Consider: As I understand it, the wiring in the Golden Gate Bridge, if layed end-to-end, would stretch around the globe three times over. Considering the circumfrence of the earth is something like 40,000km, that would mean that we've already built bridge structures that incorporate over 100,000km of cabling. Granted, the design of the space elevator is completely novel; but this stuff is based on modern engineering understanding.

"A circumnavigational flight sounds great, it just seems far-fetched. An 852 foot test. Only 131,472,000 more feet to go."
-- Overheard circa 1903

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/27/129238&from=rss

Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say, hard cheese
- C. Montgomery Burns

Domestic technology kills religion.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
- J. Krishnamurti

We’ve got nothing to do with right-wing, left-wing or any other half-assed political category. If you work within the system, you come to one of the either/or choices that were implicit in the system from the beginning. You’re talking like a medieval serf, asking the first agnostic whether he worships God or the Devil. We’re outside the system’s categories. You’ll never get the hang of our game if you keep thinking in flat-earth imagery of right and left, good and evil, up and down.
- Illuminatus!: The Eye in the Pyramid

In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up.
- Martin Niemller

In a commencement speech of last year, Lewis Lapham mentioned a "French noblewoman, a duchess in her 80s, who, on seeing the first ascent of Montgolfier's balloon from the palace of the Tuilleries in 1783, fell back upon the cushions of her carriage and wept. "Oh yes," she said, "Now it's certain. One day they'll learn how to keep people alive forever, but I shall already be dead."

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.
- W.E.B. Du Bois

Dawkins is frequently dismissed as a bully, but he is only putting theological doctrines to the same kind of scrutiny that any scientific theory must withstand. No one who has witnessed the merciless dissection of a new paper in physics would describe the atmosphere as overly polite.
- SciAm: Scientists on Religion

I have the impression that clergymen are so used to treating the biblical stories as fables that they have forgotten the difference between fact and fiction. It's like the people who, when somebody dies on The Archers, write letters of condolence to the others.
- Richard Dawkins

A huge concern of New Yorkers in the late 1800's was how they were going to avoid drowning and suffocating from all the horse manure. Just then, the automobile hit the scene and was hailed as a Godsend because it used environmentally friendly oil...and thus the mass extinction of New York from manure strangulation was averted.

Via

7) Ethical judgments cannot be made; all is relative

This one is just stupid. It's ONLY when morality is relative that judgements can be made.

via

I've never met a Christian who was able to make up his mind about whether God IS good, or whether God DEFINES good. Can't have it both ways. If God defines good, then the whole concept of 'good' is meaningless - it's just mindless obedience. But if God IS good, it means that there's a higher standard of good and evil that God Himself can be held up against. Remember that: every time you say "God is good" you're judging Him. By your own standards of what good is.

Science uncovers questions that may never be answered. Religion is based on answers that may never be questioned.

- Ken Harding

Ei ole koskaan aikaa tehdä kunnolla.
Aina on aikaa tehdä uudelleen.

"Asevelvollisuus alistaa yksilöt militarismille. Se on orjuutta. Se, että kansakunnat sallivat sen, on todiste sen heikentävästä vaikutuksesta."
-- Asevelvollisuuden ja sotilaskoulutuksen vastainen julistus, 1930

Suddenly there was not only a source of knowledge to learn from, but a number of them. The citizens – who at this time had started to learn to read – could take their own part of the knowledge without being sanctioned. The Church went mad. The royal houses went mad. The British Royal Court went as far as to make a law that allowed the printing of books only to those print owners who had a special license from the Royal Court. Only they were allowed to multiply knowledge and culture to the citizens. This law was called "copyright".
- http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=9500

(Parkour)
''It is no wonder that myths about people running up and down the walls, flying, going through walls, and disappearing without a sound still persist. In a world where magic was commonly the explanation for anything that was out of the ordinary, a band of highly trained warriors would create more legends than your average fiction writer during his career.''

"Universal education in state schools helped uplift prior generations out of illiterate class systems -- we admit it!

"Only now our higher standards and needs and wants have far outstripped the ability of those old-fashioned public schools to deliver. Yes, we have these higher standards because public education helped get us this high. We admit the irony! Nevertheless, it's obvious that the old model of public education is now dragging at the ankles of our rising ambitions. It won't get us any higher! Lack of choice is preventing further progress by stifling educational innovations that might arise out of competition.

"As a general principle, we argue that -- with rising sophistication -- people can move on to simpler and more mature synergies that make progressively less use of coercive state power, leveraging against individual effort more and more as time goes on.

"And yes, this will benefit the poor as well. We are absolutely counting on that.

"Give us a chance to try some experiments and prove it!"

David Brin

'What is a human being, then?'
'A seed.'
'A... seed?'
'An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree'
- David Zindell, The Broken God

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Since nothing matters, everything matters.
Since everything matters, nothing matters.

Ei kukaan sinua huomaa
ellet itse mene mukaan.
- Tove Jansson

"Metsässä olisi hyvin hiljaista, jos vain ne linnut laulaisivat, jotka laulavat parhaiten."

''Voimakas taikauskoisuus on yhteydessä neuroottiseen persoonallisuuteen. Kun ihminen ei ole tasapainossa, hän tarvitsee jotain, josta saa varmuutta ja lohtua.''
http://www.apu.fi/hyva_olo/article132182-1.html

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."
- Nietzsche

a religious person steals something? "the devil made me do it."
a religious person rescues a drowning child? "god worked through me."
a religious cancer patient is cured? "it was a miracle!" (forget about the dedicated doctors, nurses, surgeons, scientists, researchers, etc)
a religious person pollutes the planet? "earthly things don't matter, I'm going to a better place."
a religious person tortures animals? "god gave us dominion over them!"
and even if they do bad things, they will always be forgiven and washed of all their sins.
they are never in any position where they have to look another human being in the eye and acknowledge their own humanity in the face of another.
what they do, good or bad, is not about reality, it is about imaginary forces at play, about some grand drama being staged.

'I’ll also say that I write the following with some reluctance. It’s a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can’t be bothered with Creationism at all, even for the fun of it. It isn’t actually any fun. Creationists just chase you round in circles. It’s boring.''
- http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzUwMDliZTQxYTJlNjUzZTQ5YTRhNGJhOTQ0NmMxMzk

''The Catholic Church is wealthier than the top five Fortune 500 companies combined. Scientology is not alone.''
- http://www.bookslut.com/features/2006_07_009358.php

''Science has learned recently that contempt and indignation are addictive mental states. I mean physically and chemically addictive. Literally! People who are self-righteous a lot are apparently doping themselves rhythmically with auto-secreted surges of dopamine, endorphins and enkephalins. Didn't you ever ask yourself why indignation feels so good?''

"If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about"

"If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him." - Cardinal Richelieu

"If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me."

"Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition."

"Because you might do something wrong with my information."

"So it doesn't bother you that within the last few years the US has held a few hundred people without charge or access to the courts, and then released them when it decided they'd done nothing wrong?"

"So it doesn't cause you concern that people are released from death row all the time after it's found they've done nothing wrong?"

"Other people who have done nothing wrong have spent years in maximum security prisons. Perhaps *more* oversight is need, rather than less?"

In the Maltese Falcon the district attorney tells Sam Spade, "If you have nothing to hide, why are you concerned?", and Sam answers back, "Everyone has something to hide."

I like to drop my pants and shout, "You're absolutely right! I have NOTHING to hide!
How about YOU?!"

Hoover had Martin Luther King placed under extensive surveillance. The FBI sent recordings revealing King's extramarital affairs to King and his wife, along with a letter suggesting that King commit suicide or else his "filthy, abnormal fraudlent self [would be] bared to the nation."

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin

Mefi

Banana cultivar

Banana video.

Right, so the lesson we learn here is to DO YOUR RESEARCH.

That breed of banana, Cavendish Cultivar, has been CULTIVATED. By HUMANS. They are all clones of each other and cannot reproduce. Natural bannanas are alot smaller, have harder peels, and are not curved to fit perfectly in the hand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_banana
Pwnt.

Necessary nonexistence

1. The creation of the world is the most marvelous achievement imaginable.
2. The merit of an achievement is the product of (a) its intrinsic quality, and (b) the ability of its creator.
3. The greater the disability (or handicap) of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.
4. The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.
5. Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator we can conceive a greater being — namely, one who created everything while not existing.
6. Therefore God does not exist.

Douglas Gasking

Q: So, what if the greatest god exists and non-exists at the same time?
A: Just plain non-existence is still greater handicap. Every bit of existence makes god smaller.

Why did God sacrifice Himself to Himself in order to correct a situation he started Himself?

To use such rhetoric -- the rhetoric of transcending the genre -- about the SF novelist is just a way of announcing you don't think most SF is very good, so that any SF that is good must be something more than SF."
- Samuel R. Delany

"Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it."
- Lawrence Weiner

You could claim that the elephants, by destroying the acacias and uprooting the commiphora, are in effect gardening, creating conditions in which one of their favoured foods, grass, will continue to flourish and provide them with a good annual crop. But equally you could argue that the grass has recruited the elephants to help extend its empire and by growing more leaves than it needs for its survival, and developing a structure which allows it to be cropped without lethal damage, it is simply paying its employees a decent wage that it can well afford.

- David Attenborough, The Elephant and the Acacia

Almost any two guys can easily find plenty of things to talk about, whereas it's often difficult for a man to come up with even one thing he really cares about that a woman also cares about.

For example, I was talking to a woman who was talking to the wife of a guy I've ridden bikes with. The wife was telling a story about how her husband ordered some lights for his bicycle, and when they arrived, he immediately unpacked them and took them into his dark basement so he could try them out and see how bright they were.

Now, that is EXACTLY what I have done when I have bought similar lights! But neither the man's wife nor the other woman could comprehend this behavior.

- Danimal Archive

"Let's adopt each other!"
"Ha ha ha! You're my kid and I'm your kid!"
"Ha ha ha!"

Hood's experiments have focused on the importance that young children put on "attachment objects" - teddy bears and comfort blankets. His researchers convince the pre-school-age subjects that their special item will be put into a machine that can produce a copy of the object which is identical in every way. But the infants, who are offered the choice of having the original or the "perfect" copy returned to them, strongly prefer the original.

"You do not have the right to use this art form to feel inferior."
- Martin de Maat

Most people lose their talent at puberty. I lost mine in my early twenties. I began to think of children not as immature adults, but of adults as atrophied children.

- Keith Johnstone, Impro

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves."
- Mahatma Gandhi

I organize in order to target
Balancing awareness
I seal the input of flowering
With the rhythmic tone of equality
I am guided by my own power doubled
- This Maya Moon

The problem with innovation is that you can't predict it. That's what innovation means -- the stuff we haven't thought of yet. Great innovations are ridiculous at the time of invention, startling on implementation, and obvious in hindsight.
- Cory Doctorow, The Street Finds its Own Use for the Law of Unintended Consequences

A communist was exhorting an audience of laborers: "Comes the Revolution, you'll eat strawberries and cream." One worker objected, "But I don't like strawberries and cream." The agitator glared at him. "Comes the Revolution, you'll like strawberries and cream!"
- Robert Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality

One of our dogs would like to be human. He wants to eat in a chair at the table, and sleep in a bed. We don't let him, because his habits aren't hygienic enough and too much people-food isn't good for him. But surely no one can blame him for trying. And who can blame us for also wanting more and better?
- Robert Ettinger, Man Into Superman, 1989 preface

From the shoulder,
beyond the wrist...
look out, evil!
It's my fist!

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley, Invictus

"You've taken my whole life away, chewed it up, and shat it out again. Everything is shit! You've turned everything I had into shit! What am I supposed to do with this? Tell me! What am I supposed to do with piles of shit!"

"Spread them on your flowers, Greg."

-Greg Feely & Mother Dirt, The Filth by Grant Morrison

I am French. Your money means nothing to me.
- Five good responses for telemarketers or collection agencies

In January 1905, more than a year after the Wrights had first flown, Scientific American carried an article ridiculing the 'alleged' flights that the Wrights claimed to have made. Without a trace of irony, the magazine gave as its main reason for not believing the Wrights the fact that the American press had failed to write anything about them.

Reporter comes to Kitty Hawk, NC, in 1903. He asks a local, "What's that buzzing sound coming from the sky?" Local replies, "It's those crazy Wright Brothers. They think they can fly."

In my view the most important element in uploading will be our gradual transfer of our intelligence, personality, and skills to the nonbiological portion of our intelligence. -- Althought we are likely to retain the biological portion for a period of time, it will become of increasingly little consequence. So we will have effectively uploaded ourselves, albeit gradually, never quite noticing the transfer.
- Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near

All useful functions in one physical body

"Aging is as undesirable as leprosy."
- Aubrey de Grey

I'd like to know if the MPAA agrees with its spokesmen who have defended the practice of prohibiting backups of DVDs by saying, "Well, you can't back up a set of crystal glasses either?" and whether, should the ability to back up a set of crystal glasses ever emerge, should the glassmakers have the right to prohibit it?
Calvin Lawson, Seattle, WA USA


The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
- Star Wars

The Moslem god insists that you lose the right to have a beer, the god of Jehovah's Witnesses forbids you to have a blood transfusion, most gods will not allow you to have any kind of sex life unless and until you get married. Let's be honest - most peoples imaginary friends are real party poopers.

Existentialism -- if life is absurd and meaningless it is so because humans fail to exercise their own reason and independence, to take charge of their own lives and create their own meanings.