Sunday, January 31, 2010

human paradox


"Let us have the hero of Lincoln at least as an aspiration for others who want to be leaders of America—to think that he was perfect helps us to strive for perfection."
- Mario Cuomo on the fallible Abraham Lincoln

Ranking of U.S. Presidents here.

geotic


"90% of life is how you respond to what's happened; not what's happened."
- Bill Clinton

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Intimacy & Competence


London, 1938

According to Sigmund Freud, the things at which we must be good are love and work.

old mathematician adage


"We must know. We will know."
- David Hilbert [1862-1943]

old political adage


"Show me where my people are going so I can lead them there."

Friday, January 29, 2010

depending upon how you define art


"60% of the world's most important works of art are located in Italy. Half of those are in Florence."
- Graham McPherson "Suggs" [born 1961]

country bumpkin*


Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1885-1895

"He was my one and only master ... he was the father of us all."
- Pablo Picasso [1881-1973] on Paul Cézanne [1839-1906] who painted the land that gave birth to him.

* because he laid paint by the trowel load

down and out and jocular

Thursday, January 28, 2010

cooking classes in Venice



http://www.enricarocca.com/english/veniceclasses.html

16 miles


According to Marco Polo, Kublai Khan walled off 16 miles of parkland at his summer estate Xanadu.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Terribilità



Fear and awe.

world war II slogan


Sunday, January 24, 2010

A place to stay in London



http://www.asterhouse.com

4077



"One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you."
- Larry Gelbart [1928-2009]

Friday, January 22, 2010

dictum

"Despair is a sin against the imagination."
- Proverb of an Inuit community acquainted with alcoholism and suicide.

why the sphinx has a human head



Power under control.

40 inspirational speeches in 2 minutes

charities

guidestar.org is the leading online clearinghouse for information on non-profit groups.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

analytical, persuasive



"I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state from a little city."
- Themistocles [c.514-449 C.E.]

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

warmth



"Ideas come to me in droves."
- America's first architect Bejamin LaTrobe, who declared bankruptcy twice, and burned his furniture for warmth, and proved that even if one is brilliant and hardworking, one can fail.

unnaturalist




"What good man would prefer a country covered with forest and ranged by a few thousand savages for our extensive republic studded with cities and towns and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements art can devise or industry execute."
- President Andrew Jackson, 1830

nonprecocity



"You don't get a sense of drawing until you're nine to eleven years old."
- Pablo Picasso

being human

"Predicting and affecting the behavior of others is what it means to be human."
- Cornelia Bargmann, Rockefeller University

reality




"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
- Reinhold Niebuhr [1892-1971]

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

vinyl




Jeff Bridges' [born 1949] collection of bad album covers here.

Monday, January 18, 2010

birth of the modern novel



Miguel de Cervantes' 17th century Don Quixote aims to change a world he does not like and cannot understand.

Salvador Dali image source here.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Saturday, January 16, 2010

voyage




Gottlieb Mittelberger, a musician, traveling from Germany to America around 1750, wrote about his voyage:
During the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress—smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and similar afflictions, all of them caused by the age and the high salted state of the food, especially of the meat, as well as by the very bad filthy water ... Add to all that a shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, fear misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles ... On board our ship, on a day on which we had a great storm, a woman about to give birth and unable to deliver under the circumstances, was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea ...
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, pp.42-43

Thursday, January 14, 2010

eject!


copycat




"The best ads motivate us to imitate the behaviour of others."
- Tim Taylor

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

overwhelmed



According to Dr. Atul Gawande [born 1965], physicians must be familiar with:
  • 13k diagnoses
  • 4k medical procedures
  • 6k drugs

disabled



"Strength through adversity."
- World War II veteran Senator [R] Bob Dole [born 1923]

eject!


Tuesday, January 12, 2010

civilization



What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass.
- William Butler Yeats [1865-1939]

Image source here.

Monday, January 11, 2010

words



"The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom."
- Malcolm Gladwell [born 1963], What the Dog Saw, p.242