Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Another November 5, 2013 Twitter tweet from Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson). He seems to have been on a football kick that day:
.....If a football at the 50 yd line were the Sun, how far is the Oort Cloud? // 400 mi away. Earth? The 35 yd line.

To add some ideas of scale to that . . .

The nearest “Goldilocks” planet found to date (planets at the right distance from their sun that they could potentially support life) is 22 light years away. On the football field scale that's the Earth's Sun at the 50 yard line and the Goldilocks planet at about 8,800 miles. The Voyager 1 Spacecraft left the Solar System in August of last year about 25 years after launch.

Some ideas of the scale of distance to consider for those who dream of humans migrating to another solar system.

[WT Sharpe]

.....In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus asks Neo: "What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
..........— Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde. From "A Perspective on 3-D Visual Illusions", Scientific American Mind, November 25, 2013.

[kennyc]

and because today is Carl Sagan's birthday November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996
(Cosmos is a great read or watch as is The Demon Haunted World)

[WT Sharpe]

What a gem he was, Kenny. Sagan had the mind of a Scientist, the heart of a poet, and the enthusiasm of an evangelist. And as I mentioned here, Cosmos has been remade for the current generation and shall soon be a mini series on Fox starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the few people on the planet who could possibly do it justice.

[BenG]

When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly with Swift, with Defoe, with Fielding, Stendhal, Thackeray, Flaubert, though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have.

From George Orwell's essay on Dickens

You can read it online here:
http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-o...arles-dickens/

[BenG]

I don’t like questions. They invent the answers. The real answers are discovered before you even know what the question is.

William McIlvanney, Laidlaw

[kennyc]

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."
— Neil Gaiman

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus asks Neo: "What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
..........— Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde. From "A Perspective on 3-D Visual Illusions", Scientific American Mind, November 25, 2013.

True but I cannot quite apply it to dropping a hammer on my toe and breaking it. The electrical signals lasted for months.

Helen

[poohbear_nc]

"Every imagination has its holy places but they are its private property."
... W.H. Auden

[Angst]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

What a gem he was, Kenny. Sagan had the mind of a Scientist, the heart of a poet, and the enthusiasm of an evangelist. And as I mentioned here, Cosmos has been remade for the current generation and shall soon be a mini series on Fox starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the few people on the planet who could possibly do it justice.

I was in Canada and missed the Carl Sagan experience. We had David Suzuki. I will definitely have to check out the new series with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

If you can't wait, Neil has a brief (3-hour) course available from The Great Courses. $30

[kennyc]

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Born November 18, 1939: Happy 74th birthday, Margaret Atwood!

[astrangerhere]

"It's a universal instinct of the human species, isn't it, that desire to dress up in some sort of disguise?"

- Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

[covingtoncat73]

“If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

[kennyc]

“Call me Ishmael.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

On this date in 1820, a sperm whale attacked a whaling ship off the coast of South America. The Essex hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, and was captained by George Pollard Jr. Pollard was only 29, the youngest man to ever command a whaling ship; the Essex, by contrast, was pretty old, and she was also small for a whaleship. She was considered lucky, though, because crews made money on most of her voyages.....

The inspiration for Moby Dick, from the Writers Almanac - http://writersalmanac.publicradio.or...ate=2013/11/20

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by kennyc

“Call me Ishmael.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The inspiration for Moby Dick, from the Writers Almanac - http://writersalmanac.publicradio.or...ate=2013/11/20

"Admiral, there be whales here!" --- Scotty to Adm Kirk (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)