I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
Mark Twain, author and satirist
And it remains true over a century later.
H/t reader David
Category: Friday Quote
Friday Quote – Christopher Hitchens
I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.
Christopher Hitchens
Friday Quote – Sam Kean
Think of the most fussy science teacher you ever had. The one who docked your grade if the sixth decimal place in your answer was rounded incorrectly; who tucked in his periodic table T-shirt, corrected every student who said “weight” when he or she meant “mass”, and made everyone, including himself, wear goggles even while mixing sugar water. Now try to imagine someone whom your teacher would hate for being anal-retentive. That is the kind of person who works for a bureau of standards and measurement.â€
Sam Kean in The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements
This was an excellent narrative of the science and scientists that discovered the various elements of the periodic table, as well as the development of the table itself.
Friday Quote – Battle of Mogadishu
We have a Blackhawk down.
Twenty years ago, Americans woke up to the bewildering images of the bodies of American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. What the hell? Why are they doing this? Weren’t we there to help feed them?
Later we would learn the details of the Battle of Mogadishu. Many learned from Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, the book (and later movie) whose title would ever be synonymous with the battle. Stories of heroism as soldiers risked, and sometimes lost, their lives to make sure no one was left behind.
Friday Quote – Robert Heinlein
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Robert Heinlein, science fiction author
Friday Quote – Massad Ayoob
If anyone still has the fantasy that you’ll always be treated as a hero after a clean shoot, this case teaches us the reality. It’s often an ordeal of lies, misunderstandings, and false accusations…and, as seen here, your family will go through that ordeal with you.
Massad Ayoob, expert on use of firearms in self defense on the Zimmerman trial
Massad Ayoob has done a detailed assessment of all aspects of the Zimmerman trial. If you have a gun for self-defense, you should really read all 19 parts, plus any others that Mas decides to write.
Friday Quote – Neils Bohr
Double quote goodness!
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.
Neils Bohr, Nobel laureate physicist
Quantum level physics is one of those areas of science that I have to struggle with. It’s as if reality has decided that it’s normal rules are boring and it’s going to do something else entirely.
Friday Quote – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fifty years ago, America first heard Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.
Yes, Dr. King, I will judge people, not by the color of their skin (or what was their first language, or whom they choose as their life partners), but by the content of their character. I will do my best to live up to your dream and to pass it on to those around me, especially my niece and nephew. I will remember the your sacrifices and those of your brothers and sisters to remind us that all humans are born with natural rights and it is immoral to take them away simply because of morphological or cultural reasons.
I will remember to try and make the dream as much of a reality as I can.
Friday Quote – Gen. James Mattis
Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
General James “Mad Dog” Mattis
I kinda have nothing to add to this.
Friday Quote – Hippocrates
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they don’t understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.
Hippocrates, father of western medicine
Presently, we understand that epilepsy is a not a single disease but a group of related neurological disorders. Why? Because medical researchers used the tools of science. They didn’t just relegate the disease to the unknowable workings of the dieties they worshipped at the time.
As science pushes further to explain our reality, the provinces of deific power shrink.
Does this mean religion and science are incompatible? I know that there are plenty of good scientists that are also religious and have no problem reconciling their beliefs with what they know of the physical world. For myself, science has shown that, at the very least, there is no good, solid evidence for the presence of a deity or dieties that control this universe. Can I say there is no god? No, but the evidence says it is at the least unlikely.