Author: Tetman Callis

“It’s easy for people to forget that they are not discovering the story, but creating it from random data.” – Rabbit Rabbit, “A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon”

“One of the basic laws of physics is that electric charge is indestructible; it is never lost or created. Electric charges can move from place to place but never appear from nowhere. We say that charge is conserved.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II (emphases in original)

“The total amount of information which has been acquired about the physical world since the beginning of scientific progress is enormous, and it seems almost impossible that any one person could know a reasonable fraction of it. But it is actually quite possible for a physicist to retain a broad knowledge of the physical world rather than to become a specialist in some narrow area. The reasons for this are threefold: First, there are great principles which apply to all the different kinds of phenomena—such as the principles of the conservation of energy and of angular momentum. A thorough understanding of such principles gives an understanding of a great deal all at once. Second, there is the fact that many complicated phenomena, such as the behavior of solids under compression, really basically depend on electrical and quantum-mechanical forces, so that if one understands the fundamental laws of electricity and quantum mechanics, there is at least some possibility of understanding many of the phenomena that occur in complex situations. Finally, there is a most remarkable coincidence: The equations for many different physical situations have exactly the same appearance. Of course, the symbols may be different—one letter is substituted for another—but the mathematical form of the equations is the same. This means that having studied one subject, we immediately have a great deal of direct and precise knowledge about the solutions of the equations of another.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II

“What was that African proverb? A person who has not known pain will hear the sound of weeping and think it is song.” – Sandra Jackson-Opoku, “Diomedéa” (emphasis in original)

“There is no loneliness like the loneliness of being taken from your mother.” – Melissa Chadburn, “ ‘Hansel and Gretel’ in LA County”

“No one has ever complained yet of being too much loved.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)

“You have to remember—everything that occurs in war is horrible. Everything.” – Justin King, “Let’s talk about good guys and bad guys in Russia”

“All Indians grow up with drunks. So many drunks on the reservation, so many. But most Indians never drink. Nobody notices the sober Indians.” – Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues

“The Indian world is tiny, every other Indian dancing just a powwow away. Every Indian is a potential lover, friend, or relative dancing over the horizon, only a little beyond sight. Indians need each other that much; they need to be that close, tying themselves to each other and closing their eyes against the storms.” – Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues

“Whenever one is trying to understand a new phenomenon it is a good idea to take a somewhat oversimplified model; then, having understood the problem with that model, one is better able to proceed to tackle the more exact calculation.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II

“The defeat at Moscow indicated that Operation Barbarossa had failed and Germany could not win the war on terms Hitler expected. The Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad proved that Germany could not win the war on any terms. Later, in the summer of 1943, the immense Battle of Kursk would confirm that Germany would indeed lose the war. The only issues remaining after Kursk were, ‘How long would that process take, and how much would it cost?’ ” – David M. Glantz, The Soviet-German War, 1941-1945: Myths and Realities

“The sisters walked to the church, which was one of those simple buildings, four walls, a door, a crucifix, and twenty folding chairs. Those folding chairs were multidimensional. Set them up facing the front, and they served as pews. Circle them around a teacher in the middle, and you had Sunday School. Push them up to card tables, and you feasted on donated food. Fold those chairs, stack them in a corner, and you cleared a dance space. Folding chairs proved the existence of God.” – Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues

“Birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are mammals.” – Gregory S. Paul, The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

“The more clearly you picture the history of life as an unbroken series of ecosystems, and not just a line of related species, the more clearly you understand the tragedy of what we’re doing to Earth, the consequences of depleting the planet we like to claim we’ve inherited.” – Verlyn Klinkenborg, “What Were Dinosaurs For?”

“I remembered my last visit to the wonderful city of Turin in northern Italy. I’d been struck by how contained and elegant that place was—actually a French city, due to the long shadow of the House of Savoy. Etched in my memory was the serenity of its daily life, which one sensed as a dangerous creator of unexpected absurdities or impressive outbreaks of madness, like Friedrrich Nietzsche’s, when in January 1889 he left his hotel and on the corner of Via Cesare Battisti and Via Carlo Alberto, sobbing, hugged the neck of a horse being whipped by its owner. That day an unstable border broke open for Nietzsche, which had seemed to separate rationality from delirium for several centuries. That day, the writer distanced himself definitively from humanity, however you want to look at it. To put it more simply, he went crazy; although according to Milan Kundera, maybe he was just apologizing to the horse for Descartes.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)

“From a long view of the history of mankind—seen from, say, ten thousand years from now—there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. II

“The Peucinians, whom some call Basstarnians, speak the same language with the Germans, use the same attire, build like them, and live like them, in that dirtiness and sloth so common to all. Somewhat they are corrupted into the fashion of the Sarmatians by the intermarriages of the principal sort with that nation: from whence the Venedians have derived very many of their customs and a great resemblance. For they are continually traversing and infesting with robberies all the forests and mountains lying between the Peucinians and Fennians. Yet they are rather reckoned amongst the Germans, for that they have fixed houses, and carry shields, and prefer travelling on foot, and excel in swiftness. Usages these, all widely differing from those of the Sarmatians, who live on horseback and dwell in waggons. In wonderful savageness live the nation of the Fennians, and in beastly poverty, destitute of arms, of horses, and of homes; their food, the common herbs; their apparel, skins; their bed, the earth; their only hope in their arrows, which for want of iron they point with bones. Their common support they have from the chase, women as well as men; for with these the former wander up and down, and crave a portion of the prey. Nor other shelter have they even for their babes, against the violence of tempests and ravening beasts, than to cover them with the branches of trees twisted together; this a reception for the old men, and hither resort the young. Such a condition they judge more happy than the painful occupation of cultivating the ground, than the labour of rearing houses, than the agitations of hope and fear attending the defence of their own property or the seizing that of others. Secure against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the Gods, they have accomplished a thing of infinite difficulty; that to them nothing remains even to be wished.” – Tacitus, Tacitus on Germany (trans. Thomas Gordon)

“Treacherous is that repose which you enjoy amongst neighbours that are very powerful and very fond of rule and mastership. When recourse is once had to the sword, modesty and fair dealing will be vainly pleaded by the weaker.” – Tacitus, Tacitus on Germany (trans. Thomas Gordon)

“What a small obstacle must be a river, to restrain any nation, as each grew more potent, from seizing or changing habitations; when as yet all habitations were common, and not parted or appropriated by the founding and terror of Monarchies?” – Tacitus, Tacitus on Germany (trans. Thomas Gordon)

“Playing at dice is one of their most serious employments; and even sober, they are gamesters: nay, so desperately do they venture upon the chance of winning or losing, that when their whole substance is played away, they stake their liberty and their persons upon one and the last throw. The loser goes calmly into voluntary bondage. However younger he be, however stronger, he tamely suffers himself to be bound and sold by the winner. Such is their perseverance in an evil course: they themselves call it honour. Slaves of this class, they exchange in commerce, to free themselves too from the shame of such a victory. Of their other slaves they make not such use as we do of ours, by distributing amongst them the several offices and employments of the family. Each of them has a dwelling of his own, each a household to govern. His lord uses him like a tenant, and obliges him to pay a quantity of grain, or of cattle, or of cloth. Thus far only the subserviency of the slave extends. All the other duties in a family, not the slaves, but the wives and children discharge. To inflict stripes upon a slave, or to put him in chains, or to doom him to severe labour, are things rarely seen. To kill them they sometimes are wont, not through correction or government, but in heat and rage, as they would an enemy, save that no vengeance or penalty follows. The freedmen very little surpass the slaves, rarely are of moment in the house; in the community never, excepting only such nations where arbitrary dominion prevails. For there they bear higher sway than the free-born, nay, higher than the nobles. In other countries the inferior condition of freedmen is a proof of public liberty.” – Tacitus, Tacitus on Germany (trans. Thomas Gordon)

“In social feasts, and deeds of hospitality, no nation upon earth was ever more liberal and abounding. To refuse admitting under your roof any man whatsoever, is held wicked and inhuman. Every man receives every comer, and treats him with repasts as large as his ability can possibly furnish. When the whole stock is consumed, he who has treated so hospitably guides and accompanies his guest to the next house, though neither of them invited. Nor avails it, that they were not; they are there received, with the same frankness and humanity. Between a stranger and an acquaintance, in dispensing the rules and benefits of hospitality, no difference is made. Upon your departure, if you ask anything, it is the custom to grant it; and with the same facility, they ask of you. In gifts they delight, but neither claim merit from what they give, nor own any obligation for what they receive. Their manner of entertaining their guests is familiar and kind.” – Tacitus, Tacitus on Germany (trans. Thomas Gordon)

“Silver and gold the Gods have denied them, whether in mercy or in wrath, I am unable to determine.” – Tacitus, Tacitus on Germany (trans. Thomas Gordon)

“Pythagoras is said to have discovered the fact that two similar strings under the same tension and differing only in length, when sounded together give an effect that is pleasant to the ear if the lengths of the strings are in the ratio of two small integers. If the lengths are as one is to two, they then correspond to the octave in music. If the lengths are as two is to three, they correspond to the interval between C and G, which is called a fifth. These intervals are generally accepted as ‘pleasant’ sounding chords. Pythagoras was so impressed by this discovery that he made it the basis of a school—Pythagoreans they were called—which held mystic beliefs in the great powers of numbers. It was believed that something similar would be found out about the planets—or ‘spheres.’ We sometimes hear the expression: ‘the music of the spheres.’ The idea was that there would be some numerical relationships between the orbits of the planets or between other things in nature. People usually think that this is just a kind of superstition held by the Greeks. But is it so different from our own scientific interest in quantitative relationships? Pythagoras’ discovery was the first example, outside geometry, of any numerical relationship in nature. It must have been very surprising to suddenly discover that there was a fact of nature that involved a simple numerical relationship. Simple measurements of lengths gave a prediction about something which had no apparent connection to geometry—the production of pleasant sounds. This discovery led to the extension that perhaps a good tool for understanding nature would be arithmetic and mathematical analysis. The results of modern science justify that point of view. Pythagoras could only have made his discovery by making an experimental observation. Yet this important aspect does not seem to have impressed him. If it had, physics might have had a much earlier start. (It is always easy to look back at what someone else has done and to decide what he should have done!) We might remark on a third aspect of this very interesting discovery: that the discovery had to do with two notes that sound pleasant to the ear. We may question whether we are any better off than Pythagoras in understanding why only certain sounds are pleasant to our ear. The general theory of aesthetics is probably no further advanced now than in the time of Pythagoras. In this one discovery of the Greeks, there are the three aspects: experiment, mathematical relationships, and aesthetics. Physics has made great progress on only the first two parts.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (emphases in the original)

“Anyone who dedicated himself to literature had not renounced the world; the world had simply evicted him, or never admitted him as a tenant. Nothing serious, then; in the end, a poet was someone for whom the world didn’t even exist, because, for him, there was only the radiance of the eternal outside.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)

“It might be an enviable thing to experience genius and dance it in the form of a tango.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)

“My advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)

“He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)

“There was a people that had a chief temple, wherein dwelt a bloodthirsty deity, behind a curtain, guarded by priests. Once fearless hands tore the curtain away. Then all the people saw, instead of a god, a huge, shaggy, voracious spider, like a loathsome cuttlefish. They beat it and shoot at it: it is dismembered already; but still in the frenzy of its final agony it stretches over all the ancient temple its disgusting, clawing tentacles. And the priests, themselves under sentence of death, push into the monster’s grasp all whom they can seize in their terrified, trembling fingers.” – Aleksandr I. Kuprin, “The Outrage—A True Story,” (from Best Russian Short Stories, ed. Thomas Seltzer)

“Every time that some dastardly event or some ignominious failure has occurred, after executing a martyr in a dark corner of a fortress, or after deceiving public confidence, some one who is hidden and unapproachable gets frightened of the people’s anger and diverts its vicious element upon the heads of innocent Jews. Whose diabolical mind invents these pogroms—these titanic blood-lettings, these cannibal amusements for the dark, bestial souls?” – Aleksandr I. Kuprin, “The Outrage—A True Story,” (from Best Russian Short Stories, ed. Thomas Seltzer)

“The bourgeois paterfamilias was specially devised by Heaven to utter commonplaces and trivialities.” – Aleksandr I. Kuprin, “The Outrage—A True Story,” (from Best Russian Short Stories, ed. Thomas Seltzer)