-01-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

EXTRACT OF LETTER TO ROBERT MOFFAT from David Livingstone
12 September 1855

"Our family is reported to have been rather famous for quick learning among Highland chieftains' sons, and like one of our ancestors on his death bed, who told the assembled circle of friends that he had made diligent search and never could hear of one of the Livingstons having been a thief, I never heard of one who was a donkey."

An alternative version of this story was published in an 1887 newspaper (haven't found the citation yet):

"Dr. Livingstone, the famous explorer, was descended from the Highlanders, and he said that one of his ancestors one day called his family around him. He was dying and had all of his children around his death-bed. He said: 'Now, lads, I have looked all through our history as far back as I can find it, and I have never found a dishonest man in all the line, and I want you to understand that you inherit good blood. You have no excuse for doing wrong. Be honest.'"

The Livingstones are the name used today for the great majority of those of MacLea heritage, like myself. --Kyle=

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 233

2007-01-03T06:34:00.000-08:00

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
--William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.2

"Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it." --Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (1948- )

"As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask, "that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ..." --Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"

"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses." --C. G. Jung, Psychological Reflections

"The butterfly counts not years but moments and has time enough."
--Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter,
educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)

"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them." --T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 232

2006-12-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

"A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics". All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and
schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer." --George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 231

2006-12-19T05:50:00.000-08:00

"Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print." --Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 230

2006-12-12T05:33:00.001-08:00

"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good."
--Seneca

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 229

2006-12-12T05:31:00.000-08:00

"If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic." --Barry Jones, politician, author (1932- )

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 228

2006-12-11T09:09:00.001-08:00

"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it." --Leo Rosten

The Rule of Threes

2006-12-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

The rule of threes:

You can survive for three hours without shelter
You can survive for three days without water
You can survive for three weeks without food

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 227

2006-12-07T05:29:00.001-08:00

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." --Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 226

2006-12-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

"So the conventional wisdom in Galbraith’s view must be simple, convenient, comfortable, and comforting--though not necessarily true. It would be silly to argue that the conventional wisdom is never true. But noticing where the conventional wisdom may be false--noticing, perhaps, the contrails of sloppy or self-interested thinking--is a nice place to start asking questions."

--Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 225

2006-12-07T05:19:00.000-08:00

"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." --James Baldwin

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 224

2006-12-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

"There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking." --Alfred Korzybski

Dogs and Memory

2006-12-04T06:28:00.000-08:00

The love of dogs.

The persistence of minor memory.

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 223

2006-12-04T06:18:00.000-08:00

Books to the ceiling
Books to the sky
My pile of books is a mile high
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

--Arnold Lobel