Category: Verandah
“We have become tireless voyeurs of death: he is on the morning news and the evening news and on the breaking, middle-of–the-day news as well—not the celebrity death, I mean, but the everyone-else death. A roadside-accident figure, covered with a sheet. A dead family, removed from a ramshackle faraway building pocked and torn by bullets. The transportation dead. The dead in floods and hurricanes and tsunamis, in numbers called ‘tolls.’ The military dead, presented in silence on your home screen, looking youthful and well combed. The enemy war dead or rediscovered war dead, in higher figures. Appalling and dulling totals not just from this year’s war but from the ones before that, and the ones way back that some of us still around may have also attended. All the dead from wars and natural events and school shootings and street crimes and domestic crimes that each of us has once again escaped and felt terrible about and plans to go and leave wreaths or paper flowers at the site of. There’s never anything new about death, to be sure, except its improved publicity. At second hand, we have become death’s expert witnesses; we know more about death than morticians, feel as much at home with it as those poor bygone schlunks trying to survive a continent-ravaging, low-digit-century epidemic. Death sucks but, enh—click the channel.” – Roger Angell, “This Old Man”
“One of saddest lessons in history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.” – Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark
“Expectation bias is a well-established phenomenon that occurs in scientific analysis when investigator(s) reach a premature conclusion without having examined or considered all of the relevant data. Instead of collecting and examining all of the data in a logical and unbiased manner to reach a scientifically reliable conclusion, the investigator(s) uses the premature determination to dictate investigative processes, analyses, and, ultimately, conclusions, in a way that is not scientifically valid. The introduction of expectation bias into the investigation results in the use of only that data that supports this previously formed conclusion and often results in the misinterpretation and/or the discarding of data that does not support the original opinion. Investigators are strongly cautioned to avoid expectation bias.” – Technical Committee on Fire Investigations, Sec. 4.3.8, NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations (2011 Edition)
“Any hypothesis that is incapable of being tested is an invalid hypothesis. A hypothesis developed based on the absence of data is an example of a hypothesis that is incapable of being tested. The inability to refute a hypothesis does not mean that the hypothesis is true.” – Technical Committee on Fire Investigations, Sec. 4.3.6.1, NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations (2011 Edition)
“They say I’m lazy, but it takes all my time.” – Joe Walsh, “Life’s Been Good”
“If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more fucking time, but I would really settle for less fucking tragedy.” – John Stewart, The Daily Show, Dec. 3, 2014
“Complete privacy does not exist in this world except in a desert, and anyone who is not a hermit must expect and endure the ordinary incidents of the community life of which he is a part. Thus he must expect more or less casual observation of his neighbors as to what he does, and that his comings and goings and his ordinary daily activities, will be described in the press as a matter of casual interest to others. The ordinary reasonable man does not take offense at a report in a newspaper that he has returned from a visit, gone camping in the woods or given a party at his house for his friends. Even minor and moderate annoyance, as for example through public disclosure of the fact that the plaintiff has clumsily fallen downstairs and broken his ankle, is not sufficient to give him cause of action under the rule stated in this Section [652D]. It is only when the publicity given to him is such that a reasonable person would feel justified in feeling seriously aggrieved by it, that the cause of action arises.” – Kenneth S. Abraham and Albert Clark Tate, Jr., compilers, A Concise Restatement of Torts
“After 9/11 in New York, a horrific but specific injury was deliberately levered into an apocalyptic panic. In the annals of courage and utter cowardice, none are more vivid than the contrasting pictures of Churchill on the rooftop of 10 Downing Street, coolly watching the Blitz, and Dick Cheney cowering in a bunker to make his fear contagious. “ – Adam Gopnik, “A Point of View: Four Types of Anxiety and How to Cure Them”
“There was a period in my life when I was spending time among great sleight-of-hand men, card magicians, in Las Vegas, and one of them slipped me a guide to card cheating that had been privately printed by a professional card cheat. (Card magic and card cheating are Siamese twins, and no great card magician has not flirted with fiddling his neighbours).
It was a sour piece of work, but it taught me something vital. Since a card cheat can only cheat effectively on his own deal, unless he has the cards marked (hard to do) the rest of the time he has to just play smart, and this means fully internalising, as instant reflexes, all the statistical probabilities of card playing. I recall the cheater’s insistent formula about these odds, almost his precise words, with indecent clarity: If the odds on whatever it might be—say, drawing to an inside straight—are 10-to-one, you’ll see it this week; if it’s 100-to-one, you won’t see it this week, but you will see it this year. If it’s 1000-to-one you won’t see it this year, but you will probably see it once. Anything more than that—10,000-to-one, 100,000-to-one—you’re never going to see at the card table. It’s just never going to happen. Yeah, but it will happen, to someone you say! Someone draws an inside straight. Yeah, he said, but you won’t.” – Adam Gopnik, “A Point of View: Four Types of Anxiety and How to Cure Them”
“There are some things in life that people simply have to put up with. A glaring stranger is one of them.” – Neal R. Bevans, Tort Law for Paralegals
“The beneficial effect of doubling the home market for our industry by the simple expedient of higher wages for all employees marked the opening of new vistas of prosperity if not the birth of a vast new economic concept.” – Hugh Johnson to John J. Pershing, September 28, 1930
“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.” – William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“You must maintain your composure in the airplane or you will die. You learn that from your first day flying.” – Captain Alfred C. Haynes, United Airlines Flight 232 (1989)
“You never merely write; you write to someone.” – Deborah E. Bouchoux, Aspen Handbook for Legal Writers (emphasis in original)
“Reasons briefely set downe by the auctor to perswade every one to lerne to singe.
First, it is a knowledge easely taught, and quickly learned, where there is a good master, and an apt scoller.
Second, the exercise of singing is delightful to nature, and good to preserve the health of Man.
Third, it doth strengthen all parts of the brest, and doth open the pipes.
Fourth, it is a singular good remedie for a stutting and stamering in speech.
Fifth, it is the best meanes to procure a perfect pronunciation, and to make a good orator.
Sixth, it is the onely way to know where Nature hath bestowed the benefit of a good voyce; which guift is so rare, as there is not one among a thousand, that hath it: and in many, that excellent guift is lost, because they want Art to expresse Nature.
Seventh, there is not any musicke of instruments whatsoever, comparable to that which is made of the voyces on Men, where the voyces are good, and the same well sorted and ordered.
Eighth, the better the voyce is, the meeter it is to honour and serve God therewith: and the voyce of man is chiefely to be employed to that ende.
Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learne to singe.”
— William Byrd, Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs
“Friends, let me tell you: Sitting outside and reading is not a difficult art to master.” – Matt Bell, Facebook, June 25, 2014.
“Once upon a time, or so the story goes, the American military were developing a computer system that they could train to identify tanks on the battlefield. The approach involved connecting a ‘neural network’ to a camera. The training was to be done using photographs. So the design team went out into the field and took 100 photographs of scenes with tanks in various orientations – out in the open, hiding behind trees, and the like. They also took 100 photographs of scenes with no tanks present. The system would be taught using both positive and negative cases. They split all the photographs into two sets, one for training and one for testing the system after training had taken place. Using the training set, they showed the system pictures of tanks and said, ‘Tank’. They also showed the system pictures without tanks and said, ‘No tank’. Each time the system would first have a guess, and if shown to be wrong would adjust itself. A keen understanding would emerge, it was hoped, of the key features it needed to consider in making the right judgment. From entirely random beginnings the system’s performance improved. It got so proficient that it could give a correct answer most of the time. The next step was to test the system on the remaining photos—the set that it had not yet seen. It behaved extremely well—perfectly in fact, categorizing every photo as either ‘tank’ or ‘no tank’ correctly. The designers decided to commission a further set of photos for more testing. The pictures came back and they were shown to the system. Only this time its performance was abysmal—no better than flipping a coin. It took the designers a while to work out what was going on. It turned out that the original photographs with tanks and without tanks had been taken on different days. The ‘tank’ days happened to be sunny. The ‘no tank’ days had been cloudy. Each time the system was shown a photograph with a tank, it saw bright sunlight, blue skies and shadows. Each time it saw a photograph without a tank, it saw grey skies and an absence of shadows. This was the meaning of ’tank’ it inferred. The designers had developed a sunny day detector, and a good one at that.” – Lawrence Chapin, et al., “Predictive Coding, Storytelling, and God: Narrative Understanding in e-Discovery”
“Three thousand years ago, David, according to the tradition, was the poet who wrote the Psalms. Even if you can’t believe that someone named David literally wrote the Psalms, the fact is that someone wrote them.” – Zachary Lazar, “In the Presence of My Enemies”
“Appellate judges are not obliged to act like potted plants. Nor like automatons, following only the path laid down by the parties without deviation or interruption. While the discretionary power to reach a new issue should be used with restraint, in criminal matters that restraint should be informed with due regard to the accused’s right to a fair trial. A reviewing court should intervene ‘to achieve a just result. We may not avert our eyes from what is clearly before us.’ (People v. Gray, 247 Ill.App.3d 133 (1993)).” – Justice Michael B. Hyman, People v. Hobson, 2014 IL App (1st) 110585 (March 12, 2014)
“Our soul possesses two broad and strong wings, which can bring us better and more permanent possessions than gold, honour or health. Our sharp intellect allows us to penetrate the secrets of nature, and lets us pursue that way as long as we modestly recognize our human weaknesses. But as for the ultimate secrets, which are higher than angels and angelic spirits: no speculative reason can attain them, but only deep mystical contemplation. There where our thinking can come only slowly and with endless effort, our heart, our mystical faith rises with a single wingbeat.” – Will-Erich Peuckert, Pansophie (trans. Hanegraaff)
“We are told that many criminal defendants representing themselves may use the courtroom for deliberate disruption of their trials. But the right of self-representation has been recognized from our beginnings by federal law and by most of the States, and no such result has thereby occurred. Moreover, the trial judge may terminate self-representation by a defendant who deliberately engages in serious and obstructionist misconduct. Of course, a State may— even over objection by the accused—appoint a ‘standby counsel’ to aid the accused if and when the accused requests help, and to be available to represent the accused in the event that termination of the defendant’s self-representation is necessary. The right of self-representation is not a license to abuse the dignity of the courtroom. Neither is it a license not to comply with relevant rules of procedural and substantive law. Thus, whatever else may or may not be open to him on appeal, a defendant who elects to represent himself cannot thereafter complain that the quality of his own defense amounted to a denial of ‘effective assistance of counsel.’” – United States Supreme Court, Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975)
“It ever has been the fate of system mongers to mistake the productions of their own imaginations, for those of nature herself: And their works, instead of advancing the cause of truth, serve only as false guides, who are ever ready to mislead us and impede our progress.” – John Stevens, Jr., “Americanus V,” Debate on the Constitution, Part One (ed. Bailyn)
“Too often, writers fear that in order to get attention in an over-stimulated world, they need to open with a car crash, a zombie apocalypse, an explosion of expletives, an alternate universe, or prose that turns cartwheels on the ceiling. It’s not that those things can’t work, but they’re certainly not necessary, and unless they’re done exceedingly well, they backfire. What the editor is really looking for is presence on the page—a feeling that you, the author, are in control; that you have a deep respect for language and a well-made sentence, no matter how plain or ornate; that something is at stake; and that in addition to whatever plot you are hatching, you can create friction in the simple act of rubbing two sentences up against each other.” – Dawn Raffel, “The Most Important Words”
“I began thinking about what makes a life worthwhile. And I thought of Pessoa and Kafka. We look at the lives of writers and consider them important, but what if we never discovered Pessoa’s trunk of books? What if Kafka’s work was never published? Would their lives have been worth living? And I thought of my own strange neuroses. My friends take them for granted, because I’m a writer, so I’m supposed to be this way. But if I hadn’t been a writer and still had these neuroses, I’d be ignored. I’d never get laid.” – Rabih Alameddine, “This Is Also My World” (interview by Dwyer Murphy)
“The entire Internet can never be made ‘safe.’ Vast stretches of cyberspace are already ‘dark’—full of abandoned websites, discarded protocols, huge databases, and clandestine enterprises engaged in by both criminals and political dissidents. Like it or not such wild corners will endure, for the Internet remains a faithful mirror of the human soul, haunted by the same angels and demons of our own nature.” – Jay Nelson, “Can the Internet Be Tamed?”
“It’s no secret that American education is extremely outdated. The long day divided into periods marked by bells, summer vacations, neat rows of desks, and the same subjects for everybody, were all meant to turn 19th century farm children into 20th century factory workers, clerks, and secretaries. It’s a painfully obsolete model.” – Jay Nelson, SWCP Portal, August 2012
“We have a War College, but no peace college.” – John Ketwig, …and a hard rain fell
“If you want to live, it’s good to be friendly.” – Art Spiegelman, Maus II
“According to language, race, or nation, we set ourselves apart, and each pile up our filth to overtower the other’s.” – Ödön von Horváth, The Age of the Fish (Jugend ohne Gott) (trans. Thomas)
“Marriage is like a garden I reckon. After a while, no matter what you do, it’s all too much work for not enough reward. One day you’re pulling out the same weeds you pulled out last month, or trimming the low branches off the same tree you trimmed them off last year, and you start thinking about why you’re doing it, and you can’t remember why you started to in the first place. Why you planted that particular tree, or chose that type of grass for the lawn, or why you even bothered with having a garden at all, cos the fact is, you haven’t sat your arse down out there and looked around and enjoyed it in years anyway. You was just going through the motions, doing what you did cos it’s what people do, what’s expected of you, so you just keep right on doing it.” – Harry Pants, Midlife