Quote Pack

An assorted bunch of quotes I've come across in the last week:


"The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law."

— Frédéric Bastiat

"Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed."

— Richard John Neuhaus

"Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it." 

— ​Philip K. Dick

"[W]hen the officials trusted to execute law faithfully violate laws regularly, they lose their presumption of legitimacy."

— Andrew McCarthy

"Consequences that are not sufficiently painful or sufficiently scary aren’t consequences[.]"

— Jonah Goldberg

"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

— usually attributed to Lee Segal (Segal's Law)

Wojtek the Bear

"Wojtek [...] was a Syrian brown bear cub found in Iran and adopted by soldiers of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps. During the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek helped move ammunition."

More on Wikipedia...

Close enough

I ran across an interesting tidbit that I missed during my years in school.   Apparently 0.9̅ = 1.  (If you can't see the special character, the 0.9 is repeating, meaning 0.9999999...)  I initially didn't believe it either, since I, too, thought of this number as something approaching the limit of 1.    It turns out that you have to think harder about the nature of infinity in order to get your definitions right.   What helped me is this:  how small is the difference between 0.9̅ and 1?  It's infinitely small, or 0.

From Wikipedia:

"The equality 0.999... = 1 has long been accepted by mathematicians and is part of general mathematical education. Nonetheless, some students find it sufficiently counterintuitive that they question or reject it, commonly enough that the difficulty of convincing them of the validity of this identity has been the subject of several studies in mathematics education."

Link to article...

Also, the best part:

"Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
"A: 0.999999...."

Pistol Shrimp

"A neutral observer would not find this world to be believable."  — N.D. Wilson

Consider the pistol shrimp.  It...

• ...can kill fish at a distance.
• ...is one of the loudest animals on Earth.
• ...is considered a nuisance by the Navy.
• ...is friends with one particular kind of fish and hangs out with it all the time.
• ...can generate temperatures equivalent to the surface of the Sun.

Pistol shrimp FTW.

Read on...

WP: Betteridge's Law of Headlines

From the article:

Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".

Read the rest on Wikipedia...

Maneki Neko

Saw one of these outside a Thai restaurant and wondered about it.   Now I know:

"The Maneki Neko is a common Japanese sculpture, often made of ceramic, which is believed to bring good luck to the owner. The sculpture depicts a cat beckoning with an upright paw, and is usually displayed — many times at the entrance — in shops, restaurants, pachinko parlors, and other businesses. Some of the sculptures are electric or battery-powered and have a slow-moving paw beckoning."

Wikipedia: Maneki Neko ...

Fort Morgan, 1864

Fort Morgan, one of two forts guarding Mobile Bay, shortly after its surrender in 1864.

Link to page with high-resolution version...

WP: Pfeffernüsse

"Pfeffernüsse are small, firm, round biscuits,
sometimes with ground nuts."  

WP: Oware

"Oware is an abstract strategy game of Akan origin. Part of the mancala family, it is played throughout West Africa and the Caribbean."

WP: Southern States Cooperative

"Southern States Cooperative is a agricultural supply cooperative owned by more than 300,000 farmers in the United States. Southern States Cooperative supplies farmers with feed, seed, fertilizer, farm supplies and fuel. As of 2008 there were over 1200 retail locations in 23 states."

WP: Dimethyl Sulfoxide

"Use of DMSO in medicine dates from around 1963, when a Oregon Health & Science University Medical School team, headed by Stanley Jacob, discovered it could penetrate the skin and other membranes without damaging them and could carry other compounds into a biological system. [...] Because DMSO increases the rate of absorption of some compounds through organic tissues including skin, it can be used as a drug delivery system."

WP: Questing Beast

"The Questing Beast, or the Beast Glatisant (Barking Beast), is a monster from Arthurian legend. It is the subject of quests undertaken by famous knights such as King Pellinore, Sir Palamedes, and Sir Percival."

Cognitive Surplus

A devastating infographic comparing TV-watching time to the time it took to build one of the most useful things ever made.

WP: Chiefess Kapiolani

"High Chiefess Kapi'olani (c. 1781–1841) was an important member of the Hawaiian nobility at the time of the founding of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the arrival of Christian missionaries. One of the first Hawaiians to read and write and sponsor a church, she made a dramatic display of her new faith which made her the subject of a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson."

WP: IMEI

"The International Mobile Equipment Identity or IMEI is a number, usually unique, to identify GSM, WCDMA, and iDEN mobile phones, as well as some satellite phones. It is usually found printed inside the battery compartment of the phone. It can also be displayed on the screen of the phone by entering *#06# into the keypad on most phones."

WP: Mystery Airship

"Mystery airships or phantom airships are a class of unidentified flying objects best known from a series of newspaper reports originating in the western United States and spreading east during 1896 and 1897."

WP: Irn-Bru

"Irn-Bru is a carbonated soft drink produced in Westfield, Cumbernauld, Scotland. [...] In addition to being sold throughout the United Kingdom, Barr's Irn-Bru is available throughout the world and can usually be purchased where there is a significant community of people from its native Scotland. Innovative and sometimes controversial marketing campaigns have kept it as one of the best-selling soft drinks in Scotland where it competes directly with global brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi."

WP: Cinchona

"Cinchona or Quina is a genus of about 38 species in the family Rubiaceae, native to tropical South America. They are large shrubs or small trees growing 5-15 metres in height with evergreen foliage. [...] The bark of the tree is medicinally active containing a variety of alkaloids, including the anti-malarial compound quinine [...]"

WP: Chinook Jargon in English

"British Columbian English and Pacific Northwest English have several words still in current use which are loanwords from the Chinook Jargon, which was widely spoken throughout the Pacific Northwest by all ethnicities well into the middle of the 20th century. These words tend to be shared with, but are not as common in, the states of Oregon, Washington, Alaska and, to a lesser degree, Idaho and western Montana."