logs written by Luis Apiolaza in Christchurch, New Zealand
Archive of articles classified as' "quotes"
Back homeFrom the Bad banana blog why-I-chose-this-name page:
Bad bananas. Sour milk. Mix them together and you’re well on your way to banana bread, my friend. The same principle works with ideas. A seemingly worthless chunk of information here. An old, bad idea there. Mix them up and you just might end up with something tasty.
Amen.
Sometimes it is really easy to keep on going, but sometimes things get complicated and I need some extra inspiration. El flaco Spinetta is fail safe on this; this time he comes with Canción para los días de la vida:
Tengo que aprender a ser luz
entre tanta gente detrás
me pondré las ramas de este sol que me espera
para usarme como al aire
Maybe it is time to break the few remaining links and move on.
Seth Godin does it again in Curious. At some point we stop searching and settle for the mediocre.
While doing research in forestry I can see many explanations that seem to be ‘good enough’, being held as precious pieces of wisdom. ‘Wood basic density is the canonical driver for wood quality’ and we kept (and some still keep) on nodding and working on that basis, wasting years and budgets into oblivion. This is just one example of the lack of curiosity.
Why do we stop questioning? It is safer to go with the mass: one can even build a career out of this. Dissent and alternative explanations are frown upon, because they add uncertainty to our orderly world. Uncertainty brings out fear and resentment, because we are — apparently — increasing our ignorance when following our curiosity. As John Archibald Wheeler put it:
We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Some people are deeply uncomfortable with this thought.
Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable — Shimon Peres.
I think of my taxes supporting part of the programs and cry.
Some times I have the temptation of using an external locus of control: ‘it was not my fault that x happened, it depended on someone else’. Ultimately, most of the time we are responsible for what happens (or that we let happen) to us, and this is one of the reasons why I really dislike to see people suing McDonald’s because ‘it made them fat’ or similar I-am-not-responsible-for-myself type of frivolous legal actions.
One of my favourite quotes is used by Ayn Rand in the first few pages of The Fountainhead:
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me — Ayn Rand.
I read this book a couple of years ago, when I really enjoyed the ideas, despited of the stilted characters and dialogues. Anyway, we can always challenge ourselves — and the world during this process — if we act upon our believes and values. Or, using Rand’s words, ‘Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice’. Human beings always face this choice: What is the best use of the present time? Our answers determine our success and failure in every endeavour.
This month I started working for the School of Forestry, University of Canterbury, where I am supposed to teach, supervise and research all sort of nifty things. One of the things with research is that one needs constant change and permanent challenges. For a while I stepped outside research because I was feeling tired, but I then got back the love for the trade.
Last week I read a transcription of a very inspirational presentation by the late Richard Hamming (via Paul Graham): You and your research. In two parts of the presentation Hamming presents summaries of his experience. First:
Let me summarize. You’ve got to work on important problems. I deny that it is all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur’s ‘Luck favors the prepared mind’. I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons for years—great thoughts only—means that I committed 10% of my time trying to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not important. I found in the early days I had believed ‘this’ and yet had spent all week marching in ‘that’ direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched in the direction I thought was important. It’s that easy.
At the end of the talk, he stated:
If you really want to be a first-class scientist you need to know yourself, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your bad faults, like my egotism. How can you convert a fault to an asset? How can you convert a situation where you haven’t got enough manpower to move into a direction when that’s exactly what you need to do? I say again that I have seen, as I studied the history, the successful scientist changed the viewpoint and what was a defect became an asset.
In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don’t succeed are: they don’t work on important problems, they don’t become emotionally involved, they don’t try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don’t. They keep saying that it is a matter of luck. I’ve told you how easy it is; furthermore I’ve told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!
In a non-completely unrelated post Robert Fripp explains (via Scobleizer):
We should not expect good work to be acknowledged; and where it is, we should not expect it to be welcomed. Rather, the strength of a creative impulse is measured by the strength of opposition it meets.
It is not often that one is exposed to a really motivational text, which is really uplifting compared to the ‘teamwork rocks’ lame posters that one finds in most companies. I have been talking with a few people trying to, first, determine what are the ‘big issues’ in my area and, second, what would be steps toward tackling them. I am trying to combine two strategies: fishing for ideas that I can extend until they become a real contribution and, more importantly, growing new ideas into something useful.
There is a saying in Spanish that says1 ‘El hombre propone pero Dios dispone’, which loosely translates2 to ‘one can plan, but God makes the final decision’. I had planned a couple of very tight deadlines, but on Friday 9 I got sick and on Monday 12 I underwent surgery. Final result: all deadlines are ridiculously off time and I will need to finish some work from overseas.
It was my first time having general anaesthetics, so I was a bit worried about waking up or, rather, not waking up. I had a good conversation with the anaesthetist, who was very understanding. I had been told before that people start a countdown from ten, and normally they are sleep by five. However, nobody asked me to count; and the only thing that I remember is thinking ‘Hospilite: what a lame name for hospital lights’ while looking at the ceiling of the operating theatre. Next thing someone is asking me ‘Are you in pain?’, and I was saying ‘Yes, a bit’ before receiving some morphine. This was one hour and a half after thinking about Hospilite.
Coming from surgery feels strange. It has been painful, but not terribly so, and tiring. The first few days after the event, I was quite emotional. I do not know if it is the realisation of one’s own mortality or ‘just’ the effect of anaesthesia. At the same time I am very grateful to Marcela, who has managed to take care of everything and everyone while I have been slowly moving around.
I still have four more days of medical licence, and I can certainly say that I am glad to still be around!
1 I found the origin of this proverb explained as:
Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit. Así se lee en la Imitación de Cristo de Kempis (libro 1.º, cap. 19, vers. 9.º), aunque tal vez sea una nueva versión de la sentencia de Publio Siro: Homo semper aliud, fortuna aliud, cogitat (Siempre el hombre piensa una cosa, y la fortuna otra). Parecida la frase que comentamos es la de L’homme s’agite, Dieu le mène, (El hombre se mueve. Dios le guía), que con frecuencia ha sido atribuida a Bossuet, pero que pertenece a Fenelón. En las Sagradas Escrituras (Proverbios, cap. 16, vers. 9.º) se lee: ‘El hombre elige su camino y Dios conduce sus pasos’.
2 The previous note in Spanish makes reference to Proverbs 16,9: ‘In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps’. There are alternative versions of this verse available.
After our 1998 expedition to India, we gained a bit more appreciation of Indian food. Hobart has four or five Indian restaurants, with Annapurna being probably the best one. Anyway, we have not had Indian food for a while and we decided to order this time from that Tandoor and Curry House (101 Harrington Street, Hobart). The food used to be very good and this time we ordered simple and mild dishes: Lamb Korma and Palaak Paneer. However, it seems that they have changed chef or something like that; the food was pretty ordinary, the Palaak Paneer quite spicy and we both got heartburn. Not recommended anymore.
Last weekend was—as any weekend—horrible on terms of TV programs, so after putting Orlando in bed we just started watching our copy of the twentieth anniversary edition of E.T. the extraterrestrial Twenty three year later the movie is still magical for me and, embarrasingly, I still get emotional when E.T. say goodbye.
On Sunday I decided to watch The girl in the café, which was broadcasted by ABC. The previews of the movie promised something a bit different and funny: it starts with a socially disfunctional public servant (Bill Nighy—for some obscure reason I have a weak spot for him) meeting a mysterious low-key girl (Kelly Macdonald) in a café, with the background of G8 summit negotiations. Unfortunately, as time passes the movie becomes a propaganda medium and very incredible. The movie promised much more than it delivered.
This reminded me of some (relatively recent) movies that I had really enjoyed, in no particular order:
I should probably prepare a list of older movies that I still like (coming one day, maybe soon).
We have almost finished adding content to Tim’s web site, including a PDF version of his book. We have implemented the whole site using Textpattern. Yes, this is a shameless plug to get Tim’s site indexed by search engines.
Finally, the quote of the week:
Rehab is for quitters—Unknown.
Another bombing, another massacre. More killing and maiming innocent people in the name of religion, politics, big ideas or small ones.
Flashback: twelve years of Catholic school listening about good and evil, some times as abstract concepts, some times personified in strange caricatures. Then in 1982 I came across The Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam and read:
Pen, tablet, heaven and hell I looked to see
Above the skies, from all eternity;
At last the master sage instructed me,
‘Pen, tablet, heaven and hell are all in thee’.
There are a few bad people amongst us, walking with hell inside them. As John Quiggin pointed out, this is a time for solidarity with Indonesian people.
A week without much happening on this site, but plenty of things happening on the background. Thus, no posts but plenty of emails and me quite busy and dealing with ‘should I go for the next big thing or not?’. Decisions, negotiations, decisions…
Some interesting things that I have seen:
Ah-Ah, I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya punk?—Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.
This weekend is family time and helping some friends with a bunch of cows: it does not get more removed from the web than that.
