For the United States, the passing of the Cold War yielded neither a “peace dividend” nor anything remotely resembling peace.
Clinging doggedly to the conviction that the rules to which other nations must submit don’t apply, Americans appear determined to affirm Neibuhr’s axiom of willful self-destruction.
Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power
You might say the story starts with a television broadcast.
It has not ended yet.
Rick Perlstein, Nixonland
The first draft of Gravity’s Rainbow was written out in neat, tiny script on engineers’ quadrille paper.
Again, Blicero’s nickname, “Stretchfoot” (see V733.26n).
Steven Weisenburger, A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion
Military thought, the complex product of both violent war and intellectual analysis, suffered from disparagement and disrepute during almost all the past two millennia in Imperial China.
Li Chin bowed twice and went out, and turned all his military books over to Li Chi.
Ralph Sawyer, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China
When thirty-six-year-old Walter Gropius conceived the Bauhaus, it was to provide the larger world with sensible designs in which from followed function, and ornament and fluff were eradicated.
Its legacy is not the perpetuation of one particular style, it is, rather, the extension of those larger values all over the world.
Nicholas Fox Weber, The Bauhaus Group
It began on a summer afternoon in July, a month of intense heat, rainless skies and scorching, dust-laden winds.
He stood helplessly in the doorway and looked around the empty room.
James Hadley Chase, No Orchids for Miss Blandish
The science of Pedagogics cannot be derived from a simple principle with such exactness as Logic and Ethics.
It finds the world of institutions a world in harmony with such a principle.
Karl Rosenkranz, Pedagogics as a System
Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die.
Their silence, black and complete.
Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
Beginnings.
The summer beckons, and I’m suddenly desperate for it to begin.
Jay Parini, The Art of Teaching
At 7:33 P.M. on Christmas Eve on 1992, the tall man with hair the color of pewter entered Wanda Lou’s Weaponry in Sheridan, Wyoming, and pretended not to recognize Edd Partain, the cashiered Army Major turned gun store clerk.
Knox thought about it, then asked “Brentwood okay?”
Ross Thomas, Ah, Treachery!
In the offices of the Homicide Bureau of the Detective Division of the New York Police Department, on the third floor of the police headquarters building in Centre Street, there is a large steel filing cabinet; and with it, among thousands of others of its kind, there reposes a small green index card on which is typed: “ODELL, MARGARET.”
“D’ ye know, I’ve missed my concert, bothering with your beastly affairs,” he complained amiably, giving Markham an engaging smile; “and now you’re actually scolding me. ’Pon my word, old fellow, you’re deuced ungrateful!”
S. S. Van Dyne, The “Canary” Murder Case
‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it’, wrote Max Planck towards the end of his long life.
He kept trying to the end, taking solace in the words of the German playwright and philosopher Gotthold Lessing: ‘The aspiration to truth is more precious than its assured possession.’
Manjit Kumar, Quantum
He belonged to that class of men—vaguely unprepossessing, often bald, short, fat, clever—who were unaccountably attractive to certain beautiful women.
As Beard rose to greet her, he felt in his heart an unfamiliar swelling sensation, but he doubted as he opened his arms to her that anyone would ever believe him now if he tried to pass it off as love.
Ian McEwan, Solar
There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.
The gravity of our given task is great, and it is very much in doubt how the future will judge our stewardship.
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
In the beginning they were a tiny vanguard, clinging precariously to the rim of the great Chinese landmass—a few earnest, lonely, often frightened men and women engaged in an almost entirely futile enterprise.
A simpler and more appropriate remembrance of his formidable life appeared almost two decades after his death, when Time added a new line to its masthead:
Alan Brinkley, The Publisher
“I have a conscience, my dear, on this matter,” said an old gentleman to a young lady, as the two were sitting in the breakfast parlour of a country house which looked down from the cliffs over the sea on the cost of Carmarthenshire.
But it may be said, in anticipation of the future, that in due time an eldest son was born, that Llanfeare was entailed upon him and his son, and that he was so christened as to have his somewhat grandiloquent name inscribed as William Apjohn Owen Indefer Jones.
Anthony Trollope, Cousin Henry
Pythagoras (569-500 B.C.E.) was both a persion and the namesake for a society (i.e., the Pythagoreans).
See [KOB] and [WAS].
Stephen Krantz, An Episodic History of Mathematics
We will begin this chapter by briefly exploring the features that make Clojure compelling:
The Clojure community is friendly and welcoming, and we would love to hear from you.
Stuart Halloway, Programming Clojure
America, said Horace, the office temp, was a run-down and demented pimp.
Authorities welcomed any information that could lead to his capture.
Sam Lipsyte, The Ask
It is difficult to write a book about the art of teaching, because the subject is constantly changing.
The surest safeguard against that is to ask how your ideas could possibly be misused or misunderstood, and to think, not of yourself, but of your friends and brothers whom you are trying to teach.
Gilbert Highet, The Art of Teaching
It was already in the bloody London tabloids, the case not yet three days old and his own face plastered all over the paper when it was really Thames Valley police, and not the Met, not he, who owned the case.
“His name’s Joey.”
Martha Grimes, The Black Cat
The years ’89 and ’90 were years of elation and hope.
But we should not belittle what they destroyed.
David Bell, The First Total War
In 1964, just as the Beatles were launching their invasion of America’s airwaves, Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and transformed himself from an obscure academic into a star.
That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
Nicholas Carr, The Shallows
One upon a time Java was the language you wrote once and ran anywhere.
The list of available plug-ins is ever growing and limited only by the creativity and enthusiasm of the Grails community.
Scott Davis, Groovy Recipes
They had driven into town from the castle; and Keith Nearing walked the streets of Montale, Italy, from car to bar, at dusk, flanked by two twenty-year-old blondes, Lily and Sheherazade…
He drew the blinds and shut everything down, and went in.
Martin Amis, The Pregnant Widow
Many have been puzzled by the mysterious decline or collapse of great empires or civilizations and by the remarkable rise to wealth, power or cultural achievement of previously peripheral or obscure peoples.
That is what I expect, at least when I am searching for a happy ending.
Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations
Something started to go wrong with the digital revolution around the turn of the twenty-first century.
But a deepening of meaning is the most intense potential kind of adventure available to us.
Jaron Lanier, You are Not a Gadget
On the 4th of June, 1943, the Argentine army overthrew the Constitutional government of President Castillo.
And to that I will add a wonderful remark by Friedrich Nietzsche that goes to the heart of what I believe and have experienced:
Lalo Schifrin, Mission Impossible
There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.
To do so would truly be the final denial of the cultural legacy of the Scientific Revolution.
Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution
Towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth, as much as evidence will allow, American blues music spawned a noisy offspring that was eventually given the name of boogie-woogie.
Many older recordings are still available through mail order and on the Internet.
Peter Silvester, The Story of Boogie Woogie
I’m Homer, the blind brother.
Where is my brother?
E. L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley
There are few streets in America down which a man wearing a mask can walk without attracting undue attention.
“Might be a little hard to get away this evening, but I’ll try.”
Fredric Brown, A Plot For Murder
Prior to launching into the main topics in this book, let’s step back and think about some of the core assumptions of a work what calls itself Java: The Good Parts.
This is one of those cases where more really is more, and everyone wins.
Jim Waldo, Java: The Good Parts
The three who survived the ambush on the black-sand beach were the 19-year-old second lieutenant of infantry; the five-foot-four guerrilla; and the huge, somewhat crazed medical corpsman who had sweated, starved and raved away 16 pounds in the week that followed.
Something interesting and different out on the Rim perhaps—or, for that matter, almost anywhere.
Ross Thomas, Out On the Rim
If a genius is someone with exceptional abilities and the insight go find the not so obvious solution to a problem, you don’t need to win a Nobel Prize to be one.
The result of getting back in touch with our pre-commercial selves will actually create a post-commercial world that feeds us, enriches us, and gives us the stability we’ve been seeking for so long.
Seth Godin, Linchpin
The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.
The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill or that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State, which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Frank Lloyd Wright, first named Frank Lincoln Wright, was born on June 8, 1867, to William C. Wright, a minister and musician, and Anna Lloyd Wright, an educator.
Thus, the heroic years gave way to the most fruitful period of his entire life—right up to his last day on earth.
Bruce Pfeiffer, Frank Lloyd Wright, The Heroic Years: 1920–1932
So now get up.
Wolf Hall.
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, through he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.
But the man who felt himself the object of such deadly resentment, from those whose favour he wished to gain, and whom he still wished to consider as his friends, had certainly lived too long for real glory; or for all the happiness which he could ever hope to enjoy in the love and esteem of his equals.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Edmond Clive saw her almost as soon as he came into the tunnel from the San Francisco train.
He walked across the hall, to the telephone.
Leigh Brackett, No Good From a Corpse
It’s a big job to make up a curriculum that everybody can do.
Present arrangements meet many preferences, and new agreements will emerge slowly.
Arthur Powell, Eleanor Farrar, and David Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School
John Donne’s exquisite “Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart” written in about 1615, when he was a High Anglican churchman, speaks of one of most poignant schisms in Western society, and more broadly in the world: that between faith and reason.
Let us go forth and find a global ethic and reinvent the sacred for our planet, for all life, and for ourselves.
Stuart Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred
When the guide switches off his flashlight in the underground caverns of Lascaux in the Dordogne, the effect is overwhelming.
“Remember me” the Buddha told the curious priest, “as the one who is awake.”
Karen Armstrong, The Case for God
As a busy Java developer, you’re constantly looking for ways to be more productive, right?
Finally, Groovy’s ability to load and execute arbitrary scripts comes in handy to execute the DSLs.
Venkat Subramaniam, Programming Groovy
In 1989, as the Berlin Wall was toppling, Douglas Ivester, head of Coca-Cola Europe (and later CEO), made a snap decision.
How could that possibly not be interesting?
Charles Wheelan, Naked Economics
The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan.
The advantage of the accredited locutions lies in their reputability; they are reputable because they are cumbrous and out of date, and therefore argue waste of time and exemption from the use and the need of direct and forcible speech.
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to.
For the fog to burn away, and for something else this time, somehow, to be there instead.
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
It is interesting to envisage an imaginary museum of modern art today.
Or, the artist has brought the energy and power he had exerted to the point of exhaustion to a standstill, by letting the tree sump bury the axe beneath it: an unmistakable message to Alexander Iolas.
Siegfried Gohr, Magritte: Attempting the Impossible
A steady April rain was soaking the earth.
This was treasure.
John MacDonald, A Bullet for Cinderella
Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.
Accordingly he went first to Ephesus and offered sacrifice to Artemis.
Thucydides, History Of The Peloponnesian War
Was there really any reason for him to be so anxious?
He took care to pace the deck for another quarter of an hour, always repeating, “Africa—it doesn’t exit. Africa…”
Georges Simenon, Tropic Moon
I never met Stephen Jay Gould, but I wish I had.
But his writing will last because by recontextualizing biological discourse he demonstrated,k to scientists, to nonscientists, and even to antiscientists, why it was relevant.
David Prindle, Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution
I can’t get Nell out of my mind.
So let’s stop pushing them around, and give them a chance.
John Holt, How Children Fail
Under the shadow of Boston State House, turning its back on the house of John Hancock, the little passage called Hancock Avenue runs, or ran, from Beacon Street, skirting the State House grounds, to Mount Vernon Street, on the summit of Beacon Hill; and there in the third house below Mount Vernon Place, February 16, 1838, a child was born, and christened later by his uncle, the minister of the First Church after the tenets of Boston Unitarianism, as Henry Brooks Adams.
Perhaps some day — say 1938, their centenary — they might be allowed to return together for a holiday, to see the mistakes of their own lives made clear in the light of the mistakes of their successors; and perhaps then, for the first time since man began his education among the carnivores, they would find a world that sensitive and timid natures could regard without a shudder.
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
The concierge cleared her throat before knocking, fixed her eyes on the Belle-Jardinière catalog in her hand, and announced, “Mail for you, Mr. Hire.”
And in Villejuif they were busier than usual, because their whole little world was two hours behind schedule.
Georges Simenon, The Engagement
A friend of yours, Carolyn, is the director of food services for a large city school system.
We will not be able to protect against future crises if we rail against wrongdoers without looking in the mirror and understanding the potentially devastating effects of bounded rationality, self-control problems, and social influences.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge
Tonight, as usual, Waldo’s on Macdougal Street in the Village was playing to a “Standing Room Only” crowd.
“If I know Staccato, he’ll figure out a way.”
Frank Boyd, Johnny Staccato
Android combines the ubiquity of cell phones, the excitement of open source software, and the corporate backing of Google and the other Open Handset Alliance members like Motorola, HTC, Verizon, and AT&T.
A thick skin and a sense of humor are invaluable tools of the trade.
Ed Burnette, Hello, Android
I opened the fridge and stood there for a moment with my hand still on the door, bathed in the cold light, gazing blankly at the illuminated shelves.
“Are you scared to go out?”
Claudia Piñeiro, Thursday Night Widows
The sun had begun its downward slope on the evening of June 4, 1965, as President Lyndon Johnson mounted the podium on the main quadrangle of Howard University, the country’s most celebrated black center of higher education.
Only then will affirmative action no longer be white or black.
Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action was White
A man walking.
I’m so tired!…
Georges Simenon, The Widow
When Olaudah Equiano sat for his portrait sometime during the 1780s, the self-identified African and antislavery advocate appeared every bit the English gentleman.
Situating our own ways of caring for the body in the history of that care, we confront the limits of our modernity, its debts to empire, its vulnerability to disease, and its continued reliance upon the domestic labor of women.
Kathleen Brown, Foul Bodies
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
When it comes to forcing our own retirement, our successors must find some method of their own.
C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law
On a raised dais at Washington’s luxurious Mayflower Hotel, the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia is in high performance mode.
This could be his best shot.
Joan Biskupic, American Original
What has aptly been called the ‘New World of the Dutch Republic’ made a deep impression on both European and non-European peoples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whether they came in contact with this other ‘New world’ at first then or indirectly through its shipping and trade, or prints and books.
The Dutch Republic was no more.
Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic
Lester came into my office with the sun hitting his glasses and making them shine like headlights.
I never know what’s coming next.
Roger Torrey, 42 Days for Murder
We bear the nineteenth century like an incubus.
We face the challenge of integrating big structures, large processes, and huge comparisons into history.
Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons
On August 15, 1931, the following press statement was issued: The governor of the Bank of England has been indisposed as a result of the exceptional strain to which he has been subjected in the recent months.
There is no greater testament of his legacy to that trusteeship than that in the sixty-odd years since he spoke those words, armed with his insights, the world has avoided an economic catastrophe such as overtook it in the years from 1929–33.
Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance
In Part I, we build the case for use cases and aspects—why we need use cases, why we need aspects, and how the two compliment each other.
For now, it is time to apply aspects in your project.
Ivar Jacobson and Pan-Wei Ng, Aspect-Oriented Software Development with Use Cases
Three hundred sixty million years ago, we are told, there lived a fish we call Eusthenopteron.
Once we have gone as far as we can on our own, we might consent to follow our friend Eusthenopteron and, as Plato imagined, rise up, like fishes peering out of the sea, descry the things there, and, if our strength can endure the light, know that there is “the true heaven, the true light, and the true Earth.”
Walter A. McDougall, …the Heavens and the Earth
He’d lost the magic.
He had brought it off, the well-established stage star, once so widely heralded for his force as an actor, whom in his heyday people would flock to the theater to see.
Philip Roth, The Humbling
On April 26, 1956, a crane lifted fifty-eight aluminum truck bodies aboard an aging tanker ship moored in Newark, New Jersey.
If they ever come about, these enormously costly ships and ports will create yet more economies of scale, making it still cheaper and easier to move goods around the globe.
Marc Levinson, The Box
In late 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld summoned the senior military leadership to his office on the E-ring of the Pentagon.
And yet, despite these costs, more than ever, the future of Iraq hangs in the balance.
Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, Cobra II
Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as an unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the seemingly most incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying, was the one that followed the famous Greene murders.
I have often wondered if the architect was deliberate in his choice of decoration.
S. S. Van Dine, The Bishop Murder Case
A decade ago, in the Spring of 1989, Communism in Europe died—collapsed, as a tent would fall if its main post were removed.
But we, unlike they, have something to lose.
Lawrence Lessig, Code
When I mention to someone my work on a book about mathematics and music, I tend to get one of two responses:
In the end, all these failed attempts pay tribute to the beauties of music and mathematics and the fascination they exert on people.
Leon Harkleroad, The Math Behind the Music
This page last modified on 3 January 2011.