What one fool can do…

Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks.

Some calculus-tricks are quite easy. Some are enormously difficult. The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics—and they are mostly clever fools—seldom take the trouble to show you how easy the easy calculations are. On the contrary, they seem to desire to impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the most difficult way.

Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can.

Calculus Made Easy, Silvanus Thompson, 1914 (yes, still in print)

The Best Homer Simpson Quote

“Marge, if you’re going to get mad every time I do something stupid, then I guess I just have to stop doing stupid things!” (S04E09, “Mr. Plow”)

This also works from our perspective as well, to wit:

“If you’re going to get upset every time we call something you did stupid, then I guess you’ll just have to stop doing stupid things!”

The differences of translation

From the Analects of Kǒng Fūzǐ (15:19), who is frequently Anglicized as Confucius:

Ames & RosemontThe Master said, “Exemplary persons are distressed by their own lack of ability, not by the failure of others to acknowledge them.”

Lyall (Proj. Gutenberg)The Master said, His shortcomings trouble a gentleman; to be unknown does not trouble him.

LeggeThe Master said, “The superior man is distressed by his want of ability. He is not distressed by men’s not knowing him.”

A. Charles Muller: The Master said: “The noble man suffers from his own lack of ability, not from lack of recognition.”

So the next time you’re thinking you don’t get enough comments…

The Redwood Cathedral and the Universe

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” — John Muir

I have long misquoted this (I’m pretty sure I first read it in Steven Minkin’s otherwise fantastic novel, …A No Doubt Mad Idea), but according to the Sierra Club I’m not the only one. So, now I have the authentic quote to go by.

I’ve used it for years to describe how my mind works, and why I digress as much as I do. The digressions aren’t intentional, it’s just that picking at things leads me to those hitches.

And while I’m on the topic, listen to this:

Facebook = “You Must Die”

Lexicon. This comes from a phonetic rendering of the word “Facebook” into Mandarin, and then translating the characters back into English.

 

Fēi sǐ bù kě

This is reminiscent of what Paul Linebarger (who also wrote science fiction as Cordwainer Smith) did during the Korean War:

While in Korea, Linebarger masterminded the surrender of thousands of Chinese troops who considered it shameful to give up their arms. He drafted leaflets explaining how the soldiers could surrender by shouting the Chinese words for ‘love,’ ‘duty,’ ‘humanity,’ and ‘virtue’–words that happened, when pronounced in that order, to sound like ‘I surrender’ in English. He considered this act to be the single most worthwhile thing he had done in his life.

Linebarger here is Paul Linebarger, the real name of Cordwainer Smith. The Chinese words mentioned are probably 爱责仁德, pronounced “ài zé rén dé,” a fair approximation of the English.

(Rooting around about him, I see Project Gutenberg has five works by Linebarger, one of which is a novella written under his Cordwainer Smith pseudonym, three of which are works about China, and the fifth is Psychological Warfare, the book that established the field.)

”The Hot Dog Is Enlightened “

Lexicon for Ulrika and myself. This originally comes from the FAQ for the Usenet newsgroup alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, which has a number of amusing bits. This is by far the one we quote, though. Here’s the whole section:

3-4. 

Hey, I heard a great Buddhist joke…

Yeah, we know. Let us tell it to you instead:

A zen student walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, “Make me one with everything.”

But we have a better ending:

The vendor then proceeds to throw the student to the ground and shove a Hebrew National, all-beef, kosher hot dog with Bob’s Own Zesty Vegetarian Chili into the student’s left nostril while screaming, “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that one?!?!”

The hot dog is enlightened.