15 May
Better Read Than Dead
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I like the power of words, and not just because that's how I support all of us in Jakartass Towers. I could kibble and give hundreds of reasons which run the gamut from elation to grief.
Or I could give you a lecture on my 'native' language and how it's evolving, as it should, into 'Goblish'.
But I won't.
What I'm posting here is a collection of snippets cut from various articles because I like bons mots (pithy remarks). They may be taken out of context but they resonate with me and I haven't (yet) got round to expanding them into a post.
My title is, I think, wholly original, something I came up with during my morning ritual in the privy.
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the reader who doesn't get it.
On Blogging
To be unexpressed is the road to unhappiness.
Ben Kingsley
There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that it behoves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.
Robert Louis Stevenson
On Human Potential
Nobody knows anything.
Michael Palin
Aesthetics cannot be replaced wholesale by bean-counting analysis.
fr. a review of How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
I call myself a possibilian. The idea with possibilianism is to explore new ideas and to shine a flashlight around the possibility space to really understand what the size of that space is.
David Eagleman
You shoot your arrow and then you paint your bullseye around it, and therefore you have hit the target dead centre.
Brian Eno
The most important lesson life has taught me is that all my mistakes and difficult times have been my best teachers.
Hayley Mills
You define who you are and where you are by the things that you know you are not.
Brian Eno
Life is fragile and short. Don't waste it by being mean or greedy.
Felicity Kendal
On Getting Old-er
Getting old is when you start complaining about the next generation.
Jenny Agutter
People say that …….. you're not an angry young man, just a grumpy old git. But why should I get to a certain age and go, yeah that's OK? Why do I have to accept everything? If you don't want it, say so and if you want to kick against it, you should do that as well, whatever age you are.
Paul Weller
We were probably the last generation to be truly free to play.
Sue Townsend
On Religion
I don't want places to worship.
My worship is the service of the people
Aşik Ibret
We understand far too much to commit to one religious story.
David Eagleman
Religious ecstasy has overtones of Catherine of Siena drinking the pus of lepers.
Brian Eno
On Democracy
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Bernard Shaw
Whoever you vote for, the government gets in.
Jakartass and many others
On Community Power
What makes wage slaves? Wages!
Groucho Marx
Only the mediocre are scared of egalitarianism.
Bernard Shaw
We're far too smart for our own good, but not nearly clever enough for our own benefit.
Agent 3244
On Climate Change Deniers
I'm no scientist. I'm not an engineer either, but if I asked 100 engineers whether it was safe to cross a bridge, and 99 said no, I'd probably try to find another way over the ravine rather than loudly siding with the underdog and arguing about what constitutes a consensus while trundling across in my Hummer.
Charlie Brooker
"Yep, let them eat monkey meatballs in the mean time it’s off to Pacific Place with the Ferrari and a fist full of rupiahs."
One of my own recent quotes…
If I asked 100 engineers whether it was safe to cross a bridge, and 99 said no, I'd probably try to find another way over the ravine.
It's a shame you use such a superficial and clearly inaccurate quotation as an example of "pithy" comments, as it detracts from the other more accurate comments.
First of all by no means can it be claimed that "99%" of scientists accept AGW, it's way, way far short of that number and even then if I was about to cross a bridge and only five per cent of the engineers said it was unsafe and 95% said it was fine I would still think twice, so simple majoritarianism doesn't really come into the issue, that is merely scaremongering.
But what if I was told that the bridge may or may not be safe but the alternative involved throwing away all that I and my family had built up over the years, abandoning everything that we had painstakingly achieved over our lives and instead risking our livelihoods and security on some hare brained "safe" passage through a hugely dangerous ravine filled with who knows what hardships and terrors on the back of half baked, blatantly ill thought through snake-oil salesmanship that may or may not be true from people whose past predictions and theories have quite frankly often proven to be complete bonkers?
Furthermore what if I discovered that the people telling me the bridge was "unsafe" were not quite the disinterested, neutral scientists they claimed to be but where in fact being very richly rewarded for coming up with their "unsafe bridge" theory and had used quite ferocious attacks and bully boy methods against anyone who questioned their research?
What if they had very substantial financial interests in directing me and my family down the rocky ravine instead of using the bridge, the bridge might I add which has already long stood the test of time and which currently seems to be perfectly sound and at the moment handling vast amounts of traffic? What if I found out that instead of using the perfectly functioning bridge I should take the dodgy ravine route I will be expected to pay huge sums of money and that much of that money will be lining the pockets of the "unsafe bridge" brigade?
Who would be the fool then? The poor idiots climbing down the ravine or the people whizzing perfectly freely and happily over the bridge that has so far supported millions like them?
I know what I would do.
"…. a superficial and clearly inaccurate quotation."?
Sorry, Miko, but I do give a link to the sources. Still, I do agree that it's not pithy.