Escaped Thoughts

Life

Life is like a doughnut - either you're in the dough or in the hole.

 

Abs

Some guys have a six pack. Some guys have a keg.

Health - physical and mental - is not just the absence of sickness.

In theory

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.

In practice there is.

-- Yogi Berra

 

More Berraisms

Digital Dude-ism

Good line. Great actor. Mediocre film.

"Every idea man's ever had about the universe suddenly up for grabs. Bio-digital jazz, man."

Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy

Why We Don't Write

“This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.”

Eeyore (via A.A. Milne)

 

Why We Write

“From things that have happened . . . and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality….

That is why you write and for no other reason.”

– Ernest Hemingway

Bumpy Night

“Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Bette Davis (in All About Eve )

Day of Rest

“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.”

- Ovid

Slickers

I have a thing for the movie City Slickers which was a favorite of my oldest son. We watched it many times, and we still plan to do one of those trail rides one day.

The film has some moments that really click for me though...

Mitch has to give a talk to his son's class about his job. He hates his job at that point. It's his 39th birthday and he feels like it has all been a waste. Here's what he tells the dazed kids in his son's elementary school class:

Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly.

When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do.

Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?"

Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother.

Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery.

Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway.

Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?"

By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama. Any questions?

 

Daniel Stern (Phil), Billy Crystal (Mitch), Bruno Kirby (Ed)

The three city slickers get into a discussion of their best and worst days. Ed doesn't want to play, but they push him.

Ed: I'm 14 and my mother and father are fighting again... y'know, because she caught him again. Caught him... This time the girl drove by the house to pick him up. And I finally realized, he wasn't just cheating on my mother, he was cheating us. So I told him, I said, "You're bad to us. We don't love you. I'll take care of my mother and my sister. We don't need you any more." And he made like he was gonna hit me, but I didn't budge. And he turned around and he left. He never bothered us again. Well, I took care of my mother and my sister from that day on. That's my best day.

Phil: Geez, what was your worst day?

Ed: Same day.

Finally, Curly, the "real" cowboy that they meet up with in the film is pressed by Mitch about what he thinks is the secret of life (which is what he assumes he is looking for).

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? [holds up one finger] This.

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean shit.

Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?"

Curly: That's what you have to find out.

The Right Word

 

"The difference between the right word

and the almost right word

is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

-- Mark Twain

For Isaac Newton's Birthday Party

Isaac Newton was born today, January 4, in 1643. He was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and natural philosopher.  He was also an alchemist and theologian.

Newton is considered by many scholars and members of the general public to be one of the most influential people in human history.

His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" and usually called the Principia), published in 1687, is probably the most important scientific book ever written.

The book  lays the groundwork for most of classical mechanics.

Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws, by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation.

I have always found it very interesting that Newton was also highly religious. He was an unorthodox Christian, and during his lifetime actually wrote more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than on science and mathematics.

For some free and easy schooling,  take a look at him in video program 6 in The Mechanical Universe...and Beyond, "Newton's Laws" http://www.learner.org/resources/series42.html

In  "Physics for the 21st Century,"  Newton is discussed in the video and online text in unit 3, "Gravity."   http://www.learner.org/courses/physics/unit/text.html?unit=3&secNum=0

And look at Mathematics Illuminated where Newton is discussed in the context of "Concepts of Chaos," program 13.    http://www.learner.org/courses/mathilluminated/units/13/

It's Officially Winter

The last time we had a lunar eclipse on the Winter Solstice was 21 December MDCXXXVIII.

I'll bet that when the Full Moon was in total eclipse from 1:12 to 2:47 UT and the solstice occured later in the day at 16:05 UT, it would have been quite a strange time at Stonehenge.

I'm glad I stayed up to watch. The next one is in 2094 and I don't think I'll be awake for that one.

Winter Solstice sun seen rising
through the trilithon at Stonehenge

And the Earth's axis just hit full tilt. The North Pole angled 23.5 degrees away from the sun at 6:38 p.m. EST.

Sun rise was at 7:16 today for 9 hours and 12 minutes of day (the sun set at 4:28) and then we gradually start adding to the day's length - until the summer solstice in 2011.  By New Year's Day, we will have added 3 minutes of daylight.  I feel warmer already.

The Present

"Yesterday is history.

Tomorrow is a mystery.

Today is a gift. That's why we call it 'the present'."

— Eleanor Roosevelt

45,000 Words

From the prize in a Cracker Jack box:

The typical pencil can write 45,000 words or draw a line 35 miles long.

Really no good reason that you can't write a novel. And I bet you have at least two pencils...

The Trees

When the axe comes into the woods, the trees think, "At least the handle is one of ours."

  -- Turkish proverb

Don't Teach

"I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."

 -- Albert Einstein