Thursday, October 27, 2016
Saturday, June 04, 2016
Particle Physics
Friday, July 17, 2015
Shelley, Ozymandias
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”
Monday, January 12, 2015
Amor Fati
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Objectivity
Sunday, December 08, 2013
Who Goes with Fergus - William Butler Yeats
WHO will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
Invictus - William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Friday, December 06, 2013
Citizenship in a Republic, Theodore Roosevelt
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Pale Blue Dot
Wednesday, October 09, 2013
Lincoln
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
Worthless Appearances
Friday, June 28, 2013
Henry Howard - The Things that Cause a Quiet Life
My friend, the things that do attain
The riches left, not got with pain,
The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;
The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule nor governance;
Without disease the healthy life;
The household of continuance;
The mean diet, no dainty fare;
True wisdom joined with simpleness;
The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress;
The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
Content thyself with thine estate,
Neither wish death, nor fear his might.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Camus
Camus
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
White Fang - Jack London
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Monday, January 28, 2013
The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tennyson

All in the valley of Death

"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death

Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death

Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them

Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell

Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while

Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke

Then they rode back, but not

Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them

Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,

O the wild charge they made!

Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,

Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Friedman, 2012 Election
Friday, September 14, 2012
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
"Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others ... But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry"
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Eastern Roman Empire
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
TBP Comments
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Say Not the Struggle Not Availeth, Arthur Hugh Clough
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Alexander Pope
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd
Eloisa to Abelard
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Three Imperatives
1) at what cost?
2) compared to what?
3) how do you know?
Peter Gordon
Friday, July 20, 2007
Poe - A Dream Within a Dream
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Keats - Sonnet to Sleep 1819
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the Amen ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes:
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like the mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
Prey to its Own Thoughts
James Beattie
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Atlas Shrugged
People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons. "Reason," Dr. Pritchett had told them, "is the most naive of all superstitions."
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Effluvia
John Maynard Keynes
They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
Thomas Brackett Reed
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.
Andrew Lang
Friday, May 18, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Alexander the Great

The Alexander Mosaic or The Battle of Issus, approx. 200 BC, from the House of the Faun, Pompeii. Depicts a battle between the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) - Wilde
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The End of Empire
The Trial of Socrates, I.F. Stone, p. 43
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
the Power of Knowledge
Thomas Jefferson
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Insanity
Friday, March 16, 2007
WWII Photo

Soldiers raising the flag of Soviet Union on the roof of Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany in May, 1945. Тhe flag was made from а red tablecloth with the hammer and sickle themselves stamped on.