Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
Best wishes on this ostentatious day, Jennifer! (Your mother dug up this old photo of you last night while we were talking about your arrival on this planet back in the seventies… you may find it encouraging to know that if the Neurophysiologist gig isn’t working out for you, or becomes boring, you might still have a shot at success being a bunny—the advantage of being both smart and cute).
Smile for the camera…
Anyone that knows me likely also knows that I love (and collect, and occasionally share) wise words and quotations. On the weekend I was rummaging through some paper-stacks that have lain relatively undisturbed for years in my somewhat-organized home library, and I re-encountered an assortment of odd gems—including the following good-uns…
I quote others only the better to express myself.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592 )
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
—Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
We are no more than God’s imagination about himself.
—Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
The world is a tragedy to those who feel,
but a comedy to those who think.
—Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
A child of five would understand this.
Send someone to fetch a child of five!
—Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
—Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
To him who is in fear, everything rustles.
—Socrates (469 BC-399 BC)
Education is when you read the fine print.
Experience is what you get if you don’t.
—Pete Seger (1919— )
He of whom many are afraid ought to fear many.
— Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Everything has been thought of before—
the problem is to think of it again.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
There is no such thing as a pretty good omelette.
—French proverb
Many a scarecrow serves as a roost of the enlightened crow.
—(unknown)
The man who can’t visualize a horse
galloping on a tomato is an idiot.
—André Breton (1896-1966)
Please feel free to share with me the quotations that touch your own soul, tickle your fancy, or blow your mind, OK? You can contact me here.
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
Over the past few months, I have enjoyed the occasional opportunity (perhaps once a week), of driving into the city with Ev’s eldest daughter, Jennifer Kornelsen, Ph.D. I learn a lot from Jen. She’s a researcher in Neurophysiology with Canada’s National Research Council, where she conducts brain-related studies using cutting-edge fMRI technology. This week, she shared with me the Three Things About Science I Learned from Patrick (Patrick Stroman, Ph.D.), Jen’s Ph.D. supervisor (before she headed off for a stint of postdoctoral work at Stanford)… I found these profundities she shared to apply equally well to design—so I thought I’d share them here:
1) The simplest explanation is the best. (i.e. the most likely, the most accurate, the most truthful)
2) The data is what it is. (trust it, let it be…)
3) If you’re nervous and think you’re going to puke, eat something colourful! (at least then it will be Spectacular!)
Thanks Jen. I look forward to gleaning more from you over time…
Ottawa, Canada
The anarchist professor Denis G. Rancourt argues quite compellingly that global warming, rather than being “the greatest potential threat to humankind and the planet,” is in fact a myth and a red herring that contributes conveniently to the hiding of what is the planet’s most destructive force—power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might. He suggests that liberal tree-hugging activists (ouch—this stings) who buy into and feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, distracted from more urgent causes, or at best neutralized. Read a piece on this that Denis wrote here. (Though I’m somewhat reluctant to admit it, I’m starting to believe the man might be right).
Rancourt’s real concern is that if/when Carbon Trade has been introduced and established (as a result of the current, wrong-headed, singular focus on global warming), this will continue to misinform and obfuscate—essentially creating a smokescreen for the genuine causal issues: unethical and unsustainable corporate and political practices.
Thanks to new e-friend Laila Rashidie for the heads-up re: Rancourt; thanks to old friend Gregor Brandt for the cartoon above (which makes me feel a bit better, should Rancourt be right).
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You don’t stop laughing because you grow old.
You grow old because you stop laughing.
(thanks Nicole)
(source: the talented Frank Chimero)
