progress

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction. ~JOHN STEINBECK, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

manifest

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progress traps

“Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea. While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible: a city isn't easily moved. This human inability to foresee -- or to watch out for -- long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer. (109)” ― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

What strikes one most forcefully is the acceleration, the runaway progression of change - or to put it another way, the collapsing of time. From the first chipped stone to the first smelted iron took nearly 3 million years; from the first iron to the hydrogen bomb took only 3,000.” ― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

“The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn’t absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

indignation

“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
― H.G. Wells, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman

1.

Also called nimbus. a geometric shape, usually in the form of a disk, circle, ring, or rayed structure, traditionally representing a radiant light around or above the head of a divine or sacred personage, an ancient or medieval monarch, etc.

2.

an atmosphere or quality of glory, majesty, sanctity, or the like: the halo around Shakespeare's works; She put a halo around her son.

3.

Meteorology . any of a variety of bright circles or arcs centered on the sun or moon, caused by the refraction or reflection of light by ice crystals suspended in the earth's atmosphere and exhibiting prismatic coloration ranging from red inside to blue outside (distinguished from corona ).

4.

Astronomy . a spherical cloud of gas clusters and stars that form part of a spiral galaxy.

5.

an undesirable bright or dark ring surrounding an image on the fluorescent screen of a television tube, due to some fault either in transmission or reception.

 

 

rose colored glasses

“By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory.” ― Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

 

“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

SkidMarks

“The sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do.” ― Galileo Galilei

BarFlies

“We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.” ― Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

what did one barfly say to the other barfly...... is this STOOL taken?

fire into the equations

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” ― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBs5EmB0xls

 

hang on till the next day

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of
life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they
continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It
is as though they were traveling abroad.” ― Marcel Proust

“One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.” ― Albert Camus, The Fall

disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden

“The observations and encounters of a solitary, taciturn man are vaguer and at the same times more intense than those of a sociable man; his thoughts are deeper, odder and never without a touch of sadness. Images and perceptions that could be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions, occupy him unduly, become more intense in the silence, become significant, become an experience, an adventure, an emotion. Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden.” ― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

rose pink Cadillac

Well when you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day

Well when you're sitting there in your PINK silk upholstered chair
Talkin' to some rich folk that you know

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” ― Carl Sagan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEvwPVUZelU

1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid. As quoted in Einstein: The Man and His Achievement (1973) by G. J. Whitrow, p. 42
Variants:If you can't explain your physics to a barmaid it is probably not very good physics. As quoted in Journal of Advertising Research (March-April 1998)
A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good. As quoted in The Language of God (2006) by Francis Collins, p.60`~~~~Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson

images and parables

“Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.” ― Werner Heisenberg

MOTORbikin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Faithfull

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_on_a_Motorcycle

 

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

“Before I came here, I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture, I am still confused -- but on a higher level.” ― Enrico Fermi



you caught fire

[for his birthday today, the man from Praha]-“Last night I dreamt about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally somehow you caught fire.” ― Franz Kafka

A scientist's aim in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to clarify.
As quoted in "Close-up : I'm looking for a market for wisdom. : Leo Szilard, scientist" in LIFE magazine, Vol. 51, no. 9 (1 September 1961), p. 75

 

 

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