Alt•City

Relatively Speaking

excerpts from E=mc^2 a biography of the world's most famous equation by David Bodanis

"Einstein explained his theory to me every day," Weizmann said, "and soon I was fully convinced that he understood it." (Chaim Weizman on trying to understand the theory of relativity even with Einstein himself as the teacher)

Faraday's limited formal education, curiously enough, turned out to be a great advantage. This doesn't happen often, because when a scientific subject reaches an advanced level, a lack of education usually makes it impossible for outsiders to get started. The doors are closed, the papers unreadable. But in these early days of understanding energy it was a different story. Most science students had been trained to show that any complicated motion could be broken down into a mix of pushes and pulls that worked in straight lines. It was natural for them, accordingly, to try to see if there were any straight-line pulls between magnets and electricity. But this approach didn't show how the power of electricity might tunnel through space to affect magnetism.

Because Faraday did not have that bias of thinking in straight lines, he could turn to the Bible for inspiration. The Sandemanian religious group he belonged to believed in a different geometric pattern: the circle. Humans are holy, they said, and we all owe an obligation to one another based on our holy nature. I will help you, and you will help the next person, and that person will help another, and so on until the circle is complete. This circle wasn't merely an abstract concept. Faraday had spent much of his free time for years either at the church talking about this circular relation, or engaged in charity and mutual helping to carry it out. (on Michael Faraday's discovery of the relationship bewteen magnetic and electrical power)

He did that [his everyday job as an accountant], head down, working long hours, six days a week on average for the next twenty years. Only in his spare time an hour or two in the morning, and then one full day each week did he focus on his science. But he called that single day his "jour de bonheur" his "day of happiness." (on Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, pioneer in the nature of matter)

To say that people have been charming, as Hahn had been all his life, is simply to say that they've developed a reflex to do what will put the individuals around them at ease. It says nothing about their having a moral compass deeper than that. (on Otto Hahn selling out his Jewish colleague Lise Meitner as Hitler came to power in Germany)

[Lyman] Briggs had entered government service during the administration of Grover Cleveland, in 1897, before the Spanish-American war. He was a man of the past, comfortable with that time when everything had seemed easier, and America had been safe. He wanted to keep it that way. (on the original director of the U.S. atomic bomb effort who ignored warnings of German efforts to get the bomb)

[Joseph] Goebbels later noted in his diary: "I received a report about the latest developments in German science. Research in the realm of atomic destruction has now proceeded to a point where... tremendous destruction, it is claimed, can be wrought with a minimum of effort... It is essential that we be ahead of everybody..."

it's [the theory of relativity] a theory about theories: the specification of the two criteria that the speed of light is the same to all observers; that no smoothly moving reference frame inherently indistinguishable from any other which any valid theory must fulfill. If those criteria hold, the theory being considered might be true. If not, then it is definitely false. (a statement by the author which fails to recognize how previous theories have always been the absolute truth against which all truth must be measured; from the flat earth, to an earth-centered astronomy, to classical physics)

fillet of Fogg

excerpts from Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

"If to live in this style is to be eccentric, it must be confessed that there is something good in eccentricity." (Passepartout assessing Phileas Fogg's manner of life)

"He lived alone, and, so to speak, outside of every social relation; and as he knew that in this world account must be taken of friction, and that friction retards, he never rubbed against anybody." (on Phileas Fogg)

"Your watch is slow."
My watch?  A family watch, monsieur, which has come down from my great-grandfather!  It doesn't vary five minutes in the year. It's a perfect chronometer, look you."
""I see how it is," said Fix.  "You have kept London time, which is two hours behind that of Suez.  You ought to regulate your watch at noon in each country."
"I regulate my watch?  Never!"
"Well, then, it will not agree with the sun."
"So much the worse for the sun, monsieur.  The sun will be wrong, then!"
(Passepartout on his watch)
"But where is your master going?"
"Always straight ahead."

"Suppose we save this woman."
"Save the woman Mr. Fogg!"
"I have yet twelve hours to spare; I can devote them to that."
"Why, you are a man of heart!"
"Sometimes," replied Phileas Fogg, quietly; "when I have the time."

"The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment." (on rescuing the rajahs wife, Aouda)

"Would you like a servant, sir?" asked Passepartout.
"A servant!" cried Mr. Batulcar caressing the thick grey beard which hung from his chin.  "I already have two who are obedient and faithful, have never left me, and serve me for their nourishment, and here they are," added he, holding out his two robust arms, furrowed with veins as large as the strings of a bass-viol."

"I pity you, then, Mr. Fogg, for solitude is a sad thing, with no heart to which to confide your griefs.  They say, though, that misery itself, shared by two sympathetic souls, may be borne with patience." (Aouda at the end of the journey)

Hidden in Jekyll

Excerpts from Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

"And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public.  Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me." (Jekyll reflecting upon his duplicitous nature prior to inventing his potion)

"I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.  I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature." (Jekyll's first experience of his alter-ego, Hyde)

"Now, however, and in the light of that morning's accident, I was led to remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side.  All things therefore seemed to point to this; that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse."

comment - Jekyll's insistence that this experiment divided out his ill nature from his good is belied by the fact that his 'good' side takes delight in indulging his selfish wicked side.  The good which is controlling the whole process is revealed to be selfish too - and in the end, disastrously so.

"As the acuteness of this remorse [over a murder Hyde had committed] began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy.  The problem of my conduct was solved.  Hyde was thenceforth impossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to the better part of my existence; and O, how I rejoiced to think of it! with what willing humility I embraced anew the restrictions of natural life!"

comment - the death of an innocent man is the temporary reprieve for Jekyll who seeks to hide from his guilt within the shell of his goodness.

"I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold." (hiding from the murderer within)

"It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours.  I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.  After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will with the lazy cruelty of their neglect.  And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering.  These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation.  I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde.  A moment before I had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved--the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows."

watch closely

excerpts from Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

"one of Gottman's [a researcher] findings is that for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a given encounter has to be at least five to one."

"a central argument in Gottman's work is that all marriages have a distinctive pattern, a kind of marital DNA, that surfaces in any kind of meaningful interaction. This is why Gottman asks couples to tell the story of how they met, because he has found that when a husband and wife recount the most important episode in their relationship, that pattern shows up right away."

"the presence of contempt in a marriage can even predict such things as how many colds a husband or a wife gets; in other words, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system. Contempt is closely related to disgust, and what disgust and contempt are about is completely rejecting and excluding someone from the community."

"Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet understands this implicitly: you can learn as much or more from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face."

"Malpractice sounds like one of those infinitely complicated and multidimensional problems. But in the end it comes down to a matter of respect, and the simplest way that respect is communicated is through tone of voice, and the most corrosive tone of voice that a doctor can assume is a dominant tone."

"We have a sense of what a leader is supposed to look like, and that stereotype is so powerful that when someone fits it, we simply become blind to other considerations."

"They were so focused on the mechanics and the process that they never looked at the problem holistically. In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning."

"there is a kind of automatic tendency among physicians to believe that a life-or-death decision has to be a difficult decision."

"...and putting ice cream in a round container convinces us it tastes better just as surely as making the chips bigger in chocolate chip ice cream does.  The real question here is why does round taste better than rectangle or why does yellow labeling make a more lemony drink?"

"All of us gravitate toward things that mean something to us, and for most of us, that's people. But if people don't anchor meaning for you, then you seek something that does."

"Yet, in interviews with police officers who have been involved with shootings, these same details appear again and again: extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. This is how the human body reacts to extreme stress, and it makes sense. Our mind, faced with a life-threatening situation, drastically limits the range and amount of information that we have to deal with. Sound and memory and broader social understanding are sacrificed in favor of heightened awareness of the threat directly in front of us."

"Ekman has developed a number of simple tests of people's mind-reading abilities; in one, he plays a short clip of a dozen or so people claiming to have done something that they either have or haven't actually done, and the test taker's task is to figure out who is lying. The tests are surprisingly difficult. Most people come out right at the level of chance. But who does well? People who have practiced. Stroke victims who have lost the ability to speak, for example, are virtuosos, because their infirmity has forced them to become far more sensitive to the information written on people's faces. People who have had highly abusive childhoods also do well; like stroke victims, they've had to practice the difficult art of reading minds, in their case the minds of alcoholic or violent parents."

badly obsessed with good form

excerpts from Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

"Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the lines must already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school; and its traditions still clung to him like garments, with which indeed they are largely concerned. Thus it was offensive to him even now to board a ship in the same dress in which he grappled her, and he still adhered in his walk to the school's distinguished slouch. But above all he retained the passion for good form. Good form! However much he may have degenerated, he still knew that this is all that really matters. From far within him he heard a creaking as of rusty portals, and through them came a stern tap-tap-tap, like hammering in the night when one cannot sleep. "Have you been good form to-day?" was their eternal question.

"[The] Most disquieting reflection of all [for Hook], was it not bad form to think about good form?"

"[Hook thought] why do they find Smee lovable? He pursued the problem like the sleuth-hound that he was. If Smee was lovable, what was it that made him so? A terrible answer suddenly presented itself--"Good form?" Had the bo'sun good form without knowing it, which is the best form of all?"

"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg." This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form."

Snatched

excerpt from The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson

Cold, light, and selfish in the last resort, he had that modicum of prudence, miscalled morality, which keeps a man from inconvenient drunkeness or punishable theft.

Tx2

Excerpts from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

  "Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.  That alone wouldn't make the subject pleasant, I should think."  (on Dr. Manette's past and it's present effect on his mind)

"In silence they go walking up and down together, walking up and down till her love and company have brought him to himself."  (on Lucie's ability to help her father)

When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him. (of Sydney Carton)

The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. (of Jerry Cruncher and his praying wife)

He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.  (on the mender of roads and his description of the captured prisoner)

In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast.  In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going.

Wait and Hope

excerpts from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

"Believe me, to seek a quarrel with a man is a bad method of pleasing the woman who loves that man." (Danglars to Fernand)

Joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.

With the rapid instinct of selfishness, Caderousse readily perceived the solidity of this mode of reasoning; he gazed, doubtfully, wistfully, on Danglars, and then caution supplanted generosity.

Caligula or Nero, those treasure-seekers, those desirers of the impossible, would have accorded to the poor wretch, in exchange for his wealth, the liberty he so earnestly prayed for. But the kings of modern times, restrained by the limits of mere probability, have neither courage nor desire. They fear the ear that hears their orders, and the eye that scrutinizes their actions.

Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

Escape had never once occurred to him. There are, indeed, some things which appear so impossible that the mind does not dwell on them for an instant.

"What would you not have accomplished if you had been free? a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination." (Faria to Dantes)

Ah, sir," replied Caderousse, "we cannot console those who will not be consoled,"

"Lead two sheep to the butcher's, two oxen to the slaughterhouse, and make one of them understand that his companion will not die; the sheep will bleat for pleasure, the ox will bellow with joy. But man — man, whom God created in his own image — man, upon whom God has laid his first, his sole commandment, to love his neighbor — man, to whom God has given a voice to express his thoughts — what is his first cry when he hears his fellow-man is saved? A blasphemy. Honor to man, this masterpiece of nature, this king of the creation!" And the count burst into a laugh; a terrible laugh, that showed he must have suffered horribly to be able thus to laugh.

"And what do they say of it in the world?" In which world? we have so many worlds in the year of grace 1838.""

"So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing deeds, and which, more than once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the success of those projects which require rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution. In reality, when you have once devoted your life to your enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources doubled." (The Count of Monte Cristo)

"Now, really, let me ask, sir, have you? — do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called anything?"" (The Count of Monte Cristo to Danglars)

To no class of persons is the presentation of a gratuitous opera-box more acceptable than to the wealthy millionaire, who still hugs economy while boasting of carrying a king's ransom in his waistcoat pocket.

"M. Noirtier? But I thought you told me he had become entirely paralyzed, and that all his faculties were completely destroyed? "Yes, his bodily faculties, for he can neither move nor speak, nevertheless he thinks, acts, and wills in the manner I have described. I left him about five minutes ago, and he is now occupied in dictating his will to two notaries. "But to do this he must have spoken?" "He has done better than that.  He has made himself understood.

"I think I may aspire to that honor," said Danglars with a smile, which reminded Monte Cristo of the sickly moons which bad artists are so fond of daubing into their pictures of ruins.

"there is your proud and selfish nature. You would expose the self-love of another with a hatchet, but you shrink if your own is attacked with a needle.""

"I do not think it is a moment to give way to useless sorrow; leave that for those who like to suffer at their leisure and indulge their grief in secret. There are such in the world, and God will doubtless reward them in heaven for their resignation on earth, but those who mean to contend must not lose one precious moment, but must return immediately the blow which fortune strikes."

"Indeed, Beauchamp, you are unbearable. Politics has made you laugh at everything, and political men have made you disbelieve everything. But when you have the honor of associating with ordinary men, and the pleasure of leaving politics for a moment, try to find your affectionate heart, which you leave with your stick when you go to the Chamber."

"my dear fellow, you understand one must never be eccentric. If one's lot is cast among fools, it is necessary to study folly."

"The coward who feared death rejoiced at perpetual disgrace; for like all galley-slaves, you said, `I may escape from prison, I cannot from the grave.'"

"Morcerf was so completely overwhelmed by this great and unexpected calamity that he could scarcely stammer a few words as he looked around on the assembly. This timidity, which might proceed from the astonishment of innocence as well as the shame of guilt, conciliated some in his favor; for men who are truly generous are always ready to compassionate when the misfortune of their enemy surpasses the limits of their hatred."

"Very well," replied M. Danglars, who had listened to all this preamble with imperturbable coolness, but without understanding a word, since like every man burdened with thoughts of the past, he was occupied with seeking the thread of his own ideas in those of the speaker.

"From my earliest recollections, I have been beloved by no one — so much the worse; that has naturally led me to love no one — so much the better — now you have my profession of faith." (Eugenie to her father)

In fact, at half-past eight in the evening the grand salon, the gallery adjoining, and the three other drawing-rooms on the same floor, were filled with a perfumed crowd, who sympathized but little in the event, but who all participated in that love of being present wherever there is anything fresh to be seen. An Academician would say that the entertainments of the fashionable world are collections of flowers which attract inconstant butterflies, famished bees, and buzzing rones.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

Freaking notes

(excerpts from Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner)

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work - whereas economics represents how it actually does work.

Armed with information, experts can exert a gigantic, if unspoken, leverage: fear.

Here is the (real estate) agent's main weapon: the conversion of information into fear."

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.

No one is more susceptible to an expert's fearmongering than a parent. Fear is in fact a major component of the act of parenting. A parent, after all, is the steward of another creature's life, a creature who in the beginning is more helpless than the newborn of nearly any other species. This leads a lot of parents to spend a lot of their parenting energy simply being scared.

In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. (In a country with 6 million pools, this means that roughly 550 children under the age of ten drown each year.) Meanwhile, there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 million-plus guns. (In a country with an estimated under ten die each year from guns.) The likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn't even close...

But fear best thrives in the present tense. That is why experts rely on it; in a world that is increasingly impatient with long-term processes, fear is a potent short-term play.

The data show that car seats are, at best, nominally helpful. It is certainly safer to keep a child in the rear seat than sitting on a lap in the front seat, where in the event of an accident he essentially becomes a projectile. But the safety to be gained here is from preventing the kids from riding shotgun, not from strapping them into a $200 car seat. Nevertheless, many parents so magnify the benefit of a car seat that they trek to the local police station or firehouse to have it installed just right. Theirs is a gesture of love, surely, but also a gesture of what might be called obsessive parenting.  (Obsessive parents know who they are and are generally proud of the fact; non-obsessive parents also know who the obsessives are and tend to snicker at them.)

South Pacific

excerpts from James Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific"

They had an American quality.  They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives.  After that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers.  Longer and longer shadows will obscure them, until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge.

"Mom always said it was best to live right and make up your mind on the spot."

The new skipper was a Navy type.  He was a commander fifty-two years old.  He would never go higher.  He was a hard drinking man who could not be relied upon.  Yet he was an excellent fellow, and no one would prefer charges against him.  So he dragged on and on, from one unimportant job to another.  Many loved him but few respected him.

He had a shock of unruly blond hair.  His face, although not handsome, was masculine; and he carried himself as if her were one of the young men to whom the world will one day belong.

"You see sir," he said, addressing Bus, "we've lost a lot of men [building] this (air)strip.  Every foot has been paid for.  It's not to be misused lightly."

Orthodox ways

excerpts from The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware1995

It is likewise significant that, when at the Eucharist we offer back to God the firstfruits of the earth, we offer them not in their original form but reshaped by the hand of man: we bring to the altar not sheaves of wheat but loaves of bread, not grapes but wine.

...the one who asks for mercy has no claims upon the other, no rights to which he can appeal.

Jesus Christ is the second Adam, showing us the true character of our own human personhood.  God alone is the perfect man.

"My God, my God..."  must mean that at this moment Jesus is truly experiencing the spiritual death of separation from God.  Not only does he shed his blood for us, but for our sakes he accepts even the loss of God.

Loving humility is a terrible force:  it is the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it. (quoting The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky)

By loving or hating another, I cause the other in some measure to become that which I see in him or her.  Not for myself alone, but for the lives of all around me, my love is creative, just as my hatred is destructive.

...And I think that anyone who has had this experience of eternity, if only once; who has understood the way he is going, if only once; who has seen the One who goes before him, if only once - such a person will find it hard to turn aside from this path:  to him all comfort will seem ephemeral, all treasure valueless, all companions unnecessary, if amongst them he fails to see the One Companion, carrying his Cross.  (quoting Mother Maria of Paris)

Just as the air remains itself invisible to us but acts as the medium through which we see and hear other things, so the Spirit does not reveal to us his own face, but shows us always the face of Christ.

If we do not find prayer difficult, perhaps it is because we have not really started to pray.

"The hour through which you are at the present passing, the man whom you meet here and now, the task on which you are engaged at this very moment - these are always the most important moments in your whole life."  (quoting Paul Evdokimov)

The contemplative is the one who, like Moses before the burning bush, takes off his shoes - that is, strips himself of the deadness of familiarity and boredom - and who then recognizes that the place where he is standing is holy ground.  To contemplate nature is to become aware of the dimensions of sacred space and sacred time.  This material object, this person to whom I am talking, this moment of time - each is holy, each is in its own way unrepeatable and so of infinite value, each can serve as a window into eternity...To contemplate nature..is to discover...that the whole universe is a cosmic burning bush, filled with the divine Fire yet not consumed.

Just as the mother teaches her baby the name 'father' and  makes the child repeat the word with her again and again, until she brings it to use this name rather than any other childish cry, so that even when asleep it calls aloud to it's father:  so must the soul learn to repeat and to cry out "Lord Jesus." (quoting St Diadochus of Photike)

Contraries

excerpts from the Contrarian's Guide to Leadership by Steven Sample, 2002

...just as you can't become an effective leader by trying to mimic a famous leader from the past, so you can't develop your full leadership potential, or even fully appreciate the art of leadership, by slavishly adhering to conventional wisdom.  The key is to break free, if only fleetingly, from the bonds of conventional thinking so as to bring your natural creativity and intellectual independence to the fore.

USC is in the business of teaching, research and public service.  To that end we must attract the very best students and faculty and raise a great deal of money to support them.  We are decidedly not in the business of erecting buildings for their own sake; rather, we build buildings solely to help us carry out our academic mission.

I'm always astounded by the extent of the herd instinct within the artistic professions.   You might expect a high degree of conformity among such prosaic practitioners as doctors, engineers, and accountants, but wouldn't you think that clothing designers, film-makers, painters, musicians, architects and writers would be militarily individualistic?  The very best are, of course, but most of the rest are slaves to fashion.
(my note: Truth is at the heart of authentic creativity and people crave truth less than almost anything.)

The power of modern science lies in the concept of falsification; that is, any scientific theory someone might propose is as good as any other theory unless or until there is experimental evidence to the contrary.  Thus in the modern scientific tradition, one does not "prove" a theory; rather, one can only disprove it.  As Albert Einstein observed, "No amount of experimentation can prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."  But until the theory is in fact disproved or falsified, until it's found to be at odds with experimental evidence, it's accepted as being true.  In a sense, then, scientific theories live in a Darwinian world in which each is vulnerable to extinction at any moment.

Social scientists spend a lot of time arguing over definitions of terms, and how one should go about measuring the quantities encompassed by those terms, and what instruments and units one should use in making those measurements.  By contrast, natural scientists spend relatively little time squabbling over such matters.  As a consequence, a really silly theory in the natural sciences can often be discredited in a matter of a year or so, whereas it might take a century to convincingly falsify a theory in the social sciences.

I've always believed that a physicist who can't say something intelligible about quantum mechanics to a bright twelve year old simply doesn't understand quantum mechanics himself.

It's simply inconceivable to the average person that he should under any circumstances allow a subordinate to make an erroneous decision for which he (the leader) will be held ultimately responsible.  But that is in fact the very essence of major-league leadership.

Finally, when making really important decisions, a contrarian leader listens carefully to his conscience or, if he is religious, to his God.  The operative word here is listens.  When most people try to carry on a conversation with their inner voice (be it the voice of God or conscience), they wind up doing all the talking.  That's because we naturally fear our inner voice - we're afraid it might tell us something we don't want to hear.

...as a practical matter, a leader needs to know where his ethical convictions begin to diverge  from pure, cold self-interest.  To help in that regard, let's consider a question which I have posed at times to newly minted graduates at commencement ceremonies at which I've been invited to speak.  It is an extremely difficult and often quite personal and embarrassing question.  No, it has nothing to do with sex. Rather, the question is:  How do you feel about God?

What I have found is that the vast majority of people - leaders and followers alike - duck this question altogether.  Discovering how one feels about God is simply too difficult or frightening for most people to address in any serious or meaningful way....

There are millions of people who regularly attend religious services, yet haven't the foggiest idea of how they feel about God, or what kind of relationship they have with their God, or what they expect of him, or what they believe he expects of them.

...we are as fully human, and no more human, than our brothers and sisters in ancient Egypt or in modern Mongolia.  And one of mankind's deepest and most abiding concerns for all times, in all places, and for all peoples, is our feeling for and relationship with God.

Whenever a staff person is empowered to act as a buffer between a leader and his line officers, the results can be truly disastrous.  The primary reason is that, under these circumstances, the staff person can exercise the power of the leader while being shielded from the heat and accountability that should always attend the exercise of power.

...whatever the basis of his authority may be, when an effective leader turns in a new direction his followers turn with him; that's the test of real leadership.

...the contrarian leader knows that telling compelling stories is one of the most powerful tools there is for establishing a close bond with his followers and for inculcating his vision among them.  The most effective leader in history in this regard was Jesus.

...the very notion of perfection is almost antithetical to effective leadership...Whatever it is you're doing can always be done better, and hence there is no upper bound on the amount of resources that can be consumed in the pursuit of perfection.

Whaling

excerpts from Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself - the man's a human being just as I am:  he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him.  Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Now Jonah's captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless.  In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.

With much interest I sat watching him.  Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face - at least to my taste - his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable.  You cannot hide the soul.

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.

Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his tomahawk.  Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our still prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South.  It is not down in any map; true places never are.

The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrent's beds, unerringly I rush!  Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.

...the sight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form.  On his broad back flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake.  The bearer looked nobler than the rider.

But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of his - these words best omitted here; for live under the blessed light of the evangelical land.  Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.

Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring carriage ashore.  But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable.  The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it?  Mark how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea - mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides...the sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.

As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilised laughter forked upwards out of them like the flame from the furnace, as to and fro, in their front, the harpooners wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat around her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man!  Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller, believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly.  Tomorrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least, gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp - all others but liars!

And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in sunny spaces.  And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

...at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn.  Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.

Out of the Dark

excerpts from "The Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer too, while most seaman lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life.  Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them - the ship; and so is their country - the sea.

When annoyed at meal times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house had to be built.  This was the station's mess room.  Where he sat was first place - the rest were nowhere.

The word "ivory" rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed.  You would think they were praying to it.  A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse.  By Jove!  I've never seen anything so unreal in my life.  And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.

This was the foreman - a boiler-maker by trade - a good worker.  He was a land, bony, yellow-faced man, with intense eyes.  His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist.

Meat from the Slaughterhouse

excerpts from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, 1969

She took Billy with her whenever she played, taught him to play a little, too.  She said she was going to join a church as soon as she decided which one was right.
     She never did decide.  She did develop a terrific hankering for a crucifix, though.  And she bought one from a Sante Fe gift shop during a trip the little family made out West during the Great Depression.  Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

Billy Pilgrim had stopped in the forest.  He was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed.  His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring.  He was like a poet in the Parthenon.

...All time is time.  It does not change.  It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations.  It simply is.  Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber." 
     "You sound to me as though you don't believe in free will," said Billy Pilgrim.

"If I hadn't spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn't have any idea what was meant by 'free will.'  I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports from one hundred more.  Only on Earth is there any talk of free will."

Billy covered his head with his blanket again.  He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward-always got much sicker until she went away.  It wasn't that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality.  She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education.
     She upset Billy simply by being his mother.  She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.

"Aren't you cold?"
"I hadn't noticed."
"Oh my God, you are a child.  If we leave you alone here, you'll freeze to death, you'll starve to death."  And so on.  It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.

Lazzaro was talking to himself about people he was going to have killed after the war, and rackets he was going to work, and women he was going to [have], whether they wanted to or not.  If he had been a dog in a city, a policeman would have shot him and sent his head to a laboratory, to see if he had rabies.

Extra Points

excerpts from Everybody's All-American by Frank Deford, 1981

Gavin Grey was famous, handsome and heroic, and in no ways a man or a real person.

What was different about the judge from all other people I knew was (as I figured out much later) that he arrived at various and sundry conclusions via thinking.  It was an extraordinary break for me that I had encountered such an individual, for very few children ever meet anyone who actually thinks.

"You see, we see entirely too much nowadays, Donnie-Me-Boy.  We used to buy what we could afford and live with our dreams, but now we buy our dream items on credit and thus are confined by all our purchases."

Being beautiful or being a natural athlete is, past a point, only a matter of trying to stay one.  Those of us who are neither can go about the simple business of living in a much freer way.  We don't have to agonize about losing our magic--just our youth.

As a rule, the worst people for spoiling athletes are women, fraternity brothers, and clergymen.

Where talent is concerned, there is no such thing as amateur.

And at that, for no reason, Sample said, "Praise God."  It reminded me of a cat yawning.  They do that all of a sudden for no good reason, either.  It left me even more uneasy.  I know there is nothing wrong with saying "Praise God," and I certainly heard enough of that sort of thing firsthand, growing up in the South, but somehow it always seemed to me to be terribly bad manners, rather like kissing with your mouth open in public.

Pulled from McTeague

quotations from McTeague by Frank Norris, 1899

He had the thin, eager, cat-like lips of the covetous; eyes that had grown keen as those of a lynx from long searching amidst muck and debris; and claw-like, prehensile fingers--the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disburses.

He counted out to her the price of all her junk, grudging each piece of money as if it had been the blood of his veins.

They took great pleasure in each other's company, but silently and with reservation, having the masculine horror of any demonstration of friendship.

Perhaps he dimly saw that this must be so, that it belonged to the changeless order of things--the man desiring the woman only for what she withholds; the woman worshiping the man for that which she yields up to him.  With each concession gained the man's desire cools; with every surrender made the woman's adoration increases.

Polk street rubbed elbows with the 'avenue' one block above.  There were certain limits which its dwellers could not overstep; but unfortunately for them, these limits were poorly defined.  They could never be sure of themselves.  At an unguarded moment they might be taken for 'toughs,' so they generally erred in the other direction, and were absurdly formal.  No people have a keener eye for the amenities than those whose social position is not assured.

She--perhaps McTeague as well--felt that there was a certain inadequateness about the [wedding] ceremony.  Was that all there was to it?  Did just those few muttered phrases make them man and wife?  It had been over in a few moments, but it had bound them for life.  Had not something been left out?  Was not the whole affair cursory, superficial?  It was disappointing.

She began to love him more and more, not for what he was, but for what she had given up to him.

With the brusque resolve and intrepidity that sometimes seizes upon very timid people--the courage of the coward greater than all others--she had presented herself at the old Englishman's half open door...

She was alone, a solitary, abandoned woman, lost in the lowest eddies of the great city's tide--the tide that always ebbs.

Shanspeak

excerpts from The Blue-eyed Shan by Stephen Becker

After a moment Aung said, "Plenty trouble China side."
Greenwood said, "Want to know a secret?"
Aung caught his breath. "You tell me.  I no tell any man."
Greenwood said, "Plenty trouble Burma side too."
Aung considered this nugget, then looked reproachfully at his passenger.  "That is humor."
"That is humor.  You watch the road please."
Aung was laughing.  "Plenty trouble every side."
"That's the first rule,"  Greenwood said.  "Plenty trouble every side."

"Wars make prodigies."
"They also make good men bad and bad men good," Greenwood said.
"And which are you?"
"I cannot say.  Perhaps my war is not over."

"A consolation in time of retreat," Olveskoy maintained.
"We are not retreating," Yang said.  "We are withdrawing in good order."
    "An improvement," Olveskoy said.  "Until now my whole life has been a retreat.  Withdrawing in good order is like a victory."

Nuang smiled at his wife, who returned the smile.  There were moments in Nuang's life so complete, so swollen, that he feared the gods' wrath, as if one day he might be made to pay a great price.

"Does the work have a name?  Are you a magistrate?"
    "The Shan have no word for it.  I am a man of science and my science is man.  I am also a professor."
..."So what have you learned?"  Jum-aw did not mock; he sought truth.
"Well, I have learned to ask you why you want to know."
     "Ah.  Then wisdom is questions and not answers."
"There is much truth in that."

And when the time came, Yang Yu-lin was enrolled in a foreign university in Peking, a Roman Catholic institution run by Frenchmen and their Chinese minions.  Its Catholicism was incidental.  Yang's father had no doctrinal prejudices; worshipping his own ancestors, conferring with Confucius, and communing with Lao-tzu, being, in short, an ignorant and barbarous reactionary, he believed, like so many educated and civilized liberals, that the various forms of Christianity were so many childhood diseases--discommoding, itchy and to be suffered for no more than three weeks.

His own ecstasy was, nevertheless, constant.  He was permanently intoxicated, perhaps insane.  He no longer lived on earth but in some starry realm, lovers' heaven, gods' madhouse.  In sober moments, when at work or writing dutifully to his father, he feared retribution.  With her in public places, he could barely breathe for joy, pride, immortality.  In private he knew impulses to weep, rage aloud, hang himself--it was all too much for one poor heart to withstand.  He was not sure always that it was she, precisely; perhaps it was the loving and not its object that he loved.

"There was a warrior inside the scholar, and the war woke him, and I wonder if he ever went back to sleep."

"And now I ask this:  Who upholds the world if not the righteous man?  And who is a righteous man if not he who travels far to free a slave?  And this Green Wood, when his death was upon him today, what did he ask for?  That the innocent be spared.  And did he grovel?  No.  Did he haggle?  No.  I tell you, there was less of me seven years ago than there is of a tokay, and now I am half an elephant, but I am the same soul, and even if I have not remembered this Green Wood once a year I do not forget that my life is his."

They bore the body to General Yang, the body of a corporal from Honan, a scrawny farm boy conscripted to fight the Communists.  The men gathered in soldier's silence, and Yang said a few words, and they buried him there, just off the trail, in a glade ten miles from the majestic Salween, a long way from home, but what dead man is not?

Hating America was an international pastime; he had learned that since the war.  If you want a man to hate you, save his life.

Olevskoy shouted, "No! Absolutely not!  I will not risk an ambush!"
     "I swear to you,"  Greenwood shouted, "that there will be no ambush, and that you will have the freedom of the village afterward."  Distant echoes, then calm again.
Olevskoy shouted, "Do you believe in God?"
Greenwood was flabbergasted.  After a moment he shouted, "No!"
     "Then who are you to swear to anything?"

It is not easy to die well when you have lived badly.

Passages from India

quotations from E.M. Forster's A Passage to India

"One can tip too much as well as too little, indeed the coin that buys the exact truth has not yet been minted."

"It is easy to sympathize at a distance," said an old gentleman with a beard.  "I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear."

...she shook hands with the group and said a few words of welcome in Urdu.  She had learnt the lingo, but only to speak to her servants, so she knew none of the politer forms and of the verbs only the imperative mood.

"We're out here to do justice and keep the peace.  Them's my sentiments.  India isn't a drawing room."
     "Your sentiments are those of a god," she said quietly...
Trying to recover his temper he said, "India likes gods."
     "And Englishmen like posing as gods."

...the conversation had become unreal since Christianity had entered it.  Ronnie approved of religion as long as it endorsed the National Anthem, but he objected  when it attempted to influence his life.

It was as if irritation exuded from the very soil.  Could one have been so petty on a Scottish moor or an Italian alp?  Fielding wondered afterwards.  There seemed no reserve of tranquility to draw upon in India.

Their crackling bad humor left them, but the heaviness of the spirit remained; thunderstorms seldom clear the air.

He could hear church bells as he drowsed, both from the civil station and from the missionaries out beyond the slaughter hous--different bells and rung with different intent, for one set was calling firmly to Anglo-India, and the other feebly to mankind.  He did not object to the first set; the other he ignored knowing their inefficiency.

It was, in a new form, the old, old trouble that eats the heart out of every civilization; snobbery, the desire for possessions, creditable appendages; and it is to escape this rather than the lusts of the flesh that the saints retreat to the Himalayas.

Although though her hard school-mistressy manner remained, she was no longer examining life, but being examined by it; she had become a real person.

Ronny's religion was of the sterilized Public School brand, which never goes bad even in the tropics.  Wherever he entered, mosque, cave, or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the Fifth Form, and condemned as "weakening" and attempt to understand them.

Sir Gilbert, though not an enlightened man held enlightened opinions.  Exempted by a long career in the Secretariate from personal contact with the peoples of India, he was able to speak of them urbanely, and to deplore racial prejudice.

Mocking Birds

from To Kill a Mockingbird:

"Did you know some of 'em came out of the woods one Saturday and passed by this place and told me me and my flowers were going to hell?"
     "Your flowers too?"
"Yes ma'am.  They'd burn right with me.  They thought I spent too much time in God's outdoors and not enough time inside the house reading the Bible."

BookBond an explanation of this section

  Having to be a schedule-driven reader in the past (had to get in the daily 'quiet time' amount of bible reading...that's another thought for another day) I have at this point found in my bible reading the ability to let something catch me and hold me.  I don't have to keep going anymore.  The method is simple; as I read there are often 'interesting' things, but not so often 'arresting' things.  If I can keep going, I do, but if something genuinely holds me I stop and make note of it and let God move it around in me.  Many of the pieces found in my bible study notes sections come from these arresting words or passages.   

I read widely and never cease to find amazing slivers of God's image expressed through authors, many of whom disbelieve in the Creator. The image of God in man is revealed in many ways, but one which seems most obvious to me is in man's ability to create.  Actually man has more than an ability to create, we have a need to create.  I find the same phenomena of interest-arrest happening when I read anything created by one of my God's creations.  BookBond is a section full of arresting pieces from the books I am reading.  They make me laugh, think, sorrow, hope...they help me to enjoy being alive and so to me point me back to the giver and sustainer of my life, Jesus.