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Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o’clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, “Honey or condensed milk with your bread?” he was so excited that he said, “Both,” and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, “But don’t bother about the bread, please.”
-A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Bonus trivia: A.A. Milne was an ardent pacifist but joined the British Army in World War II because he believed Hitler was evil incarnate.
Amazing. How do you do it Kakarot? You’ve always been like this, ever since the day I first met you, always ready to meet the next challenge, even if it’s bigger than you are.
It was the same on Namek. You improved so much that it would make Recoome look like he were standing still. Your power had increased so dramatically since our battle on Earth that I thought you’ve done it. I thought…you have become a Super-Saiyan. It tore me apart. How could a low-class soldier accomplish so easily what I… I had struggle my whole life to achieve? After 3 millennia, it finally happened; A new Super-Saiyan has emerged, and somehow, I have become his witness.
Then at last it happened. I too transformed. After living every moment of every day for the single purpose of surpassing you, I finally became a Super-Saiyan myself. The prince has reclaimed his throne and fulfilled his destiny. But no matter how strong I became, your power still exceeded mine.
At first I thought it was your loved ones, than it was your instinct to protect them that inspired you on and pushed you beyond your limits. But then I found myself with a family of my own, and my power… didn’t increase at all. I used to fight for the shear of pleasure, for the thrill of the hunt, all I thought was strength mattered, I spared no one. And yet you showed mercy to every one, even your fiercest enemies, even me…
Yet you never thought of killing, nor of revenge. Only to test your limits, and to push us beyond them, to become the strongest you could possibly be. How can a Saiyan fight like that, and at the same time be so gentle that he wouldn’t hurt a fly? It makes me angry just thinking about it. But perhaps it is my anger that has made me blind to the truth for so long. I see it now, this day has made it all too clear. You’re better than me, Kakarot. You are the best…
-Vegeta, Dragonball Z
The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools.
-Herbert Spencer
Bonus trivia: Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest”, easily the most misunderstood and notorious phrase in modern history. He was also the philosopher to enthusiastically push the idea that the concepts of evolution and the first law of thermodynamics (the Conservation of Energy) meant that humanity would push inevitably on to perfection. The doctrine would be blasted apart in the trenches of World War I.
Homecoming for me conjures up fragments of memories of college, specifically one time that I came home from Berkeley. Be sure to check out different perspectives on the same issue from JK and $.
It was the most depressive phase of my life. My genius girlfriend had just broken up with me and I wasn’t making many new friends. Even worse, I was trying to rebound and failing miserably. There was a girl in one of my classes who was a solid 3, ugly enough that I would never be interested in her ordinarily. One day I came to class, put on my most charming smile, and tried to spark up a conversation. She looked at me like I asked her if I could defecate on the floor. What IS that with girls being able to smell the desperation?!
Anyways, my only solace toward the end of that semester was chatting online with this one girl from back home that I thought was really cute. I met her when my brother was having an ugly breakup with a Japanese girl, causing something of an uproar amongst that girl’s friends. I had to intervene and iron out a peace on behalf of my brother, and I ended up talking to this girl quite a bit. She was really quiet at first but opened up to my goofy jokes and funny tales of adventure. I liked that she had a cutesy and quirky sense of humor, and she played basketball in high school, which is hot.
She got depressed that nobody would ask her to a formal since she was a senior and I thought that was a travesty. Being the gentleman that I am, I asked her to the formal and declared that I thought she was such a good person and so beautiful that I would actually be willing to drive from Berkeley back to Palos Verdes to see her dress up and dance crazy for me. So my roomie and I rented an old Fiesta, where I also learned to drive stick, and drove down to LA.
And you know what? I walked into that formal like I was a king. I may have been depressed at Berkeley, but driving through the familiar streets of LA gave me a huge surge of confidence. This was territory that I had already conquered. I felt like I was walking in with my leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, throwing my jacket over my shoulder, and soaking in the admiration of these children.
But this story doesn’t end well. I didn’t really feel it with Lisa because I kept thinking she was holding back. I wasn’t sure what to do to get her going – up to that time, all of the girls I dated were all fairly open in their enthusiasm for me. Awkwardly, at the end of the night, we both sort of twiddled our fingers for a while before she disappointedly said, “I had a good time, I hope you have a safe drive back to Berkeley” and left. I ended up sleeping in the car thinking about what the freak went wrong. Waking up in the car in my tux is among the worst mornings of my life.
The aftermath is that she was waiting for me to make a move. She wanted to be taken, for me to sweep her up and go for it all. And it was a lesson learned the hard way, because my hesitation meant that the door slammed shut once and for all.
Good times, good times.
Problems worthy
of attack
Prove their worth
by hitting back.
-Piet Hein
Bonus trivia: Piet Hein became notorious as a member of the Danish resistance during Nazi occupation by writing this poem. It passed German censors. If you understand it, then you’ve grasped the essence of freedom and self-respect:
Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
the first one again.
When somebody persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?”
-John Maynard Keynes
Bonus trivia: Keynes hated the arithmetic mean and regarded its use as the tool of simple minds.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
-Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead vs United States, 277 US 479 (1928)
Bonus trivia: Louis Brandeis graduated from Harvard Law School at the age of twenty with the highest grade average in the school’s history. He is also the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court.
“No, and I don’t want to,” said Frodo. “I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.”
“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Cooking is a discipline. At the end of the day, there are no shortcuts to chopping vegetables, butchering meat, or kneading dough. You simply have to do it.
But therein lies the passion. Cooking well is a labor of love, a true salute that hard work is more important than talent. Cooking well means taking fewer shortcuts and doing things the long way because your dish might come out 1% better. You throw out the bottles of minced garlic and start chopping because your guests deserve the real thing. You haggle at the farmer’s market and make your own stock because your loved ones deserve the freshest ingredients you can find.
Cooking well is like playing the piano. A six year old is being creative and original when they bang their hands on the keys, but that doesn’t make them budding concert pianists. It’s only through years of training and learning the basics that the piano goes from a box with 88 keys to a beautiful instrument.
Society has spent the last few decades learning to eat well, and we are all better for it. We no longer eschew sushi as merely raw fish and we can tell the difference between hamburger meat and steaks. But cooking well has been left behind. People have lost the ability to speak through their own hands, conveying a message with words like passion, culture, and memory. We’ve been slightly ashamed to dare ourselves to roll up our sleeves and take pride in our home cooked meals, providing for our families at the most visceral level.
But there is hope. Cooking is finding fresh interest as people who eat well have decided that maybe they’d like a crack at taking their own chances. This recession has taken away our budgets for fancy restaurants and forced us to learn the tough virtues: hard work, finding your calling, and family. Cooking well takes a whole new meaning now.
You want a valve that doesn’t leak and you try everything possible to develop one. But the real world provides you with a leaky valve. You have to determine how much leaking you can tolerate.
-Arthur Rudolph
Bonus trivia: Rudolph was a notorious figure because he designed the V-2 rocket production facility, which used Nazi concentration camp labor. He was captured by US forces and brought back, eventually joining the team that designed NASA’s Saturn V rocket.
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