Saturday, June 27, 2009

Vita Brevis


"Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile."

"Art is long, life short, opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, and judgement difficult."

Monday, June 15, 2009

A Hard Rule


"The test of merit in my profession, with the people, is success. It is a hard rule, but I think it right."

Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, 1862

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Word of God


Of course we all should obey the word of God, once we all agree on exactly what He said.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Manifestation of the Spirit


I like to read the following passage from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians as an early recognition of the utility of dispersed knowledge and a celebration of the spontaneous order.

"There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; 
there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God
who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.

As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
so also Christ."

Sunday, June 7, 2009

The Rising Marginal Cost of Originality

"Suppose you are the two hundred and ninetieth city planner in the history of the world. All the good ideas have been used, all the so-so ideas have been used, and you need something new to make your reputation. You design Canberra. That done, you design the Combs building at ANU, the most ingeniously misdesigned building in my personal experience, where after walking around for a few minutes you not only don't know where you are, you don't even know what floor you are on.

I call it the theory of the rising marginal cost of originality—formed long ago when I spent a summer visiting at ANU.

It explains why, to a first approximation, modern art isn't worth looking at, modern music isn't worth listening to, and modern literature and verse not worth reading. Writing a novel like one of Jane Austen's, or a poem like one by Donne or Kipling, only better, is hard. Easier to deliberately adopt a form that nobody else has used, and so guarantee that nobody else has done it better.

Of course, there might be a reason nobody else has used it."

From www.daviddfriedman.blogspot.com

Saturday, June 6, 2009

A Suitable Hard Drive

"I have learned that people are uploading their lives into cyberspace and am convinced that one day all human knowledge and memory will exist on a suitable hard drive which, for preservation, will be flung out of the solar system to orbit a galaxy far, far away."

Friday, June 5, 2009

Fish-a-tarian

"Then I would have a room-service dinner, and the only thing on the hotel menu that fit my fish-a-tarian diet was breaded fried shrimp with the texture of sandpaper, really just a ketchup delivery system."

Thursday, June 4, 2009

A Good Time Tonight

"Well, we've had a good time tonight, considering we're all going to die someday."

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Death-Thing

"I'm so depressed today. I just found out this 'death-thing' applies to me."

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Consistently Good

"The constant work enhanced my act. I learned a lesson: It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances."

Monday, June 1, 2009

They Don't Get It

"In his standard warm-up for the studio audience, when he was asked, 'Do they get this show in Omaha?' Steve [Allen] would answer, "They see it, but they don't get it."