- "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet
enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to
our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and
to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the
grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more
meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times
when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and
defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new
creations, the new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something
new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say
that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about
fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core.
In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's
famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do I truly
understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a
great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more
humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who
is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in
France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."
- "When you feel your life ain't worth living you've got to stand up and take a look around you then a look way up to the sky. And when your deepest thoughts are broken, keep on dreaming boy, cause when you stop dreamin' it's time to die.."
- "BILL GATES' SPEECH TO MT. WHITNEY HIGH SCHOOL in Visalia, California.
To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice. Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.
Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for bhttp://www.motivatingquotes.com/success.htmurger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one."
Bill Gates,
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_bill_gates_speech.htm
- "Four things never come back: The spoken word, The sped arrow, The past life, The neglected opportunity. Lets oath ourselves to speak and do wise, be focused to allow the sped arrow, be a good learner from the past life and be privileged with all the opportunities in spite of big or small." Shalini Nigam
- "When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be." Patanjali
- "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Peter Drucker
- "Your life is your message to the world. Make it inspiring." Lorrin L. Lee
- "We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems." Lee Iacocca
- "If you repeat chapters, the ending will never change... Be Brave enough to go to another chapter..." Lalit S. Dev Mahendru
- "The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases." Carl Jung
- "A good listener is usually thinking about something else."
Kin Hubbard
- "The purpose of life is a life of purpose." Robert Byrne
- "One chance is all you need", Jesse Owens,
http://www.jesseowens.com/quotes/
- "A hero is made in the moment, not from questioning the past or fearing what's to come."
http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/a-hero-is-made-in-the-moment-not-from-questioning-the-past-or-f/
- "History, Mark Twain noted, rhymes; it does not repeat."
http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259, p.65
- "It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, buts its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in weight."
http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259, p.75
- "A house divided can not stand."
- "Epictetus compared people who "fit in" to the white threads of a toga. Indistinguishable. He wanted to be the purple thread. "That small part which is bright, and makes all the rest appear graceful and beautiful. Why then" he asked, "do you tell me to make myself like the many? And if I do, how shall I still be purple?"
http://binaryaddition.blogspot.com/2008/08/fitting-in.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus
- "Alan: There's a saying Shirley. Perhaps you've heard it, 'All it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to say, it's a business'."
http://www.tvrage.com/Boston_Legal/episodes/308995
- ''Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.'' Winston Churchill,
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-getting-of-wisdom-20120313-1uy8a.html
- "Sometimes you have to loose everything before the penny finally drops... or... whatever.So here's what I figured out.We're not evil sinners or perfect knock offs of god.We let the world tell us weather we're saints or sex addicts.Sane or insane.Heroes or victims.Weather we're good mothers,or loving sons.But we can decide for ourselves.As a certain wise fugitive once told me,sometimes its not important which way you jump,just that you jump." Victor Mancini,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024715/quotes
- "This is an international problem, a problem of humanity."
...
"Our problem is not with the people of Syria, there we have brothers, friends."
...
"If you are against the people, you are always risk losing, being condemned, and you see examples of that all over he world."
Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ikFp-bkzlFMKslwxLGAf91a9DAtQ?docId=CNG.4068cc3958df4994bc6d71115552788f.7c1
- "It's become a virtually unmanageable task to go and see if you have the freedom to operate," he said. "Procedurally it would be impossible to check all of (the valid patents) -- even large companies can't afford to do that."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-1108-bf-apple-google-20111108,0,2542002.story
-
Daniel: "I'm sure you've heard of the '23' enigma."Rush: "Yeah, it refers to some ridiculous notion that everything and anything is connected to the number 23."
http://www.billiedoux.com/stargateu1x14.html
...
Daniel: "Most rational people believe that the enigma relies the power of the mind to perceive truth in almost anything."
Rush: "If you look for it you're going to find it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma
- "Question everything, yield nothing and speak by the hour." Mark Twain
- "Motivation alone is not enough. If you have an idiot and you motivate him, now you have a motivated idiot." Jim Rohn
-
"Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and
that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a
frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always
trying to understand all things as a part of nature." Carl Sagan
- "People fear what they don't understand. When they don't understand they assume..." William Forrester
- "You can believe whatever want, that’s what everyone does."
- "The average person lies three times every ten minutes."
- "It is only the mind which separates reality from truth."
- "There are as many truths as there are people."
- "A person can always see things from a perspective that they choose to see them from."
- "A person's truth is so simple that most ignore it to seek deeper truths."
- ''If you [keep] sticking to what you actually believe in, then the times ultimately come to favour you,'' he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/labor-must-follow-in-chifleys-footsteps-20120923-26f2l.html
- "Teddy Roosevelt once observed that life's greatest gift is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing," he said. "I will always treasure my opportunity to have done that with you, and I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end."
http://www.smh.com.au/world/cia-chiefs-shock-exit-after-affair-20121110-294sv.html/
- "Think about the future today." Volvo scientist
- "Keep it simple. Perfection is a lot of things done well." Marco Pierre White
- People are capable of surprising not only others but themselves. He calls this "the single most promising phenomenon in history." Lapid, in effect a political vessel awaiting content, is a character in search of meaning and, as such, of interest to Oz.
...
"He is a phenomenon, a manifestation of the desire of the middle class for normalization. Israelis want to be like Holland," Oz told me. "It is a legitimate desire even if it tends to ignore fundamental issues, like the conflict with the Arabs. I don't know if Lapid has ideas and I'm not sure he knows. What Lapid will do is a mystery not just to me -- it is probably a mystery to him!"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/opinion/global/roger-cohen-sitting-down-with-amos-oz.html
- Two final thoughts from Oz worth the consideration of Israeli politicians: On the nature of tragedy and the nature of time.
"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash of right and right. Tragedies are resolved in one of two ways: The Shakespearian way or the Anton Chekhov way. In a tragedy by Shakespeare, the stage at the end is littered with dead bodies. In a tragedy by Chekhov everyone is unhappy, bitter, disillusioned and melancholy but they are alive. My colleagues in the peace movement and I are working for a Chekhovian not a Shakespearian conclusion."
And this: "I live in the desert at Arad. Every morning at 5 a.m. I start my day by taking a walk before sunrise. I inhale the silence. I take in the breeze, the silhouettes of the hills. I walk for about 40 minutes. When I come back home I turn on the radio and sometimes I hear a politicians using words like 'never' or 'forever' or 'for eternity' -- and I know that the stones out in the desert are laughing at him."
Sit down with Oz. That is my advice to the next Israeli government -- and to all the deluded absolutists, Arab and Jew, of this unnecessary conflict whose unhappy but peaceful ending is not beyond the scope of open-ended human imagination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/opinion/global/roger-cohen-sitting-down-with-amos-oz.html?pagewanted=2
- "A name is more than just a noun, verb, or adjective. It's your life, your legacy, your journey, sacrifices, and everything you've worked hard for every day of your life as and adolescent, young adult and adult. Don't let anybody tarnish it when you know you've live up to your own set of ethics and personal ethos."
http://ktla.com/2013/02/07/read-christopher-dorners-so-called-manifesto/#axzz2KT6O2sgJ
- "We can never pretend that we were wise enough to have chosen great parents."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-nothing-self-made-about-me/2013/02/10/adff2b5a-7226-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop
- As Obama himself put it, while our fundamental political truths "may be self-evident, they've never been self-executing."
...
What are some other deep truths we can promote through words? That individual initiative is possible only with the infrastructure and human capital the American public has provided for all of us. That health care is inseparable from life. That education is far more than taking tests or competing in the global economy; it is what makes us free and equal. That the environment is not just outside; it is inside us, with polluted air and water and pesticides destroying our health, now and tomorrow. That women's rights are human rights. That great disparities in wealth destroy opportunity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-speeches-are-not-just-words--they-are-political-action/2013/02/08/25bee9e4-6fdb-11e2-aa58-243de81040ba_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop
-
"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
-- William Blake, Eternity, c. 1793."
http://ww2.cs.mu.oz.au/~ljk/
- "The national interest is not related to who is ruling the country at a specific time, because, as you know better than others, the national interest is a permanent interest."
http://www.euronews.com/2012/12/22/italy-prepares-as-monti-steps-down
- "You're measured by what it is you get done, not by the fact that you're trying to get something done -- and Saxby's a doer. He's a work horse; he's not a show horse."
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/debt-obama-isakson-failing/2013/01/08/id/470419
- "I was always a hard worker . . . but I have changed my perception on how I behave and what I do outside the tennis court. Before I was thinking it was enough that you work hard for four, five or six hours on court, that your day would end.
"But now I understand that your day does not end when you walk off the tennis court. Tennis, in my opinion, is a way of life.
...
"One of the best quotes that I ever read was from Michael Jordan, who said, 'In my life, I have failed over and over and over again and that is why I have succeeded'."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/tennis/lleyton-braces-for-rebooted-tipsarevic/story-fnbe6xeb-1226553115342
"There is a moment, immediately before life becomes no longer worth living, when the world appears to slow down and all its myriad details suddenly become brightly, achingly apparent," he wrote.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/13/aaron-swartz-family-mit-government
- "No man is an island, entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."
http://www.itwire.com/it-policy-news/regulation/58132-aaron-swartz-was-not-an-island
- "Apple, as a design leader, is not only capable of doing this, they have a responsibility for doing it," he said. "People expect great things from them."
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/daily-report-apple-shake-up-may-lead-to-design-shift/
- "There are two kinds of history" in China, Southern People's Weekly wrote in an editorial accompanying its cover story: "history itself and 'history that can be admitted.'"
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2012/0607/China-s-Great-Leap-Forward-One-man-s-quiet-crusade-to-remember-the-disaster
- "Moscow is increasingly keen to be viewed as a nation crusading for the supremacy of international principles and self-determination rather than the global rule of powers such as the United States."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gDp72NCceFx6OGEBFmbSEgmHG5hw?docId=CNG.b217ec03ebf121cecc9bd7bbba523a9c.3f1
- "History shows us that nations collapse when a small elite controls the government and runs an economic system for its exclusive benefit. Nations prosper when their economies reward broad groups -- not just the wealthy, but merchants, traders, inventors, manufacturers and workers."
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120711/OPINION03/207110315/1008/OPINION01/1-percenters-flock-support-their-own-Mitt-Romney
- "We need to separate functional need from traditional form if we hope to embrace innovation. Our idols and ideas imprison our imagination. We must stop clinging to self-limiting concepts of communication and computing and dream big for the future."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/2013/jan/15/phone-tablet-death-innovation
- "To err is human - but to really screw up you need a computer.
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.
Never try to teach a pig to sing - it wastes your time and annoys the pig."
http://forum.canucks.com/topic/339524-irans-new-jet-fighter-qaher-f313/page__pid__11116909#entry11116909
- "When people turn away from a project, from an idea, then eventually it heads towards its doom."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21320056
- "The test for America's policy makers will be whether they are willing to accept a few failures in exchange for many successes. America's entrepreneurs and innovators who are leaders in global clean energy race understand that not every risk can - or should - be avoided. Michelangelo said, 'The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark'."
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/chu-says-big-solar-soon-to-be-cheaper-than-coal-and-gas-74823
- "economic sanctions like those outlined by Bob Carr:
... cause death and destruction through structural violence - starvation, malnutrition, the spread of deadly diseases, curtailed access to medicines that can exceed the cleaner alternative of war. John Mueller and Karl Mueller argued in Foreign Affairs that sanctions caused more deaths in the 20th century than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history."
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013121122928381198.html
- "But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges: that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9828438/Democracy-is-on-the-brink-of-a-sea-change.html
"We desperately need new rules for a world that is not only obscenely unequal, but is facing a massive ecological crisis"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/13/world-trade-organisation-new-director-general
- "I'm a left-wing politician, but I'm seeking votes from left to right. A left-wing idiot is as dangerous as a right-wing idiot"
http://www.smh.com.au/world/czechs-lean-left-for-zeman-20130127-2des4.html
- "The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/opinion/global/will-syria-bleed-hezbollah-dry.html
- "There is this idea that if everyone tells the truth it will make it all better. No it won't," Brailsford, the Team Sky principal, said.
"Telling the truth doesn't make it better. It's about acting on the information that you find and doing something tangible with that information to make sure it doesn't happen in the future.
"This idea of everyone telling the truth and it all goes into a pot, is it going to change anything? If it is about trying to identify all the individuals who were involved only to say, 'OK you're off the hook', then what have you learned?"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/9828392/Team-Skys-Dave-Brailsford-angered-by-UCI-plan-to-offer-amnesty-to-doping-whistle-blowers.html
- "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danikenson/2012/10/09/huawei-zte-and-the-slippery-slope-of-excusing-protectionism-on-national-security-grounds/
- "For years now, there has been a steady flow of scandals across China. They have included cooking oil recycled from drains and resold, strawberries sprayed with dye to make them look more red and chicken containing growth hormones which produce a fully grown chicken in just 45 days."
http://news.sky.com/story/1038819/china-food-contamination-jaw-dropping
- Nationalism "neither rescued Najibullah nor will it rescue Karzai; the Afghan nation is one of the nations of the world that knows its puppets and its heroes," said the Taliban statement, which was written by a man identified as Qari Habib.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/world/asia/karzais-bet-vilifying-us.html?pagewanted=all
- "Its claim to be a laid back country, meanwhile, is belied by the bewildering array of rules and regulations, from strict border protections to the bylaws which stipulate that cars should be parked in the same direction as the flow of traffic."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21030666
- "It was once said of Prussia that it wasn't a country that had an army, but an army that had a country. And North Korea is a garrison state, a society organized for war."
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2001/01/hitchens-200101
- "The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/16/the-obama-double-standard/
- "Democracy, after all, can't thrive without a broad, strong, educated core of citizens. But today they find themselves buffeted by the remorseless dictates of global capital, the need for evermore education and training and the burdens of higher taxes to pay for social programs they need, such as health care."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/obama-jobs-plan_n_2450429.html
- "Strange as it may seem, companies can learn a great deal from the world of politics when it comes to executive power. Democracies have fixed terms of office for their leaders, and many have rules preventing the same individual staying in power too long. Power corrupts, as the old saying goes, so we need binding rules to prevent our leaders from abusing their powers or falling asleep at the wheel. The same principle applies to corporations, most of which would benefit enormously from a new leader every five or 10 years. Jack Welch is the exception that proves this rule: Yes, his 20 years at the helm of General Electric (GE) was a great success story, but for every Welch, there is also a CEO who stayed on too long."
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-18/making-the-ceo-accountable
- "The CEO is accountable to the organization he or she is running, not the other way around."
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-18/making-the-ceo-accountable
- "Of the annual 30,000 gun deaths in the U.S., only 200 are homicides resulting from acts of self-defense, according to the FBI. Still, no one is talking about stripping away the right of anyone to own a gun to scare off a prowler or hold off a rapist (even though most people shot by guns in homes are relatives and friends). The only types of gun anyone is talking about restricting are the assault rifles that former Gens. Colin Powell and Stanley McChrystal say should only be in the hands of soldiers -- the kind of weapon used by a mentally unstable young man to murder first-graders in Newtown."
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-obamas-gun-control-20130115,0,6816836.story
- "War teaches its lessons most directly to people who are in it. "Hagel has been there as an enlisted man," Gallagher said. - "Paraphrasing Douglas MacArthur, no one hates war like a soldier does. That's the kind of sensibility Hagel would bring."
http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-veterans-would-welcome-sceptical-hagel-20130202-2dr3q.html
- "Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It's time to start thinking."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-global-leadership-vacuum-europe-incapable-america-unwilling-a-880945.html
- "The way we see it as Arabs: If you are silent, then you are agreeing with what is happening."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/world/middleeast/the-saturday-profile-hajji-marea-a-rebel-commander-in-syria-holds-reins-of-war.html?pagewanted=all
- "Devaluing a currency," one senior Federal Reserve official
once told me, "is like peeing in bed. It feels good at first, but pretty
soon it becomes a real mess."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324761004578283684195892250.html?mod=WSJ_hp_us_mostpop_read
- "Our geography has shaped our psychology," he said. "We have the character of an island nation: independent, forthright, passionate in defense of our sovereignty."
...
"When people think about it, they're identity-driven," Kellner said. "But when it becomes a practical proposition, they take a much more pragmatic view."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-britain-future-20130211,0,2880251,full.story
- I do not recall ever being so discouraged by a great set of statistics. These reminded me of the truth about China's leadership today. It has nothing to offer but high growth, and high growth alone cannot address the mainland's multiplying problems. It is high growth that produces these problems: Prosperity leads to demands for political and social change when political and social institutions are lacking. We have seen this numerous times before.
There is no question that prosperity is also producing a more assertive China. It wants to be heard, and it wants its voice to be powerful. Deng used to preach a "hide your strength" strategy for the China that had just emerged from the Cultural Revolution. Those days are over. But so are the days when economic growth alone will pacify the Chinese--and when risky displays of power abroad can be used to manage the desired measure of nationalist fervor at home.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2013/02/11/Chinas-Provocative-Blunder-in-the-Pacific.aspx
- "It won't just be the same disaster with different bums on the seats."
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/dams-idea-shows-vision-hunt/story-e6freuz0-1226577601416
- "Peace in the Middle East... is peace of mind for the rest of the world. This is not just a local or regional conflict; this is a global conflict with global ramifications, and it remains a core central issue."
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/165219
- "The EU is the grandest peace project in the history of mankind ... Turkey, being the most eastern part of the West, and the most Western part of the East, can turn this continental project into a global peace project," he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/13/us-britain-turkey-eu-idUSBRE91C1E520130213
- Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that's _my_ choice, dammit.
http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0410.3/1101.html
- He accepted that leadership is about doing things that might ultimately cost you, not just things that wound your opponent.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/politics/abbott-puts-aside-pugilism-to-set-a-new-moral-course-20130217-2el5z.html
- "The development of policy is not based only on the science but on a wide range of societal considerations and opinions, not all of which are as evidence based or as rational as science," he said.
"When the lines between the two become blurred the science can become mired in controversy, which is not always been good either for science or for the development of good public policy."
He said there were vast economic, environmental and health benefits from making good decisions about which scientific research should be supported, and in keeping science separate from political, ideological and religious influence.
"We can make science work well for us, for our culture, our health, our quality of life, for protecting our environment, and for driving our economy," he said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/fund-the-best-get-the-best-nurse/story-e6frgcjx-1226558527898
- Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
-
The music does not play the musician.
The true measure of a man is the battle between concious and sub conconcious.
The only way to win is to deny battle.
Exalted is the warrior who ... victory without battle.
Winning shows strength. Winning without fighting shows true strength.
Cost of victory may be great, cost of defeat even greater.
It's amazing how one incident can change the entire course of your whole life.
Stargate SG1
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The economics are simple. If we attract and retain the world's top talent, our economy will grow faster. A recent study by the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the bipartisan Partnership for a New American Economy found that, from 2000 to 2007, each foreign-born worker with an advanced degree from a U.S. university who stayed in the country to work in science, technology, engineering and math -- the STEM fields -- created, on average, 2.62 additional jobs for American workers. Their innovations power new technologies, new products and new companies.
And the reverse is equally true. If we fail to attract and retain the world's top talent, our economy will falter. By 2018, the United States is projected to have a shortage of more than 230,000 advanced degree STEM workers. Jobs in these fields are exploding, growing three times faster than the rest of the economy over the last decade, but we simply cannot fill them, even in a recession with so many people looking for work.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/29/opinion/feinblatt-immigration/index.html
- "By 2050, Asia is expected to account for more than half of the global economy. But for Asia's phenomenal economic growth during the past decade, the world would have been different today," he said, quoted by the daily.
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/kuwait/challenges-to-asian-countries-under-scanner-1.1090604
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Therefore, I say:
Know your enemy and know yourself;
in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.
When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself,
your chances of winning or losing are equal.
If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself,
you are sure to be defeated in every battle.
-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, c. 500bc
http://www.tscm.com/bugfreq.html
- One major study says more than 40% of the Fortune 500 companies in 2010 were founded by immigrants or their children. The U.S. is losing out on a major source of economic dynamism by keeping the entry gate high for the best-educated from abroad.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-qualcomm-picked-taiwan-over-us-2013-02-06?pagenumber=2
- Mr. Kerry needs to elaborate. Is stupidity a right or a privilege? With great stupidity comes great responsibility.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/in-america-you-have-a-right-to-be-stupid-kerry-says-in-blunt-defense-of-free-speech/
- "Sadly, there may come a moment when the question is no longer, do you want to?, but, do you have the choice? In this case I cannot say I'm happy taking my daughter to school and doing conferences around the world."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/nicolas-sarkozy-return-save-france
- Leadership is an extremely powerful force--typically viewed in the Army as a powerfully good force. At its best, leadership is pervasive, persuasive, persistent, uplifting and unifying; at its worst, it poisons with pedanticism, posturing, and self-importance.
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA561024
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/dclm/Toxic_Leadership.pdf
- Collective action in times of panic is what governments are supposed to do. Be it response to a natural disaster like an earthquake or a financial crisis, governments should step up when the market or the individual can't act.
Two years of sclerotic responses by Europe, culminating in the latest panic, should be enough evidence that Europe doesn't have the political means to solve its problems, even while it does have the financial means.
As the TARP program showed (only when it comes to the banks) if you make enough money available quickly enough, you can stem the tide and it won't cost you a penny.
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Even when they take action, like the European Central Banks' Long-Term Repo Operations--they bungle it by saying "there won't be a third" convincing the shorts that there's profit in betting against the central bank. The key to collective action is to dare the shorts to come at you and ensure that it's at least two-way trade, if not a loser for the challenger. Fed Chief Ben Bernanke and then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson fundamentally understood this.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/47691602
- We have done all we can, now it's your turn. That was essentially the message from the world's central banks to Western governments, as communicated by the latest annual report of the Bank for International Settlements. Since the global financial crisis began, central banks have massively expanded their balance sheets, helping avert a second Great Depression. But the BIS now fears that ultraloose monetary policy is reaching the limits of its effectiveness and may now be doing more harm than good.
The BIS is clearly right. Easy monetary policy can act only as a bridge, providing governments and banks time to address underlying solvency problems. But for many Western countries, the actions taken over the past five years have proved a bridge to nowhere: Outside the worst-hit crisis countries, governments have been slow to tackle their long-term fiscal problems, including unaffordable long-term health and pension commitments. Governments have also been slow to introduce the structural overhauls needed to free up product and labor markets, enabling economies to rebalance. Meanwhile, too many banks have been slow to recognize bad debts and recapitalize, leaving them unable to supply credit.
The BIS fears central-bank accommodation is partly to blame for the lack of action as it has taken the pressure off governments to reform. But despite new pressure in the U.S., euro zone and U.K. for another round of monetary easing, it also fears that further expansion of central-bank balance sheets is creating new risks for the global economy by keeping asset prices artificially high and insolvent businesses afloat. There is also growing evidence of new imbalances in emerging markets.
Governments should take heed. Most advanced countries need to run a primary budget surplus--before interest costs--of two percentage points of GDP for 20 years to bring debt-to-GDP ratios back to precrisis levels, the BIS estimates. Most are nowhere close. As the BIS says: "The question is not whether governments must adjust, but how?"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577488880458955826.html
- Germany's history is one of monumental reverses and extremes. In his 1901 novel Buddenbrooks, about a well-to-do North Germany family whose fortunes are in decline, Thomas Mann anticipated the present situation:
I know that the outwards, visible and tangible signs and symbols of happiness and achievement often only appear when in reality everything is already starting to go downhill again. The outer signs take time to arrive - like the light of a star which shines most brightly when it is on the way to being extinguished, or maybe has already gone out.
As Friedrich Nietzsche knew: "...hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments."
Germany may not, as widely assumed, offer a safe haven in the European debt crisis.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4056272.html
- In the real world a lot of actions are driven by the impulse and emotions felt by people as opposed to logic and reason. Basically, if you can suss out their flaws and sensitivities, you can provoke them to react in a particular way to reveal something they might not otherwise openly admit.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1937079&p=5
- "If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. This was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth."
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/03/14/lawrence-solomon-obama-will-block-keystone/
- It's easy to tell ourselves we're evolving as a race: we're faster, better and stronger. However, if there's a constant in history, it's the softer and more indulgent a society becomes, the closer it moves to collapse or conquest by a harder, nastier, power.
http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/ask-not-what-your-country-can-do-for-you-but-rather-whether-we-have-become-too-soft-20130316-2g7aa.html
- Europe is not threatened by the viciousness of the bankers or the incompetence of the politicians. It's threatened by the delegating of democracy, by the fixed idea that "the ones up top" are responsible for everyone and to blame for everything, and by the tendency to elect politicians only to insult them and replace them with Beppo Grillos all stripes.
Even in this country, this murmur is everywhere. Germany has problems of poverty? The rich are to blame. We have bad schools? The politicians should sort it out. The pensions are not affordable? The state should cough up. That's the murmur on every talk show, in every tram.
Democracy is that which does not concern me, but what others pay for. We want to control everything, but prefer to keep our fingers out of the heat. Democracy, though, is something other than mere consumerism.
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/3572051-other-guy-s-always-blame
- "There is not a prime minister who has not had to contend with leaks. As
frustrating as they are, leaks are usually beyond a politician's
control. Wise politicians vent about them only in the privacy of their
inner sanctum. It is always better to focus on the things you can
control, and not draw attention to your own insecurities."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/take-leaks-in-your-stride-ms-gillard/story-e6frgd0x-1226571140183
- "Don't settle for what life gives you; make life better and build something."
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/ashton-kutcher-talks-steve-jobs-tech-and-fruitarian-diets-20130201-2doi0.html
- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
http://sites.google.com/site/dtbnguyen/
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com.au/
