"When I look down the vista of the years, with all the "improvements," "inventions" and "progress" that they hold, I am infinitely thankful that I am no younger. Every man wants to live out his life's span. But I hardly think life in this age is worth the effort of living. I'd like to round out my youth; and perhaps the natural vitality and animal exuberance of youth will carry me to middle age. But good God, to think of living the full three score years and ten!"
- Robert E. Howard, in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft
A digression by film critic Georg Rockall-Schmidt, from his piece on product placement, regarding the recent expunging of the word "art" from the world of criticism:
"[W]ithout being able to cite any specific examples, I suspect that product placement has existed as long as what is now termed media, or even "content." Because, it's too embarrassing to call it "art." In fact, let's just call it "output." "Out...put." Those cave men had some interesting "output."
"Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."
- attributed to Plato
"Engage your brain before you engage your weapon."
- Gen. James Mattis, USMC
Farmer Mosoke (Yoshio Kusugi): "How are we to feed samurai when we live on rice gruel?"
Farmer Rikichi (Yoshio Tsuchiya): "We'll make do on millet!"
Farmer Mosuke: "Show me a samurai who will fight for farmers in return for food! They're a proud lot."
Old Man Gisaku (Kokuten Kōdō): "Look! Find hungry samurai. Even bears come down from the mountains when they're hungry."
- Seven Samurai [Shichinin no Samurai] (1954), directed & co-written by Akira Kurosawa
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Farmer Mosoke (Yoshio Kusugi): "How are we to feed samurai when we live on rice gruel?"
Farmer Rikichi (Yoshio Tsuchiya): "We'll make do on millet!"
Farmer Mosuke: "Show me a samurai who will fight for farmers in return for food! They're a proud lot."
Old Man Gisaku (Kokuten Kōdō): "Look! Find hungry samurai. Even bears come down from the mountains when they're hungry."- Seven Samurai [Shichinin no Samurai] (1954), directed & co-written by Akira Kurosawa
"Like :Kurosawa, I make mad films. OK, I don't make films. But if I did, they'd have a samurai."
- Ed Robertson ("One Week" by Barenaked Ladies)
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"The fundamental problem with the social sciences today is that they have severed the link between insight into what exists and imagination of what might exist at the next steps – the adjacent possible. To understand a state of affairs, for example in natural science, is just to grasp what that state of affairs might become under certain provocations or with certain circumstances that we impose on it. Well, what’s happened in the social sciences is that this vital link between insight into the actual and imagination of the possible has been severed. The result is that the predominant methods in the social sciences lead them to be a kind of retrospective rationalisation of what exists...[t]hey have degenerated into pseudo-science."
- Roberto Unger
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"DISCLAIMER: as always, don’t take anything I write too seriously.
In a sense, [the social sciences are pseudoscience], although that doesn’t mean that the social disciplines have no value. It is deeply problematic to call social disciplines “sciences.” Let me explain why.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, what we call “natural science” became intertwined with technology. Prior to the 19th century, science and technology were much more distantly related than they now are. A scientist and an engineer, or a scientist and a doctor, were two very different things. These days, we think of science and technology as being almost interchangeable (in the popular mind, anyway) but this was not always the case.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, there were a number of technological advancements that made science seem much more important and credible than it had been before. Advances such as penicillin, electric power, nuclear weapons, combustion engines, anaesthesia, and aviation, to name a few, turned natural science into an integral part of civilization. The importance of this point cannot be overstated: prior to the industrial revolution, natural science was largely seen as an aristocratic pursuit of obscure knowledge for wealthy people with too much time on their hands. But Einstein did his gedanken experiments and made the big bombs, and the big bombs won the big war, and suddenly science was monstrously important. Well, that’s oversimplifying a bit — the second world war was very important to this process, and perhaps marked a turning point, but it was by no means the sole factor.
Note that all of these advances came from the natural sciences. The social disciplines did not produce any technological miracles; the credibility and authority vested with scientists, or rather, people who call themselves “scientists,” comes from the successes of the natural sciences. We trust the natural sciences because what they say will happen, happens. And their experiments are rigorous enough that you can’t just make any result out to accord with the prediction. You can be proven wrong in the natural sciences, and a very smart guy named Karl Popper pointed out that falsifiability is the most important criterion for distinguishing science from pseudoscience. So is replicability, or the ability to reproduce a result over and over, reliably. The assumption is that, if your experimental results are valid, then you ought to be able to do the same experiment repeatedly and have the same results. If you say that a chemical is explosive under certain conditions, then it had better explode under those conditions whenever you do the experiment.
(Incidentally, psychology is in the midst of a “replication crisis” where more than half of psychological experiments fail to reproduce. This probably surprises you, but it shouldn’t.)
So when we call the social disciplines “sciences,” we are doing a disservice both to the social disciplines and to science. The disservice to science lies in the fact that the social disciplines receive stolen valor, and gain a credibility that they should not have because they are called sciences. This degrades the credibility of the natural sciences, which suffer from being categorized with the much less reliable social disciplines. When the third psychologist you see diagnoses you with a third mental illness incompatible with the prior two you receive, you will begin to doubt the authenticity of psychology, and, by extension, of science more generally. The disservice to the social disciplines lies in the fact that social scholars must put up an appearance of scientific rigor in order to maintain the charade of being scientists. Ironically, this degrades the quality of the social disciplines, which would be more honest and more useful if they could simply admit to not being sciences. And here I must share an amusing anecdote: I once raised this point to a psychologist, who became deeply offended and sputtered that it was “already hard enough” to get funding for psychology departments. I hazard a guess that he said a bit more than he meant to say.
It also becomes clear that the social disciplines are not sciences when you look at their history. Paradigms in natural science change in a particular way; old paradigms are refuted when they run into experimental results that they cannot account for in a satisfactory manner. Paradigms in the social disciplines, however, change in the same way as those in the humanities. Social “theories” are never really refuted, per se, although social scholars will insist that they are. In reality, paradigms in the social disciplines go in and out of fashion, much as paradigms in the humanities do.
Of course, there’s a much bigger underlying problem here, which is that our culture has deep roots in the Enlightenment and can only admit the limits of instrumental rationality with great difficulty, if at all. So perhaps I should end my little spiel like this: I do not mean to say that we should destroy the social disciplines. I just think that we should stop calling them sciences. I think that this little relabeling, and the gentle cognitive adjustment that comes with it, will make things better both for the social disciplines and the sciences."
- Caleb Beers, unusually smart quora.com poster
"The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reason. Those other subjects merely require scholarship". -- R. A. Heinlein
"Where is she? Who in the hell are you? What are you, a g&*!@@n Nazi or something? Is that elf yours?"
- Mike McGavin (Dan Haggerty), Elves (1989)
Farmer Mosoke (Yoshio Kusugi): "How are we to feed samurai when we live on rice gruel?"
Farmer Rikichi (Yoshio Tsuchiya): "We'll make do on millet!"
Farmer Mosuke: "Show me a samurai who will fight for farmers in return for food! They're a proud lot."
Old Man Gisaku (Kokuten Kōdō): "Look! Find hungry samurai. Even bears come down from the mountains when they're hungry."- Seven Samurai [Shichinin no Samurai] (1954), directed & co-written by Akira Kurosawa
"Like :Kurosawa, I make mad films. OK, I don't make films. But if I did, they'd have a samurai."
- Ed Robertson ("One Week" by Barenaked Ladies)
That's the second time someone's quoted that song to me. In one week, even. And I'm not even Canadian!
"Estelle Getty is teaching children with a little bunny, and they accidentally bought a stuffed sloth from the Australian gift shop, and they're like, "Yeah, bunny, sloth, I don't know, we're Californians. All we know about is bottled water, and fine dining, and earthquakes. We don't know anything. We're stupid. I guess it's a bunny--I've only seen bunnies on the Cadbury Egg commercials. A sloth is a bunny, right? We're Californians! We're brain dead!"
- Mike Stoklasa, Best Of The Worst, episode 96
Here's a good one from my job. A week or so back, as we were prepping for snow removal season, our mechanic "Bob" and one of our drivers "Joe" were taking out the trash in the truck shop:
Joe: "Bob, have you been throwing parts in the trash instead of the scrap bin?"
Bob: "No way, it's all garbage."
Joe: "Seriously, Bob, this garbage is heavy as f!#&. There's definitely parts in here."
Bob: "I swear, there's no parts in that garbage."
Joe: "Oh yeah? Prove it."
Bob: "Joe, I'm telling the truth! I know for a fact there's no parts in there!"
Joe: "Why's that?"
Bob: "Because I haven't worked on anything!"
Joe: "... nice."
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“I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”
- G. K. Chesterton
"Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic."
- Albert Camus
"It is time to call out Google for what it is: A monopolist in search, video, maps and browser, and a thin-skinned tyrant when it comes to ideas."
- Zephyr Teachout
"Revenge is a feast best served immediately."
- Ka D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), Farscape
"Revenge, as they say, is a sucker's game."
- David Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes), Gargoyles| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
"Revenge is a feast best served immediately."
- Ka D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), Farscape"Revenge, as they say, is a sucker's game."
- David Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes), Gargoyles
"Revenge is a sucker's game, which is why octopuseses and squids are so damn good at it."
- Me, just now
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"Revenge is a feast best served immediately."
- Ka D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), Farscape"Revenge, as they say, is a sucker's game."
- David Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes), Gargoyles"Revenge is a sucker's game, which is why octopuseses and squids are so damn good at it."
- Me, just now
But... aren't they happy and safe under the sea? Ringo Starr told me so...
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“Men do not differ so much about what things that they will call evil, but they do differ enormously about what evil things that they will call excusable.”
“It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.”
“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
- G. K. Chesterton
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"If you take political quizzes asking for your position on this or that policy, you get to the end of the quiz, and they'll label you as conservative, libertarian, or social democrat, or what have you, and any position you take in philosophy also puts you in a labeled category. And the reason that's a problem is because when you become the thing that you think, then you can't change your mind without changing your identity."
- L. Aron Nelson (Aron Ra)
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WILLIAM ROPER: "So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!"
SIR THOMAS MORE: "Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?"
WILLIAM ROPER: "Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!"
SIR THOMAS MORE: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"
- Robert Bolt, "A Man For All Seasons"
"If I'm going to take the math route on this, I'll have to know what period you define as the fall of the Roman Empire."
"The Chronology Is:
Another One Bites The Dust
Stairway to Heaven
Knocking on Heaven's Door
Locked out of Heaven
Losing my Religion
Hells Bells
Highway to Hell
Sympathy For The Devil
Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be
Shout At The Devil
The end"- 54ber, YouTube commenter
Not to be pedantic, but right after Highway to Hell I'd slot in Dog on the Road.
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"A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke."
― Soren Kierkegaard
"I used to work with [a friend] who is a Colgate [University] student. She used to tell me I was super trendy for wearing Carhartt and Dickies. And I was like, "Yeah, [but] I usually cut the little label tag off." She responded with, "Oh my God, why? That's the part you pay the money for so that people know that it's Carhartt." No, I pay money for the fact that I won't have to buy another coat for 20 years."
- David Montanye
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Lance (Carrie Brownstein): "My amigo here is looking for his first car."
Car dealer (Kumail Nanjiani): "Big day..."
Spyke (Fred Armisen): "I'm just living on a bike. I don't want a car. I hate cars. But I need it for work."
Car dealer: "Got you pegged. Come with me. You know, most cars try hard to give off that 'I don't care about cars' vibe, but this car means it. If you're gonna commit a crime, this is a great car to do it in. 'Cause... how would you describe it?"
Lance: "What's under the hood?"
Car dealer: "I would assume an engine, but nobody's actually ever opened this."
- Portlandia, season 4, episode 5, "Spyke Drives"
Reporter: "As a chess grandmaster, what's your view on America's war strategy?"
Grandmaster: "Send in the clergy! They can move diagonally!"
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
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"As a cheering crowd, you lose your sense of individuality, you lose your sense of objectivity. Of being able to look at something and go, "I may or may not like this."
- Mike Stoklasa
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"O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed you have not already collapsed in ruin."
- graffiti found in the basilica of Pompeii
More examples of ancient Roman graffiti found in Pompeii and Herculaneum can be found here. (Definitely NSFW)
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"Presidents are not priest-kings, and government is not there to provide us with moral uplift or a national sense of meaning. Government is there to plow the g+#*@#ned roads. It is there to secure the borders, defend against foreign invasion, and to make sure that the stuff sold in bottles labeled “aspirin” really is aspirin."
- Kevin D. Williamson
Matt Easton: "I've always found it funny...that when, in an American movie, if they go back in time, for some inexplicable reason they appear in [medieval] Europe. They never go back in time and appear in medieval America."
Shad Brooks: "What's that one? The Connecticut [Yankee] in King Arthur's Court? Is that the one?"
Nikolas Lloyd: "But Europe is where the past happened! I don't get you."
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"...I believe that if you're not willing to risk your life or what you hold dear to accomplish your goal, then maybe you should re-think what you really want. Power, control, security; all of those are just fancy ways of saying that you're afraid, and you want to not be afraid anymore. People will do a lot to avoid fear, even become the monsters they're afraid of."
- Agent Crimson, City of Heroes
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“Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
― Plato
“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
― Michel de Montaigne, "The Complete Essays"
“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson
“Those who tell stories rule society.”
- attributed to Plato
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Which may be where "telling stories" became equated to lying. :-)
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"The real reason for free speech is not that all opinions have value or are worth airing. It's that there is no individual or institution whom I trust to make the decision as to which opinions are worthless on my behalf."
- Yascha Mounk
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PICARD: "I am curious, Mr. Data, why are you looking at all these other cultures?"
DATA: "The interpretation of visions and other metaphysical experiences are almost always culturally derived. And I have no culture of my own."
PICARD: "Yes, you do. You're a culture of one. Which is no less valid than a culture of one billion."
- "Birthright, Part I"
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“To die hating them, that was freedom.”
― George Orwell, 1984
“As long as you hate, there will be people to hate.”
― George Harrison
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.”
― Robert Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses
“The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
A particularly keen blade of two edges, that one. How true.
"O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed you have not already collapsed in ruin."
- graffiti found in the basilica of PompeiiMore examples of ancient Roman graffiti found in Pompeii and Herculaneum can be found here. (Definitely NSFW)
"I visited, and I did not like anything except the sarcophagus!"
- written by an unknown Greek tourist on a wall of the tomb of Ramesses VI (Valley of the Kings, Egypt), circa 1st century BC
"Things will not calm down, Daniel Jackson. They will, in fact, calm up."
- Teal'c (Christopher Judge), Stargate SG-1
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"'Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.'"
- Terry Pratchett, Eric
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Apparently, as with any other sector of the engineering field, NASA has more than a few examples tongue-in-cheek reporting language:
“Underwent unplanned rapid disassembly” (exploded)
“Performed a lithobraking maneuver” (crashed into the ground)
“Engine-rich exhaust” (engine melted or fell off)
“Entered fishing orbit” (crashed into the ocean)
“Thrust was observed along an undesired vector” (spun out of control)