Done with Winter Quarter!
I'm in the futile process of reviewing roughly 1200 pages of reading for an exam tomorrow at 8am, by which time I must also write a 10 page paper. But in the meantime, it *has* yielded some fun quotes:
"using such evocative terms as scumbuckets and finks"
"A hypothetical vaccine which reduces the probability of contracting a disease from 0.20 to 0.10 is less attractive if it is described as being effective in half the cases than if it is presented as fully effective against one of two (exclusive and equiprobable) virus strains that produce identical symptoms" They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.
"Yet this apparently orgiastic panoply of theoretical choices is profoundly constraining"
"In this book Art Stinchcombe is a mole burrowing his way out of the contingency theory hole he helped to create...this fact inhibits his ability to take a deep breath and survey the fresh air he breaks his way into"
(whole paragraph:) "Sitting in silos just cannot compare to flying bombers"
"Another element affecting personal power is one's ability to get mad, to display a temper...one must be willing to confront those who seek to usurp one's power and to deal with them in an ungentlemanly way...a reputation for chutzpah also helps"
"I have seen President Kennedy engrossed in a list of famous Indian chiefs, deciding on an appropriate name for a nuclear submarine. (Inasmuch as most of the chiefs had earned their fame by defying the armed might of the United States, it was not an easy decision. In fact, when he finally decided on Chief Red Cloud, the Navy protested that this name had undesirable foreign-policy implications.)"
"The Honeymoon telegram of September 20, 1962,...so named because McCone sent it while on his honeymoon in Paris, France, accompanied not only by his bride, but by a CIA cypher team as well.)"
"Schopenhauer daringly scheduled his own lectures at exactly the same time as his nemesis Hegel, in the hope of attracting students to come to his own lectures instead of Hegel. However, no students turned up to Schopenhauer's course of lectures, and subsequently he left, never to teach at a university again...In 1831, a cholera epidemic broke out in Berlin and both Hegel and Schopenhauer fled; but Hegel returned prematurely, caught the infection, and died a few days later. Schopenhauer instead moved south, settling permanently in Frankfurt in 1833, where he remained for the next twenty-seven years, living alone with a succession of pet poodles named Atma and Butz."
"He employs a Platonic allegory to demonstrate that all existence is ultimately futile since it can be fundamentally characterized by a want of satisfaction that can never be attained. This want is otherwise known as happiness. Schopenhauer's metaphysics is said by many to be essentially marked by an all-encompassing pessimism." How wise they are, these Wikipedians...
"World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking didn't so much visit Berkeley on Tuesday night, as he took over the collective brain of the community and took it for a fascinating, baffling, thrilling ride into the cosmos...In a strange way, he managed to touch them all. Matt Brown, a Berkeley businessman, said he came to listen to Hawking because 'He's a total stud.' "
"Plato, the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced" - Nietzsche
Done! Awesome.
"using such evocative terms as scumbuckets and finks"
"A hypothetical vaccine which reduces the probability of contracting a disease from 0.20 to 0.10 is less attractive if it is described as being effective in half the cases than if it is presented as fully effective against one of two (exclusive and equiprobable) virus strains that produce identical symptoms" They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.
"Yet this apparently orgiastic panoply of theoretical choices is profoundly constraining"
"In this book Art Stinchcombe is a mole burrowing his way out of the contingency theory hole he helped to create...this fact inhibits his ability to take a deep breath and survey the fresh air he breaks his way into"
(whole paragraph:) "Sitting in silos just cannot compare to flying bombers"
"Another element affecting personal power is one's ability to get mad, to display a temper...one must be willing to confront those who seek to usurp one's power and to deal with them in an ungentlemanly way...a reputation for chutzpah also helps"
"I have seen President Kennedy engrossed in a list of famous Indian chiefs, deciding on an appropriate name for a nuclear submarine. (Inasmuch as most of the chiefs had earned their fame by defying the armed might of the United States, it was not an easy decision. In fact, when he finally decided on Chief Red Cloud, the Navy protested that this name had undesirable foreign-policy implications.)"
"The Honeymoon telegram of September 20, 1962,...so named because McCone sent it while on his honeymoon in Paris, France, accompanied not only by his bride, but by a CIA cypher team as well.)"
"Schopenhauer daringly scheduled his own lectures at exactly the same time as his nemesis Hegel, in the hope of attracting students to come to his own lectures instead of Hegel. However, no students turned up to Schopenhauer's course of lectures, and subsequently he left, never to teach at a university again...In 1831, a cholera epidemic broke out in Berlin and both Hegel and Schopenhauer fled; but Hegel returned prematurely, caught the infection, and died a few days later. Schopenhauer instead moved south, settling permanently in Frankfurt in 1833, where he remained for the next twenty-seven years, living alone with a succession of pet poodles named Atma and Butz."
"He employs a Platonic allegory to demonstrate that all existence is ultimately futile since it can be fundamentally characterized by a want of satisfaction that can never be attained. This want is otherwise known as happiness. Schopenhauer's metaphysics is said by many to be essentially marked by an all-encompassing pessimism." How wise they are, these Wikipedians...
"World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking didn't so much visit Berkeley on Tuesday night, as he took over the collective brain of the community and took it for a fascinating, baffling, thrilling ride into the cosmos...In a strange way, he managed to touch them all. Matt Brown, a Berkeley businessman, said he came to listen to Hawking because 'He's a total stud.' "
"Plato, the greatest enemy of art Europe has yet produced" - Nietzsche
Done! Awesome.