"Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret."
—Lawrence J. Peter
—Lawrence J. Peter
10:16 AM
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Thursday, 8 Aug 2013 (Only #Social)
Friday, 5 Jul 2013 (Only #Social)
"A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether."
—Roy H. Williams
—Roy H. Williams
10:51 PM
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Monday, 24 Jun 2013 (Only #Social)
Here's Carl Sagan talking about that Pale Blue Dot again. This time he's critiquing man's tendency, typically through a religious lens, to see our appearance on the cosmic stage as something terrifically intended - by a creator perhaps.
Sagan argues for the godless science of observation and logic, and the fallacy of human wishful thinking, and he does it reasonably but - to my mind - not entirely convincingly. But I say that does not matter. What strikes me is that in this video we find a man who has so much more wonder, and perhaps even spiritual insight, than most religious people that I know, and his sense of wonder is enriching and inspiring... and yet he is no friend of religion.
This is nearly ten minutes of monologue, so it's probably worth making a fresh brew first. But it is a worthwhile listen. I commend it to you if you are a thinking person. (If you're not a thinking person, then what the frakk are you doing reading this?)
Sagan argues for the godless science of observation and logic, and the fallacy of human wishful thinking, and he does it reasonably but - to my mind - not entirely convincingly. But I say that does not matter. What strikes me is that in this video we find a man who has so much more wonder, and perhaps even spiritual insight, than most religious people that I know, and his sense of wonder is enriching and inspiring... and yet he is no friend of religion.
This is nearly ten minutes of monologue, so it's probably worth making a fresh brew first. But it is a worthwhile listen. I commend it to you if you are a thinking person. (If you're not a thinking person, then what the frakk are you doing reading this?)
0:08 AM
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Sunday, 23 Jun 2013 (Only #Social)
I think this puts us in our place, at least in one context. For those of us of a certain television generation, it might bring back some memories, too. It is guaranteed to strike me dumb with awe, wonder and hope whenever I watch and listen to it.
Below is the transcript from 6'33''.
Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Below is the transcript from 6'33''.
Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
We are explorers. A single lifetime is not enough.
8:31 PM
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Wednesday, 24 Apr 2013 (Only #Social)
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
—Dr. Seuss
"Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out."
—Anton Chekhov
—Dr. Seuss
"Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out."
—Anton Chekhov
2:55 PM
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