Monday Quotations

3/30/09.

How can the combination of fragments of knowledge existing in different minds bring about results which, if they were to be brought about deliberately, would require a knowledge on the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess? To show that in this sense the spontaneous actions of individuals will, under conditions which we can define, bring about a distribution of resources which can be understood as if it were made according to a single plan, although nobody has planned it, seems to me indeed an answer to the problem which has sometimes been metaphorically described as that of the 'social mind.'

--- F. A. Hayek (1899 - 1992)


I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the judicial safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

--- F. A. Hayek


The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.

--- Arthur Koestler (1905 - 1983)

Nature v Nurture. Not How Much but How.

3/30/09. Nature works through nurture and nurture works through nature.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5986239.ece

Tails of Manhattan

3/29/09. "Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster." --- and so Woody Allen's latest story begins.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/03/30/090330sh_shouts_allen?printable=true

Happiness of the People

3/24/09. Charles Murray, social policy analyst and big ideas thinker, asks, "Do people flourish more in the United States or Europe?"

http://www.american.com/archive/2009/march-2009/the-europe-syndrome-and-the-challenge-to-american-exceptionalism

Monday Quotations

3/23/09.

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."

--- G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)


"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."

--- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)


"They (mirror neurons) allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct stimulation; by feeling, not by thinking.

--- Giacomo Rizzolatti (1937 - )

The Biology of Imagination

3/22/09. Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen on why the capacity for imagination owes more to biology than culture.

http://www.entelechyjournal.com/simonbaroncohen.htm

Rethinking Drinking: Alcohol and Your Health

3/10/09. This is a new government Web site called "Rethinking Drinking" that aims to help people recognize problem drinking patterns earlier and catch themselves before they fall.

http://www.rethinkingdrinking.niaaa.nih.gov/

Two Crooks for the Road

3/9/09. Book review of the untold story of Bonnie and Clyde.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123664301193877793.html#printMode

Monday Quotations

3/9/09.
The struggle of man against power is the
struggle of memory against forgetting.

--- Milan Kundera (1929 - )


There are one hundred and ninety-three living
species of monkeys and apes. One hundred
and ninety-two of them are covered with hair.
The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo
sapiens.

--- Desmond Morris (1928 - )


Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

--- Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

Past Their Prime (Rate)

3/9/09. Sovietologists did not predict the fall of the Soviet Union, and economists were asleep at the wheel when the economy crashed. So much for experts.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/188143/output/print

Favorite Five Composers

3/5/09. Denis Dutton, professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and editor of the popular Web site Arts and Letters Daily, discusses his five favorite composers.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/10/denis-dutton-composers-opinions-high-five_0210_denis_dutton_slide.html

From Attitude to Gratitude

3/4/09. Wall Street Journal writer Jeff Zaslow discusses why the attitude of gratitude --- not complaining, fits the tough times we live in.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123612215614023427.html

Mysteries of Science

3/3/09. 13 Unsolved scientific puzzles.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/

Monday Quotations

3/2/09.

You can persuade a man to believe almost anything
provided he is clever enough, but it is much more
difficult to persuade someone less clever.

--- Tom Stoppard (1937 - )


Festina lente.
Make haste slowly.

--- Latin proverb


Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes
more bitter. They increase the cares of life, but they
mitigate the remembrance of death.

--- Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992)