Snippets (people)
Things to use or delete. See Snippets.
Groucho Marx on wealth
"As soon as they get rich they become Republicans."
- Groucho Marx - interview with Dick Cavett @ 39:35
Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman
[Mary McCarthy's] feud with fellow writer Lillian Hellman formed the basis for the play Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron. The feud had simmered since the late 1930s over ideological differences, particularly the questions of the Moscow Trials and of Hellman's support for the "Popular Front" with Stalin. McCarthy provoked Hellman in 1979 when she famously said on The Dick Cavett Show: "every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
Hellman responded by filing a $2.5 million libel suit against McCarthy, which ended shortly after Hellman died in 1984. Observers of the trial noted the resulting irony of Hellman's defamation suit is that it brought significant scrutiny, and decline of Hellman's reputation, by forcing McCarthy and her supporters to prove that she had lied.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McCarthy_(author)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Hellman
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdIIkcYSqzA
Father Nathan Monk
"Other struggling people aren't the enemy."
Extreme Moustaches
Carneades of Cyrene
In ethics, the plank of Carneades is a thought experiment first proposed by Carneades of Cyrene; it explores the concept of self-defense in relation to murder.
In the thought experiment, there are two shipwrecked sailors, A and B. They both see a plank that can only support one of them and both of them swim towards it. Sailor A gets to the plank first. Sailor B, who is going to drown, pushes A off and away from the plank and, thus, proximately, causes A to drown. Sailor B gets on the plank and is later saved by a rescue team. The thought experiment poses the question of whether Sailor B can be tried for murder because if B had to kill A in order to live, then it would arguably be in self-defense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plank_of_Carneades
Compare -- and mash with -- Ship of Theseus:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
James Riley
"I realize this world is flawed by virtue of its children, most of whom are the spiritual children of the devil."
https://www.claremont-courier.com/education/t30360-claremont-rileys-farm
Joachim Johann Nepomuk Anton Spalowsky
Joachim Johann Nepomuk Anton Spalowsky (1752, Reichenberg – 1797) was an Austrian naturalist and polymath.
He was a surgeon attached to the civic regiments of Vienna. (See Asclepius Myrmidon.)
Spalowsky's 1795 treatise on conchology, Prodromus in Systema Historicum Testaceorum, published by the widow of Ignaz Alberti, includes original descriptions of several new species. He also wrote works on birds, plants, and mammals, including Beytrag zur Naturgeschichte der Vögel (1790–95).
He was a Member of the Royal Czech Society of Sciences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Johann_Nepomuk_Spalowsky
Abbot Arnaud Amalric
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. ("Kill them all. For the Lord knows those who are his.").
Supposed statement by Abbot Arnaud Amalric before the massacre of Béziers during the Albigensian Crusade, recorded 30 years later, according to Caesarius of Heisterbach. cf. "Kill them all and let God sort them out."
Links to pursue
- Aimee Laurel
- Andrea Graham
- http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/760947/what-cubic-problems-did-tartaglia-and-fior-pose-to-each-other
Overheard (true quotes)
- "I vow to crush all of my children's dreams. That's my main goal in life." (Female co-worker in her mid-thirties.)
By Charlie Stross
Some notes on the worst-case scenario. Excerpt:
Here's the thing: we are looking at an administration that is very clearly being operated on behalf of carbon extraction industries. Trump's cabinet picks are almost all climate change deniers. While there are some questionable exceptions--Tillerson has apparently conceded some human link with climate change--even those who are "soft" on climate change existing at all stand to benefit from interests in the coal and oil industries.
There is a huge asset bubble tied up in uncombustable fossil fuels--the carbon bubble. In addition, there is a base of approximately $70Tn ($70,000 billion--let that sink in for a moment) of installed infrastructure for processing fossil fuels and petrochemicals (with plastic and composite manufacturing being relatively small compared to packaging, shipping, and burning the stuff for energy).
Meanwhile, rival power industries are coming on stream rapidly. Solar power and electric cars could halt growth in fossil fuel demand as soon as 2020. The cost of solar has fallen by 85% in the past 7 years: by 2035 electric vehicles could make up 35% of the road transport fleet, and two-thirds by 2050. These estimates are conservative, based on the assumption that breakthrough technologies will not emerge to permit photovoltaic cells and battery capacities vastly better (or cheaper) than today.
It follows logically that if you have heavily invested in fossil fuels, time is running out to realize a return on your investment. Buying a US administration tailored to maximize ROI while fighting a rear-guard action against action on climate change and roll-out of a new, rival energy infrastructure is therefore rational (in business terms).
Russia and the Putin angle is best understood as part of this; oil and gas exports accounted for 68% of Russia's export revenues in 2013. The possibility that Trump is personally heavily invested in Rosneft via shell proxies while being at loggerheads with Merkel might be an inversion of the normal state of affairs in international relations for the past 70 years but is entirely consistent with the big money picture: Germany is trying to push (heavily) for renewable power (as well as generally being welcoming to refugees--see below).
It isn't possible for a US administration to make a ban on solar power and electric vehicles to stick globally. By its nature, solar will work well in equatorial regions, and these are where economic growth is currently focussed (China, India, and Africa all having huge population bases and demand for rapid roll out of infrastructure). Because PV is local, the need for capital-intensive centralized power stations and distribution grids is avoided: this will make it easier for Africa to catch up, just as the large-scale roll-out of telephony is sub-Saharan Africa has largely leap-frogged fixed wires and gone straight to cellular. Late adopters get better infrastructure.
Looking ahead, the carbon barons have to know that in 10-20 years time the USA will be stuck with obsolescent infrastructure and a loss of relative advantage if they pursue this course (although they, individually, will be a whole lot richer). What is to be done?
Source: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/02/some-notes-on-the-worst-case-s.html
Alexander Dewdney
Alexander Keewatin Dewdney (born August 5, 1941, in London, Ontario) is a Canadian mathematician, computer scientist, author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. Dewdney is the son of Canadian artist and author Selwyn Dewdney, and brother of poet Christopher Dewdney.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Dewdney
Vivian Gordon
The Dead Woman Who Brought Down the Mayor: Vivian Gordon was a reputed prostitute and blackmailer—but her murder led to the downfall of New York Mayor Jimmy Walker
Died during sex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_Faure
Worms in the Winecup
John Milton Bright (1908-1989) was an American journalist, screenwriter and political activist.
Bright was born in Baltimore and worked with Ben Hecht as a newspaper journalist in Chicago. With fellow journalist Kubec Glasmon, Bright co-wrote a series of stories adopted as screenplays. The most notable of these, Beer and Blood, became the 1931 film The Public Enemy starring James Cagney. The two were nominated for a 1931 Academy Award for Best Story.
In 1933 he became one of the ten founders of the Screen Writers Guild. As with other founders and members of the Screen Writers Guild, Bright was targeted in the early 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and put on the Hollywood blacklist.
Bright's wife Josefina Fierro was a Mexican-American activist in her own right. Bright fled to Mexico and wrote screenplays for at least two Mexican films.[3]
His 2002 memoir was called Worms in the Winecup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bright_(screenwriter)
James Fridman
Photoshop Follies:
Mazzarino Friars
The Mazzarino Friars were a group of Capuchin friars that turned to crime. They were active around the town of Mazzarino, Italy, in the 1950s. Their trial was a much-debated issue in the early '60s in Italy, in the context of the historical struggle between clerical and anti-clerical political forces prominent at that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazzarino_Friars
Menachem Mendel of Kotzk
"Not all that is thought need be said, not all that is said need be written, not all that is written need be published, and not all that is published need be read."
"Where is God to be found? In the place where He is given entry."
"You don't love fish. If you loved the fish, you would not have killed it and cooked it on a fire."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Mendel_of_Kotzk
Mitch McConnell
“Mitch McConnell and his family have extensive ties to China,” the Blankenship campaign’s news release says. “His father-in-law who founded and owns a large Chinese shipping company has given Mitch and his wife millions of dollars over the years. The company was implicated recently in smuggling cocaine from Colombia to Europe. Hidden aboard a company ship carrying foreign coal was $7 million dollars of cocaine and that is why we’ve deemed him ‘Cocaine Mitch.’”
"Peroxided Mark Twain"
Henry Rollins called David Lee Roth a "peroxided Mark Twain".
Jan Baptist van Helmont
Jan Baptist van Helmont (/ˈhɛlmɒnt/;[2] Dutch: [ˈɦɛlmɔnt]; 12 January 1580 – 30 December 1644) was a Flemish chemist, physiologist, and physician. He worked during the years just after Paracelsus and the rise of iatrochemistry, and is sometimes considered to be "the founder of pneumatic chemistry".[3] Van Helmont is remembered today largely for his ideas on spontaneous generation, his 5-year tree experiment, and his introduction of the word "gas" (from the Greek word chaos) into the vocabulary of science.
Sulaiman al-Tajir
During Sulaiman al-Tajir's stay at the city of Guangzhou he noted that the Chinese used fingerprint records to maintain the identities of newly arrived foreigners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Xuanzong_of_Tang_(9th_century)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulaiman_al-Tajir
Ben Dushnik
https://www.lib.umich.edu/faculty-history/faculty/ben-dushnik
https://www.lib.umich.edu/faculty-history/faculty/ben-dushnik/memoir
https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=5241
His doctoral students include Seymour Ginsburg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Ginsburg
Tycho Brahe: update timeline
Frank Herbert on governments
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
— Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
William Braikenridge
William Braikenridge (also Brakenridge) (c.1700–1762) was a Scottish mathematician and cleric, a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1752. Pic: book cover.
Michelangelo Ricci
Michelangelo Ricci (1619–1682) was an Italian mathematician and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
Richard Heck
Richard Frederick Heck (August 15, 1931 – October 10, 2015) was an American chemist noted for the discovery and development of the Heck reaction, which uses palladium to catalyze organic chemical reactions that couple aryl halides with alkenes. The analgesic naproxen is an example of a compound that is prepared industrially using the Heck reaction.
For his work in palladium-catalyzed coupling reactions and organic synthesis, Heck was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with the Japanese chemists Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki.
Pic.
Robin Williams
"The first purpose of alcohol is to make English your second goddamned language."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIWB-Neyj-c
12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
- Stand up straight with your shoulders back
- Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
- Make friends with people who want the best for you
- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
- Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
- Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
- Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie
- Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't
- Be precise in your speech
- Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
- Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Rules_for_Life
Henry Rollins
[I am a] "Jackass of all tirades." - Henry Rollins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng0F9LQvFcI
Norman Vincent Peale
"Good grief, [Norman Vincent] Peale was hardly Aleister Crowley. He was barely even the Wizard of Oz."
Boundegar @ Boing Boing
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/dark-star-rising-magick-and-power-in-the-age-of-trump/122512/5
Lightstone
Albert Harold Lightstone (1926–1976) was a Canadian mathematician. He was one of the pioneers of non-standard analysis, a doctoral student of Abraham Robinson, and later a co-author with Robinson of the book Nonarchimedean Fields and Asymptotic Expansions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._H._Lightstone
Missing birth/death dates, but interesting pic available.
To look up
Matt Chamberlain
Robin Holliday
Larry Grathwohl
Gerald Heard
The Armageddon Plan - Atlantic Monthly
Brimo
Silvio Micali
Jim Gray (computer scientist)
The Lady Tasting Tea
Debabratu Basu
John Wishart (statistician)
William Sealy Gosset
Charles Jordan (magician)
Sergei Ogoltsov
Lady Caroline Blackwood
Ettore Majorana
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Richard N. Goodwin
Peter Kuper
Giorgio Agamben
Seth Tobocman
Harold Hugh Edgerton
Eduardo Kac
J. Halcombe Laning
Dudley Allen Buck
Louis Ridenour
Arlo Guthrie on Lee Hays
Arlo Guthrie called the late Lee Hays "one of the few men I've known in this world who was not only an inspiration to me, but showed me that it's possible to do for yourself what you intend to do for the rest of the world."
Justinus Kerner
Justinus Andreas Christian Kerner (18 September 1786 – 21 February 1862) was a German poet, practicing physician, and medical write
Kim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC3o2KgQstA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrdYueB9pY4
Sol Yurick
http://www.bldgblog.com/2013/12/conic-sections-an-interview-with-sol-yurick/
http://www.solyurick.com/interviews/
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/19/interview-with-sol-yurick-aut.html
HyperGlu algorithmic generative art
This algorithmic generative art explores the visual beauty of math:
Romanian artist HyperGlu creates programs and algorithms that generate fascinating images and animations with a geometric and mathematical beauty.
https://boingboing.net/2017/07/31/this-algorithmic-generative-ar.html
Koestler on Old Testament laughter
In "The Act of Creation", Arthur Koestler writes: "In the Old Testament there are (according to Mitchell) twenty-nine references to laughter, out of which thirteen are linked with scorn, derision, mocking, or contempt, and only two are 'born out of a joyful and merry heart'."
Marx Farctor
Marx Farctor
Bricktop Smith
Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith, better known as Bricktop, (August 14, 1894 – February 1, 1984) was an American dancer, jazz singer, vaudevillian, and self-described saloon-keeper who owned the nightclub Chez Bricktop in Paris from 1924 to 1961, as well as clubs in Mexico City and Rome. She has been called "...one of the most legendary and enduring figures of twentieth-century American cultural history."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_%22Bricktop%22_Smith
Magic
It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevil_Maskelyne_(magician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdemar_Poulsen
Hibakusha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha
Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, answers questions about the future of humanity:
"Today more people die from eating too much than from human violence, which is an amazing achievement. In the past, the main economic assets were material – wheat fields, gold mines, slaves. War made sense because you could enrich yourself by waging war against your neighbours. Now the main economic asset is knowledge, and it’s very difficult to conquer knowledge through violence."
Racist history of Portland
Gideon Worthy
- Gideon Worthy, Glyph Warden
Joseph Swetname
Joseph Swetnam (died 1621) was an English pamphleteer and fencing master. He is best known for a misogynistic pamphlet and an early English fencing treatise.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swetnam
Rachel Speght
Rachel Speght (1597 – death date unknown) was a poet and polemicist. She was the first Englishwoman to identify herself, by name, as a polemicist and critic of gender ideology. Speght, a feminist and a Calvinist, is perhaps best known for her tract A Mouzell for Melastomus (London, 1617). It is a prose refutation of Joseph Swetnam's misogynistic tract, The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women, and a significant contribution to the Protestant discourse of biblical exegesis, defending women's nature and the worth of womankind. Speght also published a volume of poetry, Mortalities Memorandum with a Dreame Prefixed (London, 1621), a Christian reflection on death and a defence of the education of women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Speght
Francis Galton on Order in Apparent Chaos
"Order in Apparent Chaos: I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of cosmic order expressed by the ‘Law of Frequency of Error.’ The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshalled in the order of their magnitude, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along.“ -- Sir Francis Galton, Natural Inheritance, 1889
Research Spotlight: Victor Barranca and Applied Mathematics (Part I)
http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2018/05/01/research-spotlight-victor-barranca-and-applied-mathematics/
von Kleist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_von_Kleist
On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking In the first of his larger essays, On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking (Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden), Kleist claims that most people are advised to speak only about what they already understand. Instead of talking about what you already know, Kleist admonishes his readers to speak to others with "the sensible intention of instructing yourself." Fostering a dialogue through the art of "skillful questioning" is the key behind achieving a rational or enlightened state of mind. And yet, Kleist employs the example of the French Revolution as the climactic event of the Enlightenment era whereby man broke free from his dark and feudal chains in favor of liberty, equality, fraternity. It is not that easy though for Kleist. Man cannot simply guide himself into the future with a rational mind as his primary tool. Therefore, Kleist strongly advocates for the usefulness of reflection ex post facto or after the fact. In doing so, man will be able to mold his collective consciousness in a manner conducive to the principles of free will. By reflecting after the fact, man will avoid the seemingly detestable inhibitions offered in rational thought. In other words, the will to power has "its splendid source in the feelings," and thus, man must overcome his "struggle with Fate" with a balanced mixture of wisdom and passion.
Stephen Colbert on Trump
"He looks like a microwave circus peanut that somebody rubbed on a golden retriever."
George Washington, miserable prick
"We are sure, we are absolutely positive, that George Washington was a miserable prick. But when he spoke, he spoke for all of us, with a great conscience."
-- Penn Jillette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV7UXp1Yqlw
Nate Bucklin mix
- "Billboard Love" by Uncle Bonsai
Nicky Case
Mister Elk and Mister Seal
- Cavalcade of Excitement
Lee Hays
Arlo Guthrie called the late Lee Hays "one of the few men I've known in this world who was not only an inspiration to me, but showed me that it's possible to do for yourself what you intend to do for the rest of the world."
Lillian Schwartz
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Schwartz - 20th-century American artist considered a pioneer of computer-mediated art and one of the first artists notable for basing almost her entire oeuvre on computational media. Many of her ground-breaking projects were done in the 1960s and 1970s, well before the desktop computer revolution made computer hardware and software widely available to artists.
Aloysius Lilius
Talent
"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."
- Stephen King
The Selfish Living
"The living are so selfish. They can think of nothing but themselves."
- The Tudors: Season 4, Episode 4
People
- Charles Xavier Thomas (nonfiction) - Arithmometer (nonfiction)
- Étienne Bézout (nonfiction)
- Nicolas Malebranche (nonfiction)
- Jean Prestet (nonfiction)
- Jacques de Billy (nonfiction)
Odilon Redon
His work represents an exploration of his internal feelings and psyche. He himself wanted to place "the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible".
A telling source of Redon's inspiration and the forces behind his works can be found in his journal A Soi-même (To Myself). His process was explained best by himself when he said:
"I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased."
- Redon, Odilon (1988). Odilon Redon: the Woodner Collection. Washington, D.C.: Phillips Collection. unpaginated. OCLC 20763694.
Fortune Tellers: Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut & Aldous Huxley
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGuk9o8uZBc
- "Nothing means anything." - Kurt Vonnegut
Elliott Erwitt
- Nikita Krushchev and Richard Nixon, Moscow, 1959.
- Glassmakers of Herat
Jimi Hendrix
Fay Cluff Brown
Fay Cluff Brown (1881-1968) was a physicist and inventor who created and supervised the development of educational exhibits, most notably in the Museum of Science and Industry at New York City’s Museums of the Peaceful Arts. Much of his scientific research focused on the element selenium. Early in his career, Brown invented a device using selenium, which translated printed text into sound.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_82/May_1913/Scholarship_and_the_State
Peter Struycken
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Struycken
Wooley
"Commodore Woolsey was of middle height, sailor-built, and of a compact, athletic frame. His countenance was prepossessing, and had singularly the look of a gentleman. In his deportment, he was a pleasing mixture of gentleman-like refinement and seaman-like frankness. His long intimacy with frontier habits could not, and did not, destroy his early training, though it possibly impeded some of that advancement in his professional and general knowledge, which he had so successfully commenced in early life. He was an excellent seaman, and few officers had more correct notions of the rules of discipline. His familiar association with all the classes that mingle so freely together in border life, had produced a tendency, on his excellent disposition, to relax to much in his ordinary intercourse, perhaps, but his good sense prevented this weakness from proceeding very far. Woolsey rather wanted the grimace than the substance of authority. A better-hearted man never lived. All who sailed with him loved him, and he had sufficient native mind, and sufficinet acquired instruction, to command the respect of many of the strongest intellects of the service."
— James Fennimore Cooper, Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancthon_Taylor_Woolsey
Cassady on Graham
Neal Cassady summed up Bill Graham on sight: "He was out on the street checking tire treads to see if they’d picked up any nickels."
Blowing Mad: Neal Cassady and Music