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Commentary

Composites - A Maturing Industry by Michael L. Skinner, Published Nov. 2003

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Quotes, Links and Other Interesting Things

Wine • Zen • Poetry • Technology • Philosophy • Politics • Words • Business • Science • Art & Architecture • Religion

Wine

"There's nothing serious in mortality.
All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of." - from Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Quickly bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may whet my mind and say something clever. - Euripides

"Give me women, wine and snuff
Until I cry out 'hold, enough!'
You may do so san objection
Till the day of resurrection;
For bless my beard then aye shall be
My beloved Trinity." - John Keats

"I give you one health in the juice of the vine, The blood of the vineyard shall mingle with mine; Thus let us drain the last dew drop of gold, And empty our hearts of the blessings they hold." — Oliver Wendell Holmes, American physician, poet and author.

"I drink it when I'm happy and when I am sad. Sometimes I drink it when I am alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it, if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty." — reply of Madame Lily Bollinger, Head of the House of Bollinger, when asked when she drinks Champagne.

"From wine what sudden friendship springs!" - from The Squire and his Cur by John Gay, English poet and dramatist

"What is better than to sit at the end of a day and drink wine with friends, or substitute for friends." - James Joyce

"No thing more excellent, nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God." - Plato, Greek Philosopher

"Anyone who knows his history ... must surely know his wines." - Arnold Toynbee, English sociologist and economist

"I carry on mental dialogues with the shoots of the grapevine, who reveal to me grand thoughts, and to whom I can retell wondrous things." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet

"Long life to the grape! For when summer is flown, The age of our nectar shall gladden our own ..." - Lord Byron

"Wine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counselor. Often...wine has shown me matters in their true perspective, and has, as though by the touch of a magic wand, reduced great disasters to small inconveniences. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life, romance lurking in the commonplace." - Alfred Duff Cooper, English politician and author

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Zen

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are. - a Zen proverb

"The world is vast and wide. Why do you put on your robes at the sound of a bell?" - Zen Master Unmon

A monk was asked to discard everything. "But I have nothing," he exclaimed. "Discard that too!" ordered his master. - A Zen Koan

The wind was flapping a temple flag. Two monks were arguing about it. One said the flag was moving; the other said the wind was moving. Arguing back and forth they could come to no agreement. The Sixth Patriarch said, "It is neither the wind nor the flag that is moving. It is your mind that is moving." - A Zen Koan

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku. Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no relaization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received." Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry. "If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?" - A Zen Koan

One day Chuang-tzu and a friend were walking along a riverbank. "How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water!" Chuang-tzu exclaimed. "You are not a fish," his friend said. "How do you know whether or not the fishes are enjoying themselves?" "You are not me," Chuang-tzu said. "How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?" - A Zen Koan

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Poetry

"Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow." - from The Rubiyaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward Fitzgerald

"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, thron'd on her hundred isles!" - Lord Byron

"Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise." - Victor Hugo

Go Fetch to Me a Pint

"Go fetch to me a pint o wine,
   And fill it in a silver tassie;
That I may drink, before I go,
   A service to my bonie lassie:
The boat rocks at the Pier o' Leith,
   Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the Ferry,
The ship rides by the Berwick-law,
   And I maun leave my bonie Mary.

The trumpets sound, the banners fly,
   The glittering spears are ranked ready,
The shouts o' war are heard afar,
   The battle closes deep and bloody.
It's not the roar o' sea or shore,
   Wad make me langer wish to tarry;
Nor shouts o' war that's heard afar--
   It's leaving thee, my bonie Mary! " -- Robert Burns

"To be or not to be-that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them." - from Hamlet by William Shakespeare

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light." — Dylan Thomas

"Don't urge me to look at the moon. You know how it captivates me." - E. Ashley Skinner

"Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Dream of battled fields no more.
Days of danger, nights of waking." - Sir Walter Scott

"Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe" - from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. (This is often translated as "Truth is the highest thing that man may keep", but the Middle English word trouthe means fidelity, loyalty or a pledge or promise, so a better translation might be "A promise is the highest thing that man may keep")

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."
- from, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward FitzGerald

"Have we eaten on the insane root, That takes the reason prisoner?" - from MacBeth by William Shakespeare

Questa notte sei stata la mia luna (You shine in my heart like the moon in the night sky). - Anonymous

"Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war." - Mark Antony in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

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Technology

Tired of the real world? Live in a virtual world - Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by nearly 100,000 people from around the globe.

TED - Technology Entertainment Design - A conference like no other - An invitation only event for the worlds brightest and most innovative people.

Search blogs for what people are talking about right now! — Technorati brings you what’s happening on the web right now. Feedster - Search today’s Internet for listings, news, and blogs. Blogdigger - the search engine for RSS and blogs. Blogwise was started to let people find interesting, relevant blogs quickly and easily.

Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, science and business that’s authored by highly respected thinkers, commentators and journalists; read by many top entrepreneurs, executives, funders and followers; and is helping to lead the emergence of blogging as an influential and important form of reportage, analysis and commentary.

Check out Bluetooth wireless technology, a low cost, short-range wireless specification for connecting mobile devices. The name Bluetooth was inspired by the Danish King Harald Bluetooth, known for unifying Denmark and Norway in the 10th century.

Tired of blaring TVs? Try TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it sends out 209 different codes to turn off televisions.

What the web should be? - Web software for collaboration - take a look at Wiki and TWiki - get your own WikiWeb

Looking for information - try the Wikipedia!

The Invisible Web - a directory of some of the best resources the Invisible Web has to offer. The directory includes resources that are informative, of high quality, and contain worthy information from reliable information providers that are not visible to general-purpose search engines.

What's your house worth? - Look at Zillow for an interesting estimate.

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Philosophy

"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital." - Thomas Jefferson

"Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo." (The drop excavates the stone, not with force but by falling often.) - Publius Ovidius Naso

"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence." - Thomas H. Huxley

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else. -- Ogden Nash

"The French are true romantics. They feel the only difference between a man of forty and one of seventy is thirty years of experience." - Maurice Chevalier

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson

"As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress." - Marcel Proust

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." - Albert von Szent-Györgyi

"It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time" - Winston Churchill

"Those who are victorious plan effectively and change decisively." - Sun Tzu

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather freezes; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." — Leonardo Da Vinci

Never attribute to duplicity, what can be attributed to stupidity.

History never looks like history when you are living through it. — John W. Gardner

"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations." - David Friedman

"Always take hold of things by the smooth handle." - Thomas Jefferson

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." — Oscar Wilde

Always remember you’re unique, just like everyone else.

"In heaven all the interesting people are missing." — Friedrich Nietzsche

"Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it." — Winston Churchill

"Entiae non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" - William of Ockham - The Principle of Parsimony or Occam's Razor - the simplest answer is usually the right answer.

I'd rather be lucky than good. - Folk Saying

"Better is the enemy of good." - Voltaire

The Discourse on the Dignity of Man (1486) by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) is considered the "Manifesto of the Renaissance." The Pico Project is an online translation of this work. Pico is considered by many to be the first Humanist.

Belief in the Law of Small Numbers by Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman - A key paper on the erroneous beliefs many people have on the nature of chance. Another more recent paper (in pdf format) is Inference by Believers in the Law of Small Numbers by Mathew Rabin, which looks at the same topic in more detail. These beliefs lead to what is known as the Gamblers Fallacy.

The Growing Income Inequality Problem - interesting essay on the growing gap in incomes between rich and poor. From United for a Fair Economy

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." - Will Rogers

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." - The Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

"The line separating good and evil runs through every human heart." - Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." - Oscar Wilde

Critical Thinking On The Web by Tim van Gelder - Essays, articles, studies & links about critical thinking

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 9:1

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." - Ecclesiastes (9:11)

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Politics

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separate. " - Ulysses S. Grant  

"May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." — Martin Luther King Jr.

"If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates." - Jay Leno

"Vote for the man who promises least. He'll be the least disappointing." - Bernard Baruch

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Words

Sang-froid - Freedom from agitation or excitement of mind; coolness in trying circumstances; calmness; from the French - literally "cold blood".

"Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant" (Hail, Caesar; we who are about to die salute you.) - The traditional salute of the gladiators as they entered the Colosseum.

Veni, Vidi, Vici (I Came, I Saw, I Conquered)

Dum vivimus vivamus (While we live, let us live)

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Business

Need to borrow some money? Have money to lend? Look at these on-line lending services - Zopa and Prosper.

Try Woot! - an interesting place to shop.

Do you have the right people on the bus? Visit the web site of Jim Collins author of Built to Last and GOOD TO GREAT: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence.

If your not breaking anything. then your not getting anything done.

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Science

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Art & Architecture

Architect and designer, Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was at the forefront of the Art Nouveau movement in Spain.

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Religion

For an alternative look at the origins of the universe, check out what the Pastafarians have to say at The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

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Email Michael L. Skinner to submit commentary for inclusion on this page

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