2000/2
Breath is to the singer as floor is to the dancer.
2000/3
Computer experts now say that 2000 will be remembered mostly as the occasion for a thorough housecleaning and updating that left them primed for a rapid expansion of e-commerce and other new electronic technologies.
2000/4
Compare and contrast:
NEW CENTURY--"In the daily press we find a fierce epistolary battle raging between those who believe that the year 1899 marks the close of the nineteenth century and those who hold that not until 1901 shall we cross the threshold to the new era. It seems so difficult to understand that 1800, 1900, 2000, designates not the beginning, but the end of a century. It is evident that there never was a year 0, that the century must begin with a 1. A hundred years ago the same wordy war was waged; a hundred years hence it will be renewed."
Readers had strong opinions about our December 1999 issue on ``What Science Will Know in 2050,'' and none more forceful than the protests that this ``End-of-the-Millennium Special Issue'' came a year early. We sympathize with their point of view, but in answer: It may be more mathematically rigorous and precise to start the 21st century in 2001, but it is a meaningless precision given the caprices with which calendars have been modified over the years. Moreover, when people refer to periods like ``the 20th century" or ``the next millennium," our understanding is that they are typically less concerned with the precise demarcations than with the overall historical character and significance.
As such, ``the 20th century" is a label akin to ``the Renaissance" or ``the Victorian era." The bottom line is that if most of the world thinks that a new millennium has begun, then for all practical purposes, it has.
2000/4-7
[S]ongs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way; and sometimes they are withered untimely.
USED 2000/4
But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way; and sometimes they are withered untimely.
2000/7-8
The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
2000/7-2002/2
``All insults are untrue. I state facts.''
2000/9
The mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude [``The mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence.''], and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as truth. ... The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra are abstract or general truths. And this error is so egregious that I am confounded at the universality with which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation -- of form and quantity -- is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. ... But the mathematician argues, from his finite truths, through habit, as if they were of an absolutely general applicability -- as the world indeed imagines them to be. ... In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that x2 + px was absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you please, that you believe occasions may occur where x2 + px is not altogether equal to q, and, having made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach as speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will endeavor to knock you down.
2000/10-11
In the country lanes the ... lovers ... walked in the sunsets with their arms round each other's waists, so that they gave the impression of a capital X when seen from behind.
2000/11 - 2001/6
True ability is sought in difficult times; in easy times men of wealth or family connections, not able men, are most popular.
2001/1-6
Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.
2001/4-6
``[Y]our ignorance is higher than a mountain and deeper than a well.''
2001/6-8
When the Way is lost there is benevolence. When benevolence is lost there is justice. When justice is lost there are the rites. The rites are the end of loyalty and good faith, the beginning of disorder.
2001/9-10
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.
2001/10-2002/2
You will be successful one day.
2002/2-...
Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one?
2002/2-6
There wasn't anything I could do, so I took a nap.
2002/6-8
He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned.
2002/9-12
[W]e got our decimal point off again. We got point oh oh oh one dragon instead of a hundred dragons. I confess, the solution eludes me. The calculus of classes contains no aspect of quantitative accuracy--
2002/7-9
Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one?
2002/9-
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
2002/12-2003/2
``It doesn't help to have this swirling controversy that Senator Lott, in spite of his enormous political skills, doesn't seem to be able to handle well,'' Governor [Jeb] Bush told The Miami Herald in an interview published today.
2003/2-9
Many lives have been changed by taking infinity seriously.
2003/9-12
Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created
was human work and human madness like all Gods!
2003/12-2004/2
[T]rolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three ... many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of higher numbers. They don't realize that many can be a number. As in: one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, LOTS.
2004/2-4
Bush is just another l'il upper-class white boy out trying to prove he's tough.2004/3-5
D.C. Sniper John Allen Muhammad Sentenced to Death
Deserves [death]? 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 judgement.
2004/5-7
In the view of the authorities, the non-conformists are guilty of every fault ascribed to them by the masses, plus that of being stubborn rebels to whom the normal provisions of the law cannot be applied.
2004/6-7
Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004)Most Destructive President of the Century |
|
2004/7-2005/5
The learning process is not purely cognitive. It is simplistic to suppose that people remember what they are told, and understand things that are explained to them clearly. Much more commonly, people remember what interests them, and understand the things that they enjoy understanding. ... If in considering complex processes we limit our observations and judgments to things that we can analyze and measure exactly, this leads not to scientific exactitude but to tunnel vision. ...
2004/8-2005/5 (Economics 101)
What is perhaps most interesting about the patent system is that the American law is essentially unchanged from the Venetian patent code of 1474.
2005/5-2006/4
Secularism is a blend of three principles: freedom of conscience, equality of treatment of all citizens, whatever their spiritual convictions, and the idea according to which the common law must aim only for the common good.
2005/5-2006/4 (Economics 101)
It is true that in the Roman world were to be found dazzling and colossal fortunes ... But modern economics have taught us that the commerce in luxuries, which concerns only a small number of rich men, is absolutely inadequate to produce, stimulate and maintain a thriving industry: ``When wealth is concentrated at one pole, luxury breaks up the equilibrium of production by diminishing the manufacture of articles of use and increasing that of articles of luxury''. Industry prospers in societies in which wealth is distributed over a great number of persons and descends from the richest to the poorest by graded stages: ``the more wealth is divided, the more consumption and consequently production increase.''
2006/4-2007/9
When a man is wealthy he may wear an old cloth.
2006/5-2007/9
The most dangerous defeatists, the most dispiriting pessimists, are those who invoke September 11th to argue that our traditional values are a luxury we can no longer afford.
2006/4-2007/9 (Economics 101)
The parameter kappa, representing the curvature of the invention function, is virtually impossible to estimate with much confidence. It is perilous even to guess a plausible value for kappa. Some authors have used the functional form B(R) = beta Ralpha [for the invention function] .... This seems to be a reasonable kind of function both from the relationship of research to size of firm and the research-output ratio.
2007/9-10
Toronto is New York run by the Swiss.
2007/9-10
To the Editor:
After six years of the Bush administration and seven addresses by President Bush to Congress on the state of the union, it's now clear that Mr. Bush's political philosophy can be condensed into two principles:
First, most domestic problems in the United States can be solved by tax cuts or tax credits.
Second, most of the United States' foreign problems can be solved by wars or threats of war.
...
2007/9- (Economics 101)
As long as the medium-sized property held its own beside the great estate, [Rome] was reasonably broad-based, above her peasant foundations. Her safety would be jeopardized, however, when inflation and taxation whittled down the middle class, and left only great landowners and starving peasants side by side.
2007/10-
It is with a heavy heart that I apologize this morning to Aunt Jemima.
Home page.