Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
- Sir Winston Churchill

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
- Lewis Carroll

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
- Aldous Huxley

If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong.
- Mo Udall

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
- Hannah Arendt

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

How The World Was Saved (an excerpt fom 'The Cyberiad' by Stanislaw Lem.)

One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could create anything starting with n. When it was ready, he tried it out, ordering it to make needles, then nankeens and negligees, which it did, then nail the lot to narghiles filled with nepenthe and numerous other narcotics. The machine carried out his instructions to the letter. Still not completely sure of its ability, he had it produce, one after the other, nimbuses, noodles, nuclei, neutrons, naphtha, noses, nymphs, naiads, and natrium. 'This last it could not do, and Trurl, considerably irritated, demanded an explanation.

"Never heard of it," said the machine.Trurl's Machine

"What? But it's only sodium. You know, the metal, the element..."

"Sodium starts with an s, and I work only in n."

"But in Latin it's natrium."

"Look, old boy," said the machine, "if I could do everything starting with n in every possible language, I'd be a Machine That Could Do Everything in the Whole Alphabet, since any item you care to mention undoubtedly starts with n in one foreign language or another. It's not that easy. I can't go beyond what you programmed. So no sodium."

"Very well," said Trurl and ordered it to make Night, which it made at once - small
perhaps, but perfectly nocturnal. Only then did Trurl invite over his friend Klapaucius the constructor, and introduced him to the machine, praising its extraordinary skill at such length, that Klapaucius grew annoyed and inquired whether he too might not test the machine.

"Be my guest," said Trurl. "But it has to start with n."

"N?" said Klapaucius. "All right, let it make Nature."

The machine whined, and in a trice Trurl's front yard was packed with naturalists. They argued, each publishing heavy volumes, which the others tore to pieces; in the distance one could see flaming pyres, on which martyrs to Nature were sizzling; there was thunder, and strange mushroom-shaped columns of smoke rose up; everyone talked at once, no one listened, and there were all sorts of memoranda, appeals, subpoenas and other documents, while off to the side sat a few old men, feverishly scribbling on scraps of paper.

"Not bad, eh?" said Trurl with pride. "Nature to a T, admit it!"

But Klapaucius wasn't satisfied.

"What, that mob? Surely you're not going to tell me that's Nature?"

"Then give the machine something else," snapped Trurl. "Whatever you like." For a moment Klapaucius was at a loss for what to ask. But after a little thought he declared that he would put two more tasks to the machine; if it could fulfill them, he would admit that it was all Trurl said it was. Trurl agreed to this, whereupon Klapaucius requested Negative.

"Negative?!" cried Trurl. "What on earth is Negative?" "The opposite of positive, of
course," Klapaucius coolly replied. "Negative attitudes, the negative of a picture, for example. Now don't try to pretend you never heard of Negative. All right, machine, get to work!"

The machine, however, had already begun. First it manufactured antiprotons, then
antielectrons, antineutrons, antineutrinos, and labored on, until from out of all this antimatter an antiworld took shape, glowing like a ghostly cloud above their heads.

"H'm," muttered Klapaucius, displeased. "That's supposed to be Negative? Well... let's say it is, for the sake of peace. . . . But now here's the third command: Machine, do Nothing!"

The machine sat still. Klapaucius rubbed his hands in triumph, but Trurl said: .
"Well, what did you expect? You asked it to do nothing, and it's doing nothing."

"Correction: I asked it to do Nothing, but it's doing nothing."

"Nothing is nothing!"

"Come, come. It was supposed to do Nothing, but it hasn't done anything, and therefore

I've won. For Nothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill
nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic, aggressive Nothingness,
that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous, in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme, in its very own nonperson!"

"You're confusing the machine!" cried Trurl. But suddenly its metallic voice rang out:

"Really, how can you two bicker at a time like this? Oh yes, I know what Nothing is, and

Nothingness, Nonexistence, Nonentity, Negation, Nullity and Nihility, since all these come under the heading of n, n as in Nil. Look then upon your world for the last time, gentlemen! Soon it shall no longer be..."

The constructors froze, forgetting their quarrel, for the machine was in actual fact
doing Nothing, and it did it in this fashion: one by one, various things were removed from the world, and the things, thus removed, ceased to exist, as if they had never been. The machine had already disposed of nolars, nightzebs, nocs, necs, nallyrakers, neotremes and nonmalrigers. At moments, though, it seemed that instead of reducing, diminishing and subtracting, the machine was increasing, enhancing and adding, since it liquidated, in turn: nonconformists, nonentities, nonsense, nonsupport, nearsightedness, narrowmindedness, naughtiness, neglect, nausea, necrophdia and nepotism. But after a while the world very definitely began to thin out around Trurl and Klapaucius.

"Omigosh!" said Trurl. "If only nothing bad comes out of all this . . ."Trurl

"Don't worry," said Klapaucius. "You can see it's not producing Universal Nothingness, but only causing the absence of whatever starts with n. Which is really nothing in the way of nothing, and nothing is what your machine, dear Trurl, is worth!"

"Do not be deceived," replied the machine. "I've begun, it's true, with everything in n, but only out of familiarity. To create however is one thing, to destroy, another thing entirely. I can blot out the world for the simple reason that I'm able to do anything and everything - and everything means everything - in n, and consequently Nothingness is child's play for me. In less than a minute now you will cease to have existence, along with everything else, so tell me now, Klapaucius, and quickly, that I am really and truly everything I was programmed to be, before it is too late."

"But -" Klapaucius was about to protest, but noticed, just then, that a number of things were indeed disappearing, and not merely those that started with n. The constructors were no longer surrounded by the gruncheons, the targalisks, the shupops, the calinatifacts, the thists, worches and pritons.

"Stop! I take it all back! Desist! Whoa! Don't do Nothing!!" screamed Klapaucius. But before the machine could come to a full stop, all the brashations, plusters, laries and zits had vanished away. Now the machine stood motionless. The world was a dreadful sight. The sky had particularly suffered: there were only a few, isolated points of light in the heavens - no trace of the glorious worches and zits that had, till now, graced the horizon!

"Great Gauss!" cried Klapaucius. "And where are the gruncheons? Where my dear, favorite pritons? Where now the gentle zits?!"

"They no longer are, nor ever will exist again," the machine said calmly. "I executed, or rather only began to execute, your order..."

"I tell you to do Nothing, and you... you..."

"Klapaucius, don't pretend to be a greater idiot than you are," said the machine. "Had I made Nothing outright, in one fell swoop, everything would have ceased to exist, and that includes Trurl, the sky, the Universe, and you - and even myself. In which case who could say and to whom could it be said that the order was carried out and I am an efficient and capable machine? And if no one could say it to no one, in what way then could I, who also would not be, be vindicated?"

"Yes, fine, let's drop the subject," said Klapaucius. "I have nothing more to ask of
you, only please, dear machine, please return the zits, for without them life loses all its charm..."

"But I can't, they're in z," said the machine. "Of course, I can restore nonsense,
narrowmindedness, nausea, neerophilia, neuralgia, nefariousness and noxiousness. As for the other letters, however, I can't help you."

"I want my zits!" bellowed Klapaucius.Klapaucius

"Sorry, no zits," laid the machine. "Take a good look at this world, how riddled it is with huge, gaping holes, how full of Nothingness, the Nothingness that fills the
bottomless void between the stars, how everything about us has become lined with it, how it darkly lurks behind each shred of matter. This is your work, envious one! And I hardly think the future generations will bless you for it . . ."

"Perhaps... they won't find out, perhaps they won't notice," groaned the pale
Klapaucius, gazing up incredulously at the black emptiness of space and not daring to look his colleague, Trurl, in the eve. Leaving him beside the machine that could do everything in n. Klapaucius skulked Home - and to this day the world has remained
honeycombed with nothingness, exactly as it was when halted in the course of its
liquidation. And as all subsequent attempts to build a machine on any other letter met with failure, it is to be feared that never again will we have such marvelous phenomena as the worches and the zits - no, never again.

Armed with interpretations of their ancient, Holy books, the two sides met. East and West. They chose to war...

lol...

Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people.
- Doris Egan

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
- Horace Walpole

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
- Albert Camus

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
- George Carlin

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
- Paul Valery

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
- Pablo Picasso

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
- Victor Hugo

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
- Jane Wagner

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
- Aldous Huxley

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.
- Bertrand Russell

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.
- Carl Sagan

Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
- Rabbi Julius Gordon

Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
- Jane Austen

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
- Stephen Jay Gould

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- Rene Descartes

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
- William G. McAdoo
I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.
- Wernher von Braun

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
- Josh Billings

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
- G. K. Chesterton

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
- Ben Hecht

woooo hoooo

100th post - yay! :-) a special post for me...





So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
- Dale Carnegie

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.
- Rebecca West

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.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
- Richard Feynman

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
- Dorothy L. Sayers

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
- John Cage

Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.
- Noel Coward

"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working, and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves."
- St. Francis de Sales

There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.
- Voltaire

A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing."
- Sir Arnold Bax

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
- Sir Francis Bacon

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
- Douglas Adams

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.
- Lewis Thomas

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
- Anatole France

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.
- Anais Nin

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
- H. L. Mencken

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
- John le Carre

A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
- Jane Caminos

There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.
- Norman Mailer

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
- Edward Abbey

Pigs on the Wing (Part Two) (Waters) 1:27

You know that I care what happens to you,
And I know that you care for me.
So I don't feel alone,
Or the weight of the stone,
Now that I've found somewhere safe
To bury my bone.
And any fool knows a dog needs a home,
A shelter from pigs on the wing.

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
- Arnold Toynbee

In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small things they show themselves as they are.
- Nicholas Chamfort

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Abraham Lincoln

No human thing is of serious importance.
- Plato

Memorium

In Memorium of 09/11 - Peace, Rev. Mike

We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
- W. H. Auden

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- Carl Jung

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
- Edwin Schlossberg

We're actors - we're the opposite of people.
- Tom Stoppard

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
- Albert Camus

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
- Evelyn Waugh

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
- H. P. Lovecraft

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
- Thomas Berger

I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.
- George Burns

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
- Sir Richard Francis Burton

There are no whole truths; all truths are half- truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
- Alfred North Whitehead

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
- Henri Poincare

We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
- Judith Martin

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.
- Cullen Hightower

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
- George Bernard Shaw

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
- Emo Phillips

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
- W. Somerset Maugham

Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
- Artemus Ward

Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
- Quentin Crisp

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
- John Cage

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
- Emo Phillips

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
- James Thurber

A poem is no place for an idea.
- Edgar Watson Howe

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
- Blaise Pascal

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

There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who come in and say, 'Ah, there you are.'
- Frederick L Collins

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
- Albert Einstein

When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
- Bernard Bailey

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
- Abraham Lincoln

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
- Oscar Wilde

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
- Aldous Huxley

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
- A. J. Liebling

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
- Blaise Pascal

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.
- E. H. Gombrich

Reality is something you rise above.
- Liza Minnelli

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
- Bertrand Russell

Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.
- Jane Wagner

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
- William H. Borah

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
- Sidney J. Harris

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
- John W. Gardner

Sexy Momma

The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.
- Daniel Webster

Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
- Edith Sitwell

Proverbs 3:5-6 (New International Version)

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;

6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.

Be humble, for the worst thing in the world is of the same stuff as you; be confident, for the stars are of the same stuff as you.
Nicholai Velimirovic

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
- Andre Malraux

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
- Krishnamurti

The reverse side also has a reverse side.
- Japanese Proverb

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti

To err is human; to forgive, infrequent.
- Franklin P. Adams

Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.
- Stanislaw Lem

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
- Eric Hoffer

We are the people our parents warned us about.
- Jimmy Buffett

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.
- Mark Twain

Sacred G.I.G.O.?

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.
- Pierre Gallois

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
- Richard Feynman

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
- Malcolm Forbes


A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
- Robert Frost

Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.
- Evan Esar

Roll with the quotes...

Since I haven't had much to say lately, I'm going to post some quotations for a lil while. - Peace, Rev. Mike

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon. - George Aiken

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

New Idea...

Green Tech: Where to Be

Just saw a web ad touting Michigan companies and the State itself as the "go-to" for Green businesses:


http://www.michiganadvantage.org/Targeted-Initiatives/Alternative-Energy/Default.aspx?banner=centro09_CNN_160x600

Most Underrated Bass...

Man, was just giving The Who's "The Real Me" a good listen, and woa! Entwistle (sp?) tore that song up. I realized that he's definitely an influence on my playing style.

Couple of links...

http://plug-in-profit-site.net/


http://hop.solacenow.org/

Journey - Stone In Love tab

Was listening to this song and figured i'd like to try to learn it on guitar (i'm not real good...yet), so here is a copy of the tab i found for it. - Peace, Rev. Mike

http://www.911tabs.com/link/?5852395