Wandering through an enchanted forest
I came across the unexpected and the long time forgotten
Fulfilled I returned home
Do one thing everyday that scares you
Mary Schmich
"Tenar, I go where I am sent. I follow my calling. It has not yet
let me stay in any land for long.
Do you see that? I do what I must
do. Where I go, I must
go alone. So long as you need me, I'll be with you.
And if you ever
need me
again, call me. I will come. I would come from my grave if you called
me, Tenar!
But I
cannot stay with you."
Ursula K. Le Guin
|
Vuelan luciérnagas, y al decir yo: '¡Mira!', percibo que estoy solo |
Fireflies flit by look! I would like to say but I am alone. |
|
Todos los años sufro distinto al ver partir la primavera. |
Every year bidding farewell to spring grieves me differently |
Sobre la tierra abigarrada, camina alguien que no es ni musulman ni
infiel,
que no es ni rico ni pobre. No venera a Ala ni a sus leyes.
No cree en la verdad. No afirma nunca.
Sobre la tierra abigarrada, ¿quien es ese hombre bravo y triste?
Atribuido a Omar Khayan
I am the escaped one,
After I was born
They locked me up inside me
But I left.
My soul seeks me,
Through hills and valley,
I hope my soul
Never finds me.
Fernando Pessoa
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman,
Not the grief of a child
And you learn to build all your roads on today,
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine
Burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
In stead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth,
and you learn and learn...
With every good bye you learn.
After a while
by Veronica A. Shoffstall
Está solo. Para seguir camino
se muestra despegado de las cosas.
No lleva provisiones.
Cuando pasan los días
y al final de la tarde piensa en lo sucedido,
tan sólo le conmueve
ese acierto imprevisto
del que pudo vivir la propia vida
en el seguro azar de su conciencia,
así, naturalmente, sin deudas ni banderas.
Una vez dijo amor.
Se poblaron sus labios de ceniza.
Dijo también mañana
con los ojos negados al presente
y sólo tuvo sombras que apretar en la mano,
fantasmas como saldo,
un camino de nubes.
Soledad, libertad,
dos palabras que suelen apoyarse
en los hombros heridos del viajero.
De todo se hace cargo, de nada se convence.
Sus huellas tienen hoy la quemadura
de los sueños vacíos.
No quiere renunciar. Para seguir camino
acepta que la vida se refugie
en una habitación que no es la suya.
La luz se queda siempre detrás de una ventana.
Al otro lado de la puerta
suele escuchar los pasos de la noche.
From there the voyage to Iffish was not long. They came in to Ismay
harbor on a still,
dark evening before snow.
They tied up the boat Lookfar that had borne them to the coasts of
death's kingdom and back,
and went up through the narrow streets to the wizard's house.
Their hearts were very light as they entered into the firelight and
warmth under that roof;
and Yarrow
ran to meet them, crying with joy
Ursula K. Le Guin
When kissing don't ask for permission before or say sorry after.
Nobel Prize Secretary
But you knew them to be evil men
Was I to join them therefore? To let their acts rule my own?
I will not make their choices for them,
nor will I let them make mine for me!
Ursula K. Le Guin
But in my way, like my father before me, I'm a working man. My work is
my pleasure. I plan to do it as long as I draw breath.
My beloved father, while intubated in the I.C.U. was nonetheless
working. I still have the blood-spattered pages of his written
thoughts.
He didn't need the money. It was his passion.
Ben Stein
Mentre veniva preparata la cicuta,
Socrate stava imparando un'aria sul flauto.
"A cosa ti servirà?" gli fu chiesto.
"A sapere quest'aria prima di morire
Italo Calvino
Until the crisis struck, the conventional wisdom was that Mr Brown was a
tragic-comic figure:
a man who had desperately wanted to be prime minister, but had proved
hopelessly unfitted to the task.
Crises define politicians. In normal times, Mr Brown often seems
indecisive, gloomy and robotic.
But, in a crisis, the man’s manners are transformed. Mr Brown suddenly
looks calm, determined and in control.
Gideon Rachman
liberty means to struggle against attempts to raise up
"barriers to intercourse, jealousies, animosities and heartburnings
between individuals and classes in this country,
and again between this country and all others"
James Wilson. Economist first article
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of
yourself.
What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us
Herman Hesse. Demian
When you feel that the situation you are in is problematic you are more
likely to pay attention to detail,
which helps you with processing
tasks but interferes with creative types of things.
Norbert Schwarz
Wake up in the morning
Stretch your arms towards the sun
Say something in Chinese
And go to Paris…
Every minute, somewhere in the world there is morning
Somewhere, people stretch their arms towards the sun
They speak new languages, fly from Cairo to Warsaw
They smile and drink coffee together.
Coffee Cup, Anastasia Baburova
For love I climbed the highest peaks and sailed the southern sea
And what did you achieve?
Well... I climbed the highest peaks and sailed the southern sea...
bitter ice -
for a moment the road
and me
The Sprained Ankle Haiku, Angela Filimon Goncalves
Ya no es dieciocho
solo eso...
quince besos
I miss you, Begoña
Grounded, mature people don't usually want to be leaders.
Being grounded means that you don't long for other people to follow you,
as it's a nuisance and a responsibility and you are perfectly happy as
you are
Lucy Kellaway
He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of
the Universe
Prometheus Unbound, Shelley
To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is
interesting to you.
Eric Steven Raymond
Human beings ... are very much at the mercy of the particular language
which has become
the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to
imagine that one
adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that
language is merely an
incidental means of solving specific problems of communication and
reflection.
The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent
unconsciously
built up on the language habits of the group.
The Status Of Linguistics As A Science, 1929, Edward Sapir
Everything started with Thucydides...
La razón estrangulada. Carlos Elías
This or the like was the cause of the death of a man who,
of all the Hellenes in my time, least deserved such a fate,
seeing that the whole course of his life had been regulated
with strict attention to virtue
On the death of Nicias. The History of the Peloponnesian War.
Thucydides
Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two,
either for not joining in the quarrel,
or because envy would not suffer them to escape
On the Corcyraean Revolution. The History of the Peloponnesian War.
Thucydides
¿Pero qué fuerza puede hacer la conciencia racional, el compromiso
cívico,
cuando se desatan los delirios mesiánicos y en gran medida criminales
de las ideologías?
No había sitio para esas personas:
ni para Stefan Zweig, ni para Juan Negrín, ni para Clara Campoamor
Antonio Muñoz Molina
There's nothing more irresistible to a man than a woman who's in love
with him.
The sound of music
For me (and for others, I'm sure), the merging of supersymmetry
with a theory of space and time raised profound questions. I had
learned general relativity from reading Einstein, and if I understood
anything, it was how that theory merged gravity with the geometry
of space and time. That idea was in my bones. Now I was being told
that another deep aspect of nature was also unified with space and
time - the fact that there are fermions and bosons. My friends told
me this, and the equations said the same thing. But neither friends
nor equations told me what it meant. I was missing the idea, the
conception of the thing. Something in my understanding of space
and time, of gravity and of what it meant to be a fermion or boson,
should deepen as a result of this unification. It should not just be
math - my very conception of nature should change.
But it didn't. What I found when I hung out with van Nieuwen-
huizen's students was a group of smart, technically minded kids
frantically doing calculations, day and night.
Lee Smolin. The trouble with physics.
And yet you may be more active as a scientist -
publishing more papers and supervising more students
Lee Smolin. The trouble with physics.
There were a lot of new technical tools to learn,
so to work in string theory required an investment of a few
months to a year [...]
Those who did it looked down on those who wouldn't,
or (the suggestion was always there) couldn't
Lee Smolin. The trouble with physics.
"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age.
'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you,
than to explain all things."
Isaac Newton. Opticks
The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following:
The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific 'truth'.
Richard P. Feynman. Lectures on Physics
"Finally, and most interestingly, Philosophically we are completely wrong with the approximate law."
Richard P. Feynman. Lectures on Physics
If we are told that the same experiment will always produce the same result, that is all very well,
but if when we try it, it does not, then it does not. We just have to take what we see,
and then formulate all the rest of our ideas in terms of our actual experience.
Richard P. Feynman. Lectures on Physics
What makes science special?
Scientific Knowledge
Scientific Community
Science and Society
La verdadera vocación consiste siempre en esa actividad especial
a la que el joven, menospreciando distracciones de la edad
sacrifica tiempo y pecunio.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Reglas y consejos sobre investigación científica
Le véritable voyage de découverte
ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages,
mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux.
Marcel Proust
[On David Li's correlation model]
The development of the model had, ironically,
changed the nature of the reality it was modelling.
Sam Jones - FT. The formula that felled Wall Street a.k.a.
The problem of social sciences when facing the hard facts of nature
Exactly how such high-temperature superconductors work remains a mystery,
but that has not stopped engineers from trying to exploit them.
The Economist - Resistance is futile
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations,
for nature cannot be fooled
R. P. Feynman - Appendix F of Rogers Commission report - The hard facts of Nature
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust I
En un aula ocurren dos cosas:
Una, accesoria, la actuación del profesor.
Otra, fundamental, el aprendizaje del alumno.
The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
The Speed of Darkness - Muriel Rukeyser
Suele ser mejor actuar y aprender de los errores
que pensarlo todo muy bien antes de no hacer nada.
If nobody reads you
you're not moving science along.
Writing in the sciences - Kristin Sainani
Almost nobody reads an article
from the beginning to the end.
Writing in the sciences - Kristin Sainani
Nullius in verba
Motto of the Royal Society
The impact that Education Techonology can make
would be far greater at the bottom of the pyramid
than at the top
Sugata Mitra
The teacher that can be replaced by a machine
should be
Sugata Mitra
"
- Because absolutely no sulfur is found down there at the bottom.
- Do you believe that?
- Do you believe that zero radioactive sulfur in any experiment you do in the lab is found down there at the bottom, that we've managed to perfectly get all that virus?
- No, of course not.
- There's about one percent of the radioactive sulfur still there.
- So suppose you were a churlish biochemist.
- What would you say?
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- ERIC S. LANDER: There's still a little bit of protein there, and it's doing it.
- But time has moved on here.
- We now have two different ways to think about it.
- We got this bacterial virus experiment that's mostly giving us this answer.
- We got that Pneumococcus experiment.
- It's mostly giving us this answer.
- It's beginning to make sense.
- And also the people who are doing genetics were studying a lot of these bacteriophages, and liked them a lot, and believed.
- And the combination of Avery's experiment, which was well known by now, and the Hershey-Chase experiments pretty much said, it's got to be the DNA.
"
On the Hersey-Chase experiment - Eric Landers