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January
Comin Thro' the Rye
(body: person) |
Auld Lang Syne
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--Robert Burns (1759-1796), as interpreted in The Oxford Book of Scottish Verse, 1966, pages 406-407 and 414-415. Also see the Wikipedia entry for Auld Lang Syne for more info.
February
Intelligence is characterized by a natural lack of comprehension of life.
--supposedly this quote is from Henri Bergson’s book Creative Evolution, published in French in 1907 and in English in 1911. I encountered the quote recently when I was re-reading Mathematics and the Imagination by Edward Kasner and James R. Newman, published in 1940. Kasner and Newman, by the way, on page 23 of their book tell where the word googol came from and what it means: “The name ‘googol’ was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner’s nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it.” Google’s founders came up with a homonym of googol when they named their company, and they give credit where credit is due (see the bottom of their corporate info webpage). The problem with this month’s quote that Kasner and Newman attribute to Bergson (see p. 65 of Mathematics and the Imagination) is that it doesn’t appear to be in Bergson’s book! I discovered this when I found Creative Evolution online, “Digitized by Google,” and searched for the quote. You can try it yourself.
A slightly different version of the quote can be seen at the MathPages quotes web page, near the middle of the page.
Okay, on the 8th of February I did find it when I searched the book again. It’s on page 165. I still recommend clicking on the “try it yourself’ link above. The sentence as expressed in English and with italics as in the original is:
The intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life.
MARCH
In Paris, where the plague lasted through 1349, the reported death rate was 800
a day, in Pisa 500, in Vienna 500 to 600. The total dead in Paris numbered
50,000, or half the population. Florence, weakened by the famine of 1347, lost
three to four fifths of its citizens, Venice two-thirds, Hamburg and Bremen,
though smaller in size, about the same proportion. Cities, as centers of
transportation, were more likely to be affected than villages, although once a
village was infected, its death rate was equally high. ...
...
In October 1348 Philip VI asked the medical faculty at the University of Paris
for a report on the affliction that seemed to threaten human survival. With
careful thesis, antithesis, and proofs, the doctors ascribed it to a triple
conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius said to
have occurred on March 20, 1345. They acknowledged, however, effects
"whose cause is hidden from even the most highly trained intellects."
The verdict of the masters of Paris became the official version. Borrowed,
copied by scribes, carried abroad, translated from Latin into the various
vernaculars, it was everywhere accepted, even by the Arab physicians of Cordova
and Granada, as the scientific if not the popular answer. Because of the
terrible interest of the subject, the translations of the plague tracts
stimulated national languages. In that one respect, life came from death.
To the people at large there could be but one explanation--the wrath of God.
Planets might satisfy the learned doctors, but God was closer to the average
man. A scourge so sweeping and unsparing without any visible cause could only
be seen as Divine punishment upon mankind for his sins. It might even be God's
terminal disappointment in his creature. Matteo Villani compared the plague to
the Flood in ultimate purpose and believed he was recording the
"extermination of mankind."
--Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror:: The Calamitous 14th Century, Alfred A . Knopf, 1978. Page 99 and pages 107-108.
To ask whether the universe as we see it looks more like the work of a wise and good Creator or the work of chance, indifference, or malevolence, is to omit from the outset all the relevant factors in the religious problem. Christianity is not the conclusion of a philosophical debate on the origins of the universe: it is a catastrophic historical event following on the long spiritual preparation of humanity which I have described. It is not a system into which we have to fit the awkward fact of pain: it is itself one of the awkward facts which have to be fitted into any system we make. In a sense, it creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.
--C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, McMillan Paperbacks 1962 edition, page 24.
APRIL
“When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.”
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in a speech calling for an end to the Vietnam War, given at Riverside Church in Manhattan on April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was shot and killed. The speech was denounced at the time even by “liberal” newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times. It was called “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
“
…… but I believe in the power of love. Not in a hokey kind of way. I certainly saw that those people in conflicts who were the most able to resist the insanity of war and find an identity outside the nationalistic cause were couples that were in love. And you know they were the people who rescued people from other ethnic groups. You know I wrote a story about a Muslim farmer who for four hundred days or something in the siege of Gorazda brought a liter of milk every day to a little Serb infant that would have died without it. And very soon, people in the apartment block would see him come up in the morning and would insult him and spit at him and revile him. But that act that he carried out was a kind of witness to everybody in that apartment building. That Serb family--the father had probably been killed by the Muslims in Gorazda--whatever anger the widow had they could not demonize an entire people, because of that one man. And some little girl, some little Serb girl, is gonna grow up, and she may never meet that farmer, but she’s gonna know she owes her life to that farmer.
“ I used to have a great professor, Coleman Brown, when I was an undergraduate at Colgate, who said that for every intellectual, faith is an embarrassment. And by that he meant that when you look at the world the way it is, to have faith, to believe in the power of goodness, oftentimes doesn’t square with the reality that you face. But I think in the end to abandon faith, to succumb to the seductiveness of moral disgust and to cynicism, is a way to wash our hands of the responsibilities that we have, the moral responsibilities we have. And at that moment the world becomes a much more dangerous place than it is now.”
--Chris Hedges, in an interview with Christa Tippet on the public radio program Speaking of Faith. This particular program was called Religion in a Time of War and was first broadcast March 27, 2003, just after the beginning of the Iraq War, and was made available on the Web in April 2003. Hedges is a reporter and Harvard Divinity School graduate, and author of War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.
May
Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such a complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box, pages 9 and 10 in the Introduction, © 1999 by Kurt Vonnegut (Nov. 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007), published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
JUNE
The next morning at 10:30, the café was crowded with people from the office buildings nearby. Herb arrived first and got in line. The café staff consisted of young guys and girls who wore artistic-looking clothes and had various body piercings and tattoos. Herb guessed they were musicians or actors or artists of some kind, or just Austin slackers temporarily working to pay the bills. Original artwork and photos were displayed on the café walls. The pieces were for sale at what Herb considered to be rather steep prices. Occasionally he saw something he liked, but usually not.
The staff was mostly polite and helpful, but a particular girl—tall, tattooed and with jet-black dyed hair and always plenty of mid-section skin showing—seemed unfriendly and short-tempered. Not that Herb had seen her lose her temper. He merely judged from her curt demeanor that she probably could become angry easily, plus he’d never seen her smile.
She was one of the two people behind the counter taking orders when Herb reached the head of the line. Pen in hand, she looked up at him and raised her eyebrows.
“How’re you?” Herb said, wishing immediately that he hadn’t. He wondered fleetingly why he was trying to be friendly with this girl he didn’t like.
“Sir?” the girl said with a slight frown. Had she heard him and just pretended not to? People were standing in line behind Herb and also standing beside him waiting on their orders. Herb felt his face start to turn red.
“Uhhh,” Herb said, realizing it would be ridiculous to say ‘how are you’ again. “A large coffee and large Darjeeling tea…a pumpkin bread and a walnut-apricot scone.”
Before he could add “to go,” she said flatly, “We’re OUT of pumpkin bread.”
“Okaay,” Herb said as he glanced at the counter to see what was available. He was getting over his embarrassment. An idea occurred to him.
“Schnecken,” he said quickly and fairly quietly.
“I’m sorry?” the girl replied, with irritation evident in her voice.
“Schnecken,” said Herb, in the same quiet tone of voice.
The girl then said, in a loud, exasperated voice, “I can’t hear you!”
“A fucking schnecken!” Herb yelled back, defiantly.
Nearby conversations stopped. With her mouth open, the girl turned wordlessly toward a skinny guy with blond bangs who was taking an order from another customer. Before she could speak, the skinny guy looked at Herb and said nonchalantly, “We don’t carry schnecken, sir.”
Herb had figured that to be the case. “All right. Sorry,” he said in a normal, level tone. The girl looked back at him and as their eyes met Herb said quickly and coolly in his best teacher’s voice, “Cranberry bread then, and make the tea a hot tea, please, and it’s all to go.” The girl simply turned and began putting his order together.
Behind him and to his right, Herb heard someone say in a loud, disapproving whisper, “Typical passive-aggressive personality.”
Herb turned and saw Stan at the end of the line smiling his tight-lipped smile. Strands of his wispy blondish hair were standing up high above his head. He appeared to have just gotten out of bed. Herb erupted with a loud laugh at Stan’s comment and his disheveled look. It was a standard joke between them that they were both passive-aggressive types.
“Good morning to you, too,” Herb said. “If you can help me carry this food, I won’t yell at you.”
Stan stepped ahead of the people waiting in line, politely saying “excuse me” several times. As he stepped up to the counter beside Herb he said, “Where do you want to sit?”
“Let’s go up to the capitol grounds and find some shade,” said Herb. The tall girl behind the counter had finished getting their order together and ringing it up.
“Seven dollars and eighty-seven cents,” she said to Herb, in an even voice without emotion.
Herb said, “Okay,” and handed her a ten-dollar bill. Stan picked up his part of the order and began to walk behind Herb toward the door. As the girl handed back his change, Herb said to her, “I apologize for the angry words.”
“Apology accepted,” said the girl, looking at Herb and nodding her head slightly.
“Thank you,” Herb said, putting all the change in the tip jar.
“Thank you,” the girl said as Herb turned to follow Stan toward the door. “Have a good day.”
See dwt physics page for other Stan & Herb episodes.
JULY
BODIES FOUND
IN HOTEL ROOM
EARLY TODAY
Death Caused by “Excessive
Injection of Nar-
cotic”
______
Austin, Texas, Feb. 1--(AP)--Two persons identified as Dr. Claude Mattingly, prominent Austin physician, and Mrs. F. A. C. Perrin, wife of a University of Texas professor, were found dead in a room of the Texan hotel here today.
Dr. Will Watt and Terrence Watt, who viewed the bodies, said death had come from the “excessive injection of a narcotic.”
In the room were found containers that once held 45 grams of a narcotic and a number of injection tubes.
Dr. Mattingly, a specialist, was about 34 years old.
The bodies were found side by side in a double bed in a room that hotel attachés said Dr. Mattingly had occupied for about one month. The room was in order and the bodies were clothed, except Dr. Mattingly’s coat had been removed and Mrs. Perrin had taken off a light jacket.
Dr. Perrin refused to discuss the tragedy.
Mrs. Perrrin was Rhea Burgess of Dallas before her marriage to the professor, September 22, 1921. They had no children.
Dr. Mattingly was estranged from his wife. Two children also survive.
--from page one of the Thursday, February 1, 1934 Pine Bluff Commercial.
And another quote, posted on July 15. This is the article that appeared in the El Paso paper on the afternoon of the Trinity test at Alamogordo, New Mexico -- the successful test of the first nuclear weapon, 62 years ago, at 5:30 a.m. Monday, July 16, 1945:
http://www.geocities.com/dwtrulock/coming_to_el_paso.html
August
In the late summer and fall of 1775, the “bloody flux,” epidemic dysentery, had ripped through the ranks. Adams’s youngest brother, Elihu, a captain of militia, camped beside the Charles River at Cambridge, was stricken and died, leaving a wife and three children. Nor was Braintree spared the violent epidemic. For Abigail, then thirty years old, it had been the worst ordeal of her life.
“Such is the distress of the neighborhood that I can scarcely find a well person to assist me in looking after the sick . . . so mortal a time the oldest man does not remember,” she lamented in a letter to John. “As to politics I know nothing about them. I have wrote as much as I am able to, being very weak.”
The strong clarity of her handwriting, the unhesitating flow of her pen across the paper, line after line, seemed at odds with her circumstances. Rarely was a word crossed out or changed. It was as if she knew exactly what was in her heart and how she wished to express it--as if the very act of writing, of forming letters , in her distinctive angular fashion, keeping every line straight, would somehow help maintain her balance, validate her own being in such times.
--David McCullough, John Adams, pages
25 and 26, published by Simon and Schuster in 2001.
September
Air Fresheners work by one of four methods: (1) interfering with your ability to smell by utilizing a nerve deadening agent, (2) by coating your nasal passages with an undetectable oil film, (3) by covering up one smell with another, or rarely, (4) breaking down the offensive odor. Contrary to popular belief, air fresheners do very little to freshen the air.
--Household Hazardous Waste Satellite Collections Facility Operations and Management Training Manual, Third Edition, December 2005, Part II, page 18.
Ingredients: Water, sucrose syrup, high-fructose corn syrup (glucose-fructose syrup), citric acid, natural lemon and lime flavors with other natural flavors, salt, sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate, glycerol ester of wood rosin, yellow 5.
--Gatorade ingredients list, © 2007 S-VC, Inc.
October
He worked at a plain, tall desk at which he wrote standing up or perched on a high stool, and he appears to have completed the draft sometime in early October. Printed copies, for the consideration of the convention, were ready at the end of the month, on or about October 30, 1779, his forty-fourth birthday.
It was titled “A Constitution or Form of Government for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Adams having chosen to use the word “commonwealth” rather than “state,” as had Virginia, a decision he made on his own and that no one was to question. A tone of absolute clarity and elevated thought was established in the opening lines, in a Preamble, a new feature in constitutions, affirming the old ideal of the common good founded on a social compact:
The end of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government is to secure the existence of the body politic; to protect it; and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying, in safety and tranquility, their natural rights and the blessings of life; and whenever these great objects are not obtained, the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, happiness, and prosperity.
The body-politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals. It is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.
The survival of the rights and liberties of the people depended on the spread of wisdom, knowledge, and virtue among all the people, the common people, of whom he, as a farmer’s son, was one. “I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading,” Adams had written in his diary at age twenty-five, while still living under his father’s roof.
As no other constitution before, Adams was declaring it the “duty” of governments not only to provide education but to “cherish” the interests of literature and science—indeed, the full range of arts, commerce, trades, manufactures, and natural history.
In the end, the convention approved nearly all of his draft, with only a few notable changes. Preferring what Jefferson had written in the Declaration of Independence, the convention revised the first article of the Declaration of Rights, that all men were “born equally free and independent,” to read that all men were “born free and equal,” a change Adams did not like and would like even less as time went on. He did not believe all men were created equal, except in the eyes of God, but that all men, for all their many obvious differences, were born to equal rights.
As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.
--David McCollough, John Adams, published by Simon & Schuster in 2001. Excerpt from pages 221, 223, 224, and 225.
November
One of my favorite monuments is a statue of Samuel Gompers not far from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. Under the statue is a quote from one of Gompers’s speeches:
What does Labor want?
We want more schoolhouses and less jails,
More books and less guns,
More learning and less vice,
More leisure and less greed,
More justice and less revenge,
We want more opportunities to cultivate our better nature.
Samuel Gompers was the founder and first president of the American Federation of Labor. He established in America the tradition of practical bargaining between labor and management which led to an era of growth and prosperity for labor unions. Now, seventy years after Gompers’s death, the unions have dwindled, while his dreams—more books and fewer guns, more leisure and less greed, more schoolhouses and fewer jails—have been tacitly abandoned. In a society without social justice and with a free-market ideology, guns, greed, and jails are bound to win.
--Freeman Dyson, from an essay
called “Can Science Be Ethical?” which
he first presented
as a lecture at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 1995. The essay
appears as Chapter 2 of his 2006 book, The Scientist As Rebel.
I
know what a union does. I lived in and around Flint, Mich., for 40 years.
When they finished the pillage there, the city went into receivership.
Buick was planning on investing billions in its operation there, creating Buick City, USA, building its prototypes, world headquarters and engineering in Flint next to its factories, creating more jobs and reviving the floundering city and state economy.
Then the mayor and city employee unions got involved with their demands, Buick announced it would move all its operations somewhere else, and that it did, losing over 10,000 jobs at Buick alone, plus all the businesses that depended on those paychecks.
Each time a new business tried to start up, some union of some type showed up for the shakedown. Case in point: I opened a children’s dance studio, and here comes a representative of a musicians’ union wanting its cut for us to play records and in turn he would place a sticker on our door saying we are proud supporters of the union. I told him, “We may have to pay union dues, but you will never place a sticker on my building.”
I come from a long line of workers who have made it on our own. I do not believe in socialism. There was a time it was a useful organization truly helping the worker. Then real mob corruption came in and it was to hell with the worker, let’s use the money to feather our nest for political payoffs. Then they told the members how to vote.
You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
--Sharron K. Mathis of Hardy, Arkansas, in a letter to the editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, printed November 1, page 7B, under the heading, “Unions no longer help workers.”
December
They used to tell me I was building a dream
And so I followed the mob.
When there was earth to plow or guns to bear,
I was always there, right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead --
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun,
brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal --
Say, buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, ah, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal --
Buddy, can you spare a dime?
--“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931). First performed in the 1932 musical New Americana. See the Wikipedia entry for more info, but also check out other sources if you plan on writing a paper on it or something.
Well, take me back down where cool
water flows
Let me remember things I love
Stopping at the log where catfish bite
Walkin’ along the
river road at night
Barefoot girls dancin’ in the moonlight
I can hear the bullfrog callin’ me
Wonder if my rope’s still hangin’
to the tree
Love to kick my feet way down in
shallow water
Shoo fly, dragonfly, get back t’your mother
Pick up a flat rock, skip it across
Green River
Up at Cody’s camp I spent my days
With flatcar riders and crosstie walkers
Old Cody, Junior took me over
Said, “You’re gonna find the world is smould’rin’
If you get lost come on home to Green
River”
--Green River, words and music by John C. Fogerty, © 1969 by Jondora Music.
