Hodge-Podge

Reviewed May 18, 2003

This is a totally unrelated collection of quotations that we just keep hanging on to. Currently presented with the most recent addition at the top of the list.

On Windows2000...

They claim Windows 2000, not putting a man on the moon or harnessing nuclear energy, is the most complicated engineering product in the history of all mankind -- do you want that on your desktop?

Larry Ellison, at Telecom 99, as reported in Silicon.com.

On Modern Poetry...

Most poetry written at any given time is bad, and all poetry written at any given time is new. Together, these facts can make it seem that poetry (in fact, any art) is always in decline, since in any reader's lifetime most of what he or she reads is inferior to what has been preserved from the past. So it is always risky to make judgements about "contemporary poetry," which may be proved wrong as the passage of time turns the experiments of the present into the patrimony of the future. In any case, posterity will cherish or ignore what we produce, it will use and misuse our efforts, as it sees fit.

Adam Kirsch, "A Formal Feeling", The New Republic, June 14, 1999, page 41.

On The Internet...

A common criticism of the Internet is that it is dominated by the crude, the uninformed, the immature, the smug, the untalented, the repetitious, the pathetic, the hostile, the deluded, the self-righteous, and the shrill. This criticism overlooks the fact that the Internet also offers -- for the savvy individual who knows where to look -- the tasteless and the borderline insane.

Dave Barry, Dave Barry in Cyberspace, Crown Publishers, 1996, quoted in K. R. Brower, "Anomalous Gold," Skeptical Inquirer, January/February 1998, page 38.

How to be a Domestic Engineer

Advice from Rick Dickert, Home Office Husband, Toronto, Canada.

The Skeptic on Death

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

Carl Sagan, "In the Valley of the Shadow", Parade, 10 Mar 1996.

On Polishing Floors

It is sometimes objected that the polishing of floors is a very strenuous occupation for busy modern wives. There are two answers to that contention. In the first place, only a zealot polishes floors or brasses more than once a month, though they might conceivably pay someone else to do so. Secondly, whoever said that this duty must necessarily be allotted to women? Men are ideally adapted to these mundane tasks, and floor polishing should be mandatory for gentlemen with spreading waist lines.

Hugh Lander, A Guide to the Do's & Don'ts of House & Cottage Interiors, Acanthus Books, 1982. p. 11.

What?!

A sentence from Roy Bhaskar's Plato etc: The Problems of Philosophy and their Resolution (Verso: 267 pages; $19.00) has won the Bad Writing Contest sponsored by Philosophy and Literature, a journal published by Johns Hopkins University Press. It begins:

Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal -- of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristoelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or pyschosomatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic...
The sentence contains 55 more words but is harder to follow after this point.

"Gobbledygook: An award for bad writing," The Economist, 30 Nov 1996, page 136.

Churchill on Books

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them -- peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.

Winston S. Churchill

Women's Work

I know which detergents are on special in Sainsbury's and I know the cost of tomatoes. I never before appreciated the demands on women's time... I now recognize what women used to complain about back in the sixties. That our society places value only on earning power, not on the vital support structure that allows someone to go out and earn.

Househusband Albert Scardino, whose high-flying wife Marjorie is about to take over the Pearson group to become the first female chief executive of an FT-SE 100 company. Quote from The Times requoted in "Talking dirty," The Guardian, 14 Nov 1996, page 4.

12 Reasons for Leaving at Five

1. Done right, it will cause you to become a more efficient manager.

2. It will encourage your boss to act like a manager.

3. It will shape your subordinates.

4. It will force you to clarify your values.

5. It will help you to establish a salutary independence from your organization.

6. It will put you in the forefront of fashion.

7. It will make those exceptional occasions when you do stay late more fun.

8. It will keep you out of the burnout cycle.

9. It will permit you to make better use of your time.

10. It will enable you to be healthier.

11. It will enable you to be more loving.

12. It will restore you to some of the best traditions of Western Civilization.

Walter Kiechel III, "12 Reasons for Leaving at Five," Fortune, July 16, 1990, pp. 117-118.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington on Bureaucracy

Whilst marching to Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and then by dispatch rider to our headquarters.

We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.

Unfortunately, the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensive carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance since we are at war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.

This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government, so I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one to the best of my ability but I cannot do both:

1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountant and copyboys in London, or perchance,

2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.

Your most obedient servant,

Wellington

Quoted in a Wall Street Journal, "Letter to the Editor".

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Updated July 28, 2000