Perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com Taking on the world Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:08:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Quote of the Day 2012-1-25 http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2012-1-25/ http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2012-1-25/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:06:51 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3517 The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in [...]]]> The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.

-Chuck Close

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2012-1-25/feed/ 0 Quote of the Day 2011-8-5 http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-8-5/ http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-8-5/#comments Sat, 06 Aug 2011 01:56:12 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3512 Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.

-Cmdr. Tom “Stinger” Jordan, Top Gun

]]> Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.

-Cmdr. Tom “Stinger” Jordan, Top Gun

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-8-5/feed/ 0 Quote of the Day 2011-7-15 http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-7-15/ http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-7-15/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:53:56 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3509 I think the problem is not to find the best or most efficient method to proceed to a discovery, but to find any method at all. Physical reasoning does help some people to generate suggestions as to how the unknown may be related to the known. Theories of the known, which are described by different [...]]]> I think the problem is not to find the best or most efficient method to proceed to a discovery, but to find any method at all. Physical reasoning does help some people to generate suggestions as to how the unknown may be related to the known. Theories of the known, which are described by different physical ideas may be equivalent in all their predictions and are hence scientifically indistinguishable. However, they are not psychologically identical when trying to move from that base into the unknown. For different views suggest different kinds of modifications which might be made and hence are not equivalent in the hypotheses one generates from them in one’s attempt to understand what is not yet understood. I, therefore, think that a good theoretical physicist today might find it useful to have a wide range of physical viewpoints and mathematical expressions of the same theory (for example, of quantum electrodynamics) available to him. This may be asking too much of one man. Then new students should as a class have this. If every individual student follows the same current fashion in expressing and thinking about electrodynamics or field theory, then the variety of hypotheses being generated to understand strong interactions, say, is limited. Perhaps rightly so, for possibly the chance is high that the truth lies in the fashionable direction. But, on the off-chance that it is in another direction—a direction obvious from an unfashionable view of field theory—who will find it? Only someone who has sacrificed himself by teaching himself quantum electrodynamics from a peculiar and unusual point of view; one that he may have to invent for himself. I say sacrificed himself because he most likely will get nothing from it, because the truth may lie in another direction, perhaps even the fashionable one.

But, if my own experience is any guide, the sacrifice is really not great because if the peculiar viewpoint taken is truly experimentally equivalent to the usual in the realm of the known there is always a range of applications and problems in this realm for which the special viewpoint gives one a special power and clarity of thought, which is valuable in itself. Furthermore, in the search for new laws, you always have the psychological excitement of feeling that possibly nobody has yet thought of the crazy possibility you are looking at right now.

-Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize Lecture 1965

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-7-15/feed/ 0 Quote of the Day 2011-7-10 http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-7-10/ http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-7-10/#comments Mon, 11 Jul 2011 02:39:14 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3507 Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

-Arthur Schopenhauer

Bonus trivia: Schopenhauer hated most things in his life, including universities, women, Germans, criminals, Jews, politics, and Hegel. He liked animals.

]]> Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

-Arthur Schopenhauer

Bonus trivia: Schopenhauer hated most things in his life, including universities, women, Germans, criminals, Jews, politics, and Hegel. He liked animals.

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-7-10/feed/ 0 John Godfrey Saxe – The Blind Men and the Elephant http://www.perrymecium.com/poetry/john-godfrey-saxe-the-blind-men-and-the-elephant/ http://www.perrymecium.com/poetry/john-godfrey-saxe-the-blind-men-and-the-elephant/#comments Sun, 26 Jun 2011 06:25:37 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3502 A HINDOO FABLE.

i.

IT was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind.

ii.

The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: [...]]]> A HINDOO FABLE.

i.

IT was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

ii.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me!—but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”

iii.

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried:”Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘t is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

iv.

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:

“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”

v.

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

vi.

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

vii.

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

viii.

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

moral.

So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!


]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/poetry/john-godfrey-saxe-the-blind-men-and-the-elephant/feed/ 0 Quote of the Day 2011-6-6 http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-6-6/ http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-6-6/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:36:17 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3499 Indeed, just as study is a torment to a lazy man, abstinence from wine to a drunkard, frugality to the luxurious man, and exercise to a delicate idler, so it is with the rest. Things are not that painful or difficult of themselves; it is our weakness and cowardice that make them so. To judge [...]]]> Indeed, just as study is a torment to a lazy man, abstinence from wine to a drunkard, frugality to the luxurious man, and exercise to a delicate idler, so it is with the rest. Things are not that painful or difficult of themselves; it is our weakness and cowardice that make them so. To judge of great and lofty things we need a soul of the same caliber; otherwise we attribute to them the vice that is our own. A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see the thing, but how we see it.

-Michel de Montaigne, Essais

Bonus trivia: Montaigne was one of the most influential writers of the Renaissance, popularizing the essay as a writing form and considered the father of modern skepticism.

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-6-6/feed/ 1 Strong in the Rain – Miyazawa Kenji http://www.perrymecium.com/poetry/strong-in-the-rain-miyazawa-kenji/ http://www.perrymecium.com/poetry/strong-in-the-rain-miyazawa-kenji/#comments Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:57:11 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3495 Someone who is unfazed by the rain, undaunted by the wind, unbowed by the snow or the summer sun.

Who is sound of body, who wants nothing for himself, and who never gives in to anger, but is always smiling quietly within.

Someone who eats eight bowls of brown rice a day, simple [...]]]> Someone who is unfazed by the rain,
undaunted by the wind,
unbowed by the snow or the summer sun.

Who is sound of body,
who wants nothing for himself,
and who never gives in to anger,
but is always smiling quietly within.

Someone who eats eight bowls of brown rice a day, simple farmers’ fare,
with a bowl of miso soup and a vegetable or two.

In all things
he never takes himself into account,
always learns by watching and listening to others,
and never forgets.

He lives in a thatched hut in a meadow in the shadow of a pine grove,
and if there is a sick child in the east,
goes to care for that child.

And if there is a mother overwhelmed by work in the west,
goes to carry her bundles of rice.

If someone is dying in the south,
goes and says there is nothing to fear.

If there is a dispute or lawsuit in the north,
goes and says to stop being petty.

And when there is a drought, he sheds tears.

And when there is a cold spell in summer,
he paces anxiously back and forth.

Someone who is known far and wide as a dreamer
and never praised,
but is not a nuisance to anyone either …

That is the kind of person
I would like to be.

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/poetry/strong-in-the-rain-miyazawa-kenji/feed/ 0 Quote of the Day 2011-4-20 http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-4-20/ http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-4-20/#comments Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:08:42 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3492 Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.

-George Box

Bonus trivia: Box taught himself statistics while he was working as a chemist for the British Army during World War II. He went on to be a leading expert in the field.

]]> Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.

-George Box

Bonus trivia: Box taught himself statistics while he was working as a chemist for the British Army during World War II. He went on to be a leading expert in the field.

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-4-20/feed/ 0 Quote of the Day 2011-4-6 http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-4-6/ http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-4-6/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 03:25:08 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3490 The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends.

-Andrew Carnegie

Bonus trivia: In 1908, Carnegie commissioned a promising young journalist named Napoleon Hill to interview more [...]]]> The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends.

-Andrew Carnegie

Bonus trivia: In 1908, Carnegie commissioned a promising young journalist named Napoleon Hill to interview more than 500 of the most successful businessmen and inventors in America to find the common themes of their successes. What emerged was the idea of Positive Mental Attitude – through definitive goals, firm beliefs, perseverance, and PMA, people can succeed at anything.

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-4-6/feed/ 1 Quote of the Day 2011-3-27 http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-3-27/ http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-3-27/#comments Sun, 27 Mar 2011 17:33:41 +0000 perrymecium http://www.perrymecium.com/?p=3483 It is a favorite belief of mine that no student ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required, that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction.

-Charles Kendall Adams

[...]]]> It is a favorite belief of mine that no student ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required, that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction.

-Charles Kendall Adams

]]> http://www.perrymecium.com/quote-of-the-day/quote-of-the-day-2011-3-27/feed/ 0