Category: Uncategorized

links for 2007-05-27

links for 2006-09-10

do we need more than one Patriot[‘s] Day?

This day seems to be one of the bloodiest on American soil.

April 19 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

But how did we get from here:

# 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Lexington and Concord – British General Thomas Gage attempts to confiscate American colonists’ firearms. Captain John Parker orders his band of minutemen not to fire unless fired upon. Random shots rang out among the British soldiers. The minutemen promptly fired back. This was the “shot heard round the world.”

to here?

# 1993 – The 50-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
# 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168.

From the righteous defense of the rights of the colonists to the deaths of hundreds of innocents, by the hands of Americans?

And now we have Bloody Shirt Day.

Patriot Day, 2006:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim September 11, 2006, as Patriot Day. I call upon the Governors of the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as well as appropriate officials of all units of government, to direct that the flag be flown at half staff on Patriot Day. I also call upon the people of the United States to observe Patriot Day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and remembrance services, to display the flag at half staff from their homes on that day, and to observe a moment of silence beginning at 8:46 a.m. eastern daylight time to honor the innocent Americans and people from around the world who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

a. did they really not remember there already is a Patriot’s Day that dates back to the founding of the nation?

b. could the name be any more politically-charged as opposed to actually commemorative?

links for 2006-09-08

paradigm-shifting vs evolution

Wired 14.07: What Kind of Genius Are You?:

A new theory suggests that creativity comes in two distinct types – quick and dramatic, or careful and quiet.

What [David Galenson] has found is that genius – whether in art or architecture or even business – is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

Interesting look at creativity and innovation. Recommended reading: perhaps you haven’t peaked yet.

You keep using that phrase: it does not mean what you think it means

I had forgotten the origin of cut and run. Now if only the OpEd headline writer knew “straights” from “straits.”


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:

‘In dire straights, cut and run’

Editor — The phrase “cut and run” has appeared in The Chronicle — indeed, in all media — numerous times, usually in derogation of those who wish to depart from the ruinous American adventure in Iraq. But those who use the phrase with such fervor obviously don’t know what it means.

“Cut and run” originated in the days of sailing ships. It meant to get under way in an emergency by cutting the anchor chain and running before the wind. In the instance of square-rigged ships, it also meant to cut the lines holding the furled sails, whereupon the sails would unfurl of their own weight and the ship could sail at once.

“Cut and run” has nothing whatsoever to do with cowardice, surrender, or defeatism. It is, in fact, the intelligent thing to do when in dire straits. The captain who cuts and runs has a chance of saving his ship. The stubborn, rigid captain, who stands upon the bridge and defies the elements, will find his ship driven upon the rocks — and destroyed.

“Passage, immediate passage! The blood burns in my veins!

Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!

Cut the hawsers — and haul out — shake out every sail!

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?

Have we not groveled here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?

Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?”

— “Passage to India” by Walt Whitman.

PETER BROWNING

Lafayette

So let’s review. Cut and run means to be prepared, to be ready for action. The opposite is to refuse to adapt to changing circumstances, to willingly risk everything rather than change one’s mind.