Weblog of Quotes and Rants

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

- Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles

- George Jean Nathan

Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

- Ambrose Bierce

Music is essentially useless, as life is.

- George Santayana

I really liked this turn of phrase, from an interesting article on Africa

His face was etched with a kind of wisdom that comes at a price

- Alexandra Fuller

This is what separation of church and state is for:

I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

- Barack Obama

If you are not going to learn from your mistakes, then what is the point of making them?

I am nearing the end of my first two years as postdoc and I think this article brings up some really good points on the current "career structure for scientific research":

Give postdocs a career, not empty promises

Graduate students and post-docs get paid notoriously low. Partly because of this, the system these days favors labs with a few professors/senior scientists, and a lot of post-docs and grad students. But given the low ratio of faculty to trainees, those trainees inevitably will not all find themselves more permanent faculty (or even senior scientist) jobs. This also means that the turnover in many labs is high. I feel like a lot of human resources are being wasted, needing to train new people every 2-5 years.

“To force a highly trained postdoc from research is a terrible waste.”

Unfortunately, convincing the community to change is a huge challenge.

Edit: Another interesting article on what "failure" means in academia: A Ph.D. and a Failure

I'm a big fan of Pandora. I don't have to decide exactly what I want to listen to, just the general genre. I find out about new (to me) artists that I might otherwise never hear.

One complaint I have is the narrowness of some "stations". For one, I feel like I hear a lot of the same artists/songs on any given station. Maybe I just listen to it too much, and need to "add variety", but surely there is more out there? Or maybe pandora just doesn't have the licenses?

My R.E.M. station is great, but why do they think I only want to listen to late 80s/early 90s music? I'm willing to bet that there are newer artists with similar styles. Although, maybe others would complain if they did play outside the band's era. Such is life.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

- Victor Hugo

I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded
From embrace
By each button hook and lace

- Amy Lowell (Patterns)

And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

- Edgar Allen Poe (Annabel Lee)

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Saturday morning breakfast cereal (smbc) is a great nerdy comic, and recently posted an excellent Hemingway quote: Hemingway on Literature

And it is true: Selected Letters

I was not aware until now that Hemingway struggled with spelling ("mirricale, or however you spell it, mirricle maybe"), so I'm in good company!