The Institute for
Idiotic Pursuits
Bereishith (Genesis)
"In the beginning,
G-d Created the Heavens and the earth." [1:1]
"All the rest is commentary!"
"The power of accurate
observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
"A glass cat catches
no mice."
Joe Denholm
"A mind once
stretched by new thoughts can never regain its original shape."
"So we really ought
to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science."
###
"I believe that a scientist
looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."
"The primary purpose
of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring
to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be
given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of
the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program,
should the value of pi change. "
FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
"I don't care to belong
to any social organization which will accepts me as a member."
###
"I find television
very educational. Every times someone switches it on I go into another
room and read a good book."
"Madness is rare in
individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."
Epigram 156, Beyond Good and
Evil
"The telephone is the
greatest single enemy of scholarship; for what our intellectual forebears
used to inscribe in ink now goes once over a wire into permanent oblivion."
"What a waste it is
to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true
that is."
while speaking to the United
Negro College Fund, 5/9/89
has
been added to Bartlett's `Familiar Quotations'. (reported in Esquire, 8/92)
(reported in the NY Times, 12/9/92)
"Strange! that a Man
who has wit enough to write a Satire should have folly enough to publish
it."
###
"A learned blockhead
is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one,"
"Time has only a relative
existence."
(1795-1881)
"It is unsound and
contradictory to expect that which has never been done, can be done, except
by means which have never yet been tried."
"The perspective is realist because it assumes
that causal relationships exist outside of the human mind, and it is critical
- realist because it assumes that these valid causal relationships cannot
be perceived with total accuracy by our imperfect sensory and intellective
capacities. And the perspective is evolutionary because it assumes a special
survival value to knowing about causes and, is particular, about manipulable
causes."
Thomas D. Cook
Quasi-Experimentation
Design & Analysis Issues for Field
Settings
"Intellectuals are
people who believe that ideas are more importance than values. That
is to say, their own ideas and other people's values."
British writer (1894-1987)
"In this world of sin
and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; are for me, I
rejoice that I am not a Republican."
"If one assents to Simon’s
definition of “a natural science [an being] a body of knowledge about class
of things - objects or phenomena - in the wold: about the characteristics
and properties that they have; about how they behave and interact with
each other,” then natural science would be viewed as a descriptive process.
However, the social sciences not only fell this descriptive role, but perform
a prescrptive one as well. This is especially true of the policy
sciences of policy analysis from its ex ante."
###
"As I stated earlier,
the problem definition or structuring aspect of the policy analysis process
is not an isolated event. In order for this process to proceed, the
defining process must join with the total policy process. Ackoff
claims that a problem is “solved” when its value outcome is maximized.
When a policy maker “satisfies,” as opposed to maximizes, then he claims
the problem has been resolved. One dissolves a problem when the values
are no longer meaningful within the framework of alterative. Wildavsky
describes this process as a “route” that the process travels. Going
bact to my original metaphor of the macrame knot, it is the twisting of
the threads together that brings the problem to definition and ultimate
solution."
"We have passed
from anger about what's going on in our political system to cynicism and
alienation."
President of the University of Oklahoma
"Who's on first. What's
on second, I Don't Know is one third..."
"People everywhere
confuse what they read in newspapers with news."
U.S. journalist, author
(1904-1963)
"To the living we owe
respect, but the dead we owe only the truth."
French philsopher, writer (1694
- 1778)
"Man is a clever animal
who behaves like an imbecile."
"It is better to be
lucky than to be good!"
"The idea, which constitutes
the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a
great number of ideas."
Philosopher and theologian
(1632-1677)
March 7, 1998
more soon...
The
Institute for Idiotic Pursuits