Daily Quotes

[El Presidente]

The truth will set you free

.......but first it will piss you off 

Gloria Steinem

[Notsocleaver]

"To be young is to fear being thought stupid; to mature is to fear being stupid." Don Colacho’s Aphorisms #116

[El Presidente]

"Taking a few blows is the price for being in the arena"

Steven Pressfield 

[TobaccoRoad]

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Then the definition of sanity must be, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.- me 

[Fuzz]

"I'm not drunk. It's just the floor hates me, the tables and chairs are bullies, and the wall gets in the way."

[jazzboypro]

Early is on time, on time is late and late is unacceptable!

- Eric Jerome Dickey

[porkchop]

"Two of the gravest general dangers to survival are the desire for comfort and a passive outlook"

- US Army Ranger Handbook

[El Presidente]

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards"

Soren Kierkegaard

[mprach024]

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. 

- Albert Einstein

 

[El Presidente]

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends. 

William Butler Yeats

[Huckleberry]

Snakes slither in the same grass.

--me

[Mickey D]

“A hand in the bush is better than two on the thigh.” ~ my dad

[joeypots]

"Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."

Bertrand Russell

Why is money called dough? Because we all knead it.

Money is like manure. Left in one big pile it stinks to high heaven, but spread it around and everything grows.

[Cairo]

Terence McKenna has many mind-blowing quotes--here are a few:

We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything.

You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron.

Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.

If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan.

To search expectantly for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably as culture-bound a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant.

Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coercion, brainwashing, and manipulation.

My technique is don’t believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite.

A secret is not something untold. It’s something which can’t be told.

All culture is a kind of con game.

Society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. 

Ideology always paves the way toward atrocity.

No one knows enough to worry.

Nothing comes unannounced, but many can miss the announcement. So it's very important to actually listen to your own intuition.

You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions.

 

 

 

[SirVantes]

Asking for a friend:

8 hours ago, Cairo said:

We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything.

Why is that the limit of credulity?  Why is it not that we are asked to believe that there are "invisible waves" in the air, that we can manufacture, that carry "information" that allow us to slay orcs in real time with people on the other side of this planet?  Why is it not that they ask us to believe that our GPS does not work without quantum mechanics?    

8 hours ago, Cairo said:

If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan.

Even if you have a plan, you can be part of somebody else's plan.  And try as you might, you may figure in no one else's plan at all - and that may be the greater tragedy.

8 hours ago, Cairo said:

My technique is don’t believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite.

Alright, but are you convinced of anything?  

8 hours ago, Cairo said:

You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions.

But neither are you defenceless.  You are still clothed in your compassion, your empathy, your hope, and armoured with your thirst for truth, your scepticism and your defiance.

[Bijan]

32 minutes ago, SirVantes said:

Why is that the limit of credulity?  Why is it not that we are asked to believe that there are "invisible waves" in the air, that we can manufacture, that carry "information" that allow us to slay orcs in real time with people on the other side of this planet?  Why is it not that they ask us to believe that our GPS does not work without quantum mechanics?  

I can see it both ways. Your examples are useful and have practical applications that display their usefulness and prove their respective theories.

What simpler explanation is there for wifi? Magic? Try to calculate position from GPS signals without relativity and see how far off your positions readings are.

The big Bang theory doesn't predict much. And I'm not sure the evidence supports it besides that red shift in frequencies from more distant objects. There are other pieces of data that contradict it.

To me it seems inspired by the desire to have a scientific creation story. It doesn't seem to contribute anywhere near the useful applications that come from invisible waves and GPS.

[SirVantes]

9 minutes ago, Bijan said:

I can see it both ways. Your examples are useful and have practical applications that display their usefulness and prove their respective theories.

What simpler explanation is there for wifi? Magic? Try to calculate position from GPS signals without relativity and see how far off your positions readings are.

The big Bang theory doesn't predict much. And I'm not sure the evidence supports it besides that red shift in frequencies from more distant objects. There are other pieces of data that contradict it.

To me it seems inspired by the desire to have a scientific creation story. It doesn't seem to contribute anywhere near the useful applications that come from invisible waves and GPS.

As Arthur C Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  The disjunct is between the apparent readiness to accept, day to day, the absolutely incredible things that we (via science, exclusively) can do, and where some choose to apply the tag "obviously incredible". 

As regards the predictions and contributions of the Big Bang theory, I would say the hoary old tales about Michael Faraday being asked "What good is electricity?" apply - give it time.  At this point, the theory is part of the Standard Model, and the latter has been pretty useful in particle physics and its applications.  It may one day be disproved - great, bring it on, it's what science is about.

 

[Bijan]

@SirVantes don't disagree with your points but it seems we live in a world where easily explained science and clearly useful technologies are denied and disbelieved. In that respect the big Bang theory is on shaky ground by comparison and its being disproved would not affect the rest of the standard model theory much as far as my limited understanding of physics goes.

Edit: specifically I mean that there are those that think the earth is flat while the ancient Greeks or maybe even earlier civilizations had proved the earth was round and that some believe vaccines can not work at all and not that this or that vaccine is not worth the risk in particular.

[Cairo]

1 hour ago, SirVantes said:

Asking for a friend:

Unfortunately Terence is no longer with us to defend his quotes.   🙂 

[SirVantes]

6 minutes ago, Bijan said:

@SirVantes don't disagree with your points but it seems we live in a world where easily explained science and clearly useful technologies are denied and disbelieved. In that respect the big Bang theory is on shaky ground by comparison and its being disproved would not affect the rest of the standard model theory much as far as my limited understanding of physics goes.

Edit: specifically I mean that there are those that think the earth is flat while the ancient Greeks or maybe even earlier civilizations had proved the earth was round and that some believe vaccines can not work at all and not that this or that vaccine is not worth the risk in particular.

All agreed.  I am not a science expert either.  I can't fix a toaster, but there are guys who can, and who build things that fly.  These same guys (well, not the exact same guys, but guys from the same clan) tell me their best guess is such and such.  I am inclined to nod, maybe ask some questions, and let them try to show me how it works.  

[SirVantes]

1 minute ago, Cairo said:

Unfortunately Terence is no longer with us to defend his quotes.   🙂 

My kind of fight 😁💪💪

[Meklown]

Sometimes, there's nothing you can do, you have to keep pace with 'progress' - Serge, Whiskyfun

[porkchop]

“Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.” - William Faulkner

[jonnyfromiranny]

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

David Mccullough, Jr.

[El Presidente]

“I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsiblity on the West Coast.”
― Viktor E. Frankl,