CryHavok.Org » Opinion

The Hudson “Miracle”

ikazuchi — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:38:42 +0000

It annoys the hell out of me that people keep calling what happened during the emergency landing and evacuation of the airliner on the Hudson as a miracle.

Calling it a miracle demeans and belittles the hard work, skill, and courage of everyone involved by ripping the job they did out of their hands and making them little more than puppets of a god.

Extended Quoting

ikazuchi — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:55:59 +0000

Normally, I send to quotes to the tumblelog, but these have been gathering on my hard disk for a bit, so I figured I’d post them here instead of adding them one at a time.

“Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Those who claim a thing is impossible should not interrupt those that are doing it.” – old Chinese proverb
“Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance, / And toss them on the wheels of Chance.” – Juvenal
“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” – Abraham Lincoln
“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.” – Mark Twain
“A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.” – Granville Hicks
“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” – George Santayana
“To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep.” – Joan Klempner
“One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.” – Will Durant
“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.” – Edward Abbey
“Anybody can win unless there happens to be a second entry.” – George Ade
“All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.” – Alexandre Dumas
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” – Thomas Jeferson
“Never fight an inanimate object.” – P.J. O’Rouke
“I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.” – Joseph Baretti
“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.” – Carl Reiner
“The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory.” – Paul Fix
“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.” – R. Buckminster Fuller
“Isn’t it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?” – Kelvin Throop III
“Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.” – H.L. Mencken
“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.” – G.K. Chesterson
“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.” – Eugene McCarthy
“There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.” – Don Herold
“I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.” – Carl Sandburg
“No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.” – Thomas Mann
“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” – T.S. Elliot
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.” – Paul Gauguin
“It takes a certain maturity of mind to accept that nature works as steadily in rust as in rose petals.” – Esther Warner Dendel
“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.” – Isaac Asimov
“The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.” – Harlan Ellison
“In physics, you don’t have to go around making trouble for yourself – nature does it for you.” – Frank Wilczek
“Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.” – Jimmy Breslin
“The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” – Malcolm Forbes
“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” – Oscar Wilde
“The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That’s where we come in; we’re computer professionals. We cause accidents.” – Nathaniel Borenstein
“By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.” – Mark Twain
“If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done.” – Peter Ustinov
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.” – Daniel J. Boorstin
“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.” – James Branch Cabell
“There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man’s lawful prey.” – John Ruskin
“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde
“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.” – Bertrand Russell
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton
“I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” – Sir Winston Churchill
“We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.” – W.H. Auden
“I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.” – Blaise Pascal
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Key
“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” – Eric Hoffer
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.” – Ernest Benn
“Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.” – Norm Papernick
“The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.” – Ralph W. Sockman
“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.” – Isaac Asimov
“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.” – Mark Twain
“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.” – B.F. Skinner
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell
“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” – Sir Arthur Eddington
“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” – Susan Ertz
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss
“Think twice before you speak, and then you may be able to say something more insulting than if you spoke right out at once.” – Evan Esar
“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.” – Oscar Wilde
“It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.” – William G. McAdoo
“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.” – Bertrand Russell
“Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.” – Lester B. Pearson
“I don’t really trust a sane person.” – Lyle Alzado
“Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.” – Robertson Davies
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley
“All things are difficult before they are easy.” – Dr. Thomas Fuller
“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.” – Frank Tibolt
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.” – Gary Zukav
“It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.” – Jerome K. Jerome
“What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.” – John Ruskin
“Confusion is always the most honest response.” – Marty Indik
“All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” – Ernest Rutherford
“Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” – James M. Barrie
“One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.” – Rita Mae Brown
“Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.” – Wendell Johnson
“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.” – Aldous Huxley
“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.” – Woodrow Wilson
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.” – George Bernard Shaw
“They always talk who never think.” – Matthew Prior
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” – Galileo Galilei
“Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.” – Bertrand Russell
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” – George Bernard Shaw
“I must beware of riding off on pet steed, Tangent, far from the main track of this book.” – Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion, pg 170)
“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I love you, you love me, unless you’re flagged PVP.” – Anonymous
“I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.” — Woody Allen
“I cannot understand why I must love a “God” because if I don’t ‘He’ will hurt me. I call this the “abusive boyfriend” brand of theology, and I am not impressed with its reasoning.” — Anonymouse Wiccan
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. — Nathaniel S Borenstein
If you don’t think carefully, you might think that programming is just typing statements in a programming language. — Ward Cunningham
First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a programming style. Then forget all that and just hack. — George Carrette
If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as lines produced but as lines spent. — Edsger Dijkstra
Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic. — John Steinbeck
Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end. — Henry Spencer
Writing code has a place in the human hierarchy worth somewhere above grave robbing and beneath managing. — Gerald Weinberg
Part of the reason so many companies continue to develop software using variations of waterfall is the misconception that the analysis phase of waterfall completes the design and the rest of the process is just non-creative execution of programming skills. — Steven Gordon
As such, panic, but only slightly. -Zalewski
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
“I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.” – Stephan Leacock
“A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.” -Baltasar Gracian
“Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.” – Niels Bohr
“If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.” – John Kenneth Galbraith
“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.” – Aldous Huxley
“Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.” – Jane Wagner
“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” – Barry LePatner
“Sanity is a madness put to good use.” – George Santayana
“Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.” – Bertrand Russell
“I am not in this world to live up to other people’s expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.” – Fritz Perls
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” – Sir Winston Churchill
“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.” – Will Rogers
“In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.” – Bertrand Russell
“The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.” – Steven Wright
“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.” – Margaret Thatcher
“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.” – Charlotte Whitton
“The point of quotations is that one can use another’s words to be insulting.” – Amanda Cross
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is.” – Chuck Reid
“A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.” – James Feibleman
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.” – Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“Wisdom is what’s left after we’ve run out of personal opinions.” – Cullen Hightower
“A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.” – Roald Dahl
“I’m worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It’s not holding a charge.” – Edward Chilton
“This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.” – Wolfgang Pauli
“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” – A. A. Milne
“I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” – Harry S. Truman
“Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.” – Fran Lebowitz
“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.” -Bertrand Russell
“My day is not complete until I have terrified a complete stranger.” – Doctor’s Bumper Sticker
“In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.” – Edward P. Tyron
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. -Friedrich Nietzsche
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -Stephen Roberts
I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence. -Doug McLeod
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -Epicurus
Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don’t want to know! Important things! -Ned Flanders
Men never commit evil so fully and joyfuly as when they do it for religious convictions. -Blaise Pascal
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. -Bertrand Russell
Praying is like a rocking chair– it’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere. -Gypsy Rose Lee
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. -Gene Roddenberry
Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night — Isaac Asimov
I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life. — Andrew Carnegie
All thinking men are atheists. — Ernest Hemingway
Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. — Benjamin Franklin
Faith means not wanting to know what is true. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. — Kurt Vonnegut
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. — Frank Lloyd Wright
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. — Denis Diderot
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. — Samuel Clemens
The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. — Edward Gibbon
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. — Ferdinand Magellan
It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. — Gloria Steinem

Rule Of Three

ikazuchi — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:37:29 +0000

Currently making its rounds through the NBES (Non-Business Email Spams) is the following story:

In ancient Greece (469 – 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance, who ran up to him excitedly and said, “Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students…?”

“Wait a moment,” Socrates replied. “Before you tell me, I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Test of Three.”

“Test of Three?”

“That’s correct,” Socrates continued. “Before you talk to me about my student let’s take a moment to test what you’re going to say. The first test is Truth. Are absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”

“No,” the man replied, “actually I just heard about it.”

“All right,” said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second test, the test of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?”

“No, on the contrary…”

“So,” Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about him even though you’re not certain it’s true?”

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed.

Socrates continued, “You may still pass though because there is a third test – the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?”

“No, not really…”

“Well,” concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?”

The man was defeated and ashamed and said no more. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem. It also explains why Socrates never found out that Plato was banging his wife.

The crappy thing about this is that most people will read this and find it funny due to one sentence at the end instead of taking the time to reflect upon the Role Of Three outlined in the story and apply it to their own lives.

A Couple of Fantastic Guitar Players

ikazuchi — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:35:37 +0000

First there is Eric Mongrain:

And then we have Justin King:

Updated
I have since bought Justing King’s CD Le Blue and, though disappointed that it was not all instrumental, I found the CD to enjoyable and the both the songwriting and playing to be exceptional.

Stikfas

ikazuchi — Sat, 03 May 2008 20:53:55 +0000

Stikfas are, without a doubt, the coolest freaking toy I’ve seen in many, many years. Exceptionally articulated plastic figures that are simple, easy to assemble, and just plain freaking COOL.

And cheap. The basic ninja figure is only $7 and just lots of fun to play with. I have some wacky ideas of project to attempt with these figures (stop-motion animation comes to mind immediately).

Take a look and, if you’re willing, drop a few buck to play with one. They are well worth the cash. I picked mine up at Emerald City Comics in Seminole, FL. yesterday and keep stopping what I’m working on to play with the little buggers.

Science Fiction Setting

ikazuchi — Sat, 03 May 2008 20:45:59 +0000

In the early 21st century, an anonymous person under the handle ‘Captain Gravity’ posted detailed mathematical formula detailing how gravity worked as well as plans for a primitive gravity manipulation machine. The debates in academic circles lasted months. Two years later, the first physical prototype gravity engine was publicly unveiled, assembled by General Electric. The gravity engine, codenamed Archeoptryx, lifted into the South Pacific sky and into the history books where it hovered for almost twelve minutes before settling to the ground. Archeoptryx was a titanium ring wrapped around a faraday cage of rare-earth magnets and thirty-two types of metallic wire. Within the cage was housed both the engine and the massive power supply. The ring was eighteen feet across and the cage was slightly thinner, only fourteen feet.

Eight years of refinement reduced the size of the engine by a meager two feet in both directions and did nothing for the extreme level of power consumption, though the intervening years did generate better methods of power generation. Another three years saw the first launch of a colonization vessel towards the moon, and six more years the first manned exploration vessel towards Mars. Another three years saw the USSV Sky Eagle, the first Haslett class long range exploration vessel begin its voyage to wander our solar system and better understand our cosmic neighborhood.

It didn’t get far.

Near the orbit of Neptune came first contact with extraterrestrials. A squad of forty Soquindus warships interdicted the Sky Eagle’s journey and bombarded it with communications in over eighty languages and dialects. Their message was simple: Don’t leave the solar system. Once the humans of Guinturra, their name for Earth, had established a planetary government capable of speaking for our planet it could petition the Gamedian League for probationary membership. Any attempts to leave the solar system would be obliterated.

End Message.

It has been twenty three years since that ultimatum, and humans are still stuck in earth, resigned to their galactic reservation.

Colony Ship Alpha

ikazuchi — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:22:10 +0000

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but an idea I’ve never read about in any science fiction is the reversal of the classic concept of a colony ship.

The basic premise resides around a race of intelligent extra-terrestrials that have launched their first intergalactic expedition. These aliens have roughly the same level of technology as humans, a little more advanced in some places, a little behind in others, but have geared their country/planet to exploring space much like the United States when Kennedy announced that we Americans would be the first people on the moon.

Now imagine a civilization that after reaching their moon didn’t stop there and instead continued to push onward. Soon after they hit several of their solar system’s planets and then, after years of planning and toil, launch their first colony ship at what they determine to be the closest planet that can sustain their form of life.

Earth.

The colony ship takes over a hundred years to reach earth using some specialized deep space engines. Upon arrival, in our present day, they find the planet they hoped to claim as the first intergalactic colony of their race/country turns out to be inhabited by us. Earthlings. Humans.

Natives.