Information on 2010

If asked to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them.

Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 – 4 July 1826), the third president of the United States - 16 January 1787

A new kind of geometry

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

Phyllis Diller

First it was a dream

You got to have a dream,
if you don't have a dream,
how you gonna have a dream come true?

Song Happy Talk

The universe is wider than our views of it

I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.

Prof. Keating - Dead Poets Society

Something we must never forget

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.

Albert Einstein

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.

Neil Armstrong

Perchè Sinistra e Libertà

Per numerose ragioni voterò per Sinistra e Libertà. Perchè il gruppo ha fatto bene il suo lavoro: i suoi deputati uscenti hanno agito molto bene nella legislatura precedente (Fava: miglior parlamentare europeo - Kusstatscher: oscar delle presenze al Parlamento Europeo). Perchè vogliono portare in Europa le idee a cui sono legato: socialismo, ecologismo e laicismo.

La libertà senza socialismo è privilegio, ingiustizia; il socialismo senza libertà è schiavitù, barbarie.

(Michail Bakunin)

A Theory of Everything

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time — life and death — stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.

Richard Feynman

Crisis

L'auto ha raggiunto i limiti del suo sviluppo. La prova? Quest'anno non ci sono state innovazioni.

da Scientific American, 1909

Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Walt Disney

Sono anche uno Statolatra

La nostra concezione di Dio deriva dall’antico dispotismo orientale, ed è una concezione indegna di uomini liberi. Non ha rispetto di sé stesso chi si disprezza e si definisce miserabile peccatore […] Non bisogna rimpiangere il passato o soffocare la libera intelligenza con idee che uomini ignoranti ci hanno propinato per secoli. Occorre sperare nell’avvenire e non voltarsi a guardare a cose ormai morte che, confidiamo, non rivivranno più in un mondo creato dalla nostra intelligenza.

Bertrand Russell, «Perché non sono cristiano», 1927

Does the democracy work well?

During a meeting the joint owners of a building have to debate about the idea to paint the external walls of their house.

There are 3 groups:

• group A: 10 joint owners want to paint the house and they like yellow;
  
• group B: 10 joint owners want to paint the house and they think a yellow house is ugly;
  
• group C: 10 joint owners don't want to paint their house, but if they have to do, they would like yellow.
  

The apartment house manager can decide how they will vote. I have two alternatives: in a single round (1st strategy) or in two (2nd strategy).

1. Just one question:
   
   "Do you want to paint your house in yellow?"
   
   Result: NO. Groups B hate yellow and group C don't want to pain the house.
   
   
2. Two sequential questions:
   
   "Do you want to paint your house?"
   
   Result: YES. Group A and B win again group C.
   
   "Do you like yellow?"
   
   Result: YES. Only group B don't like yellow.
   
   Final result: YES.
   

The question is: who have the power to decide, the apartment house manager or joint owners?

Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Winston Churchill

I knew it!

Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.

Irving Fisher, perhaps the first celebrity economist, a few days before the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Happiness

I shall take the heart... for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.

The Tinman in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

by L. Frank Baum

Good company

A man alone is always in bad company.

[Paul Valery]

Perceptions

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.

Albert Einstein

The Sun Sets Sail - Rob Gonsalves

The show must go on

Le masse... cadranno vittime più facilmente di una grossa menzogna che di una piccola.

Adolf Hitler in «Mein Kampf»

Ci sono molti i modi di mentire: dal fornire una versione comoda dei fatti, all’inventare pericoli inesistenti per eludere quelli veri.
I tagli Si chiamano «riforme». Le torture? «Tecniche di interrogatorio rafforzate». Un tempo le verità inconfessabili del potere erano coperte dal segreto, oggi la guerra contro la verità è combattuta e vinta sul terreno della parola.

Someone is more equal than others

In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

George Orwell

Smart people

Segavano i rami sui quali erano seduti e si scambiavano a gran voce le loro esperienza di come segare più in fretta, e precipitarono con uno schianto, e quelli che li videro scossero la testa segando e continuarono a segare.

Bertolt Brecht da Esilio

La vita è pura casualità

by *p (I got that pentax feva / Im back for a min)

Chi disse "preferisco avere fortuna che talento" percepì l'essenza della vita. La gente ha paura di ammettere quanto conti la fortuna nella vita, terrorizza pensare che sia così fuori controllo. A volte in una partita di tennis la palla colpisce il nastro e per un attimo può andare oltre... o tornare indietro. Con un po' di fortuna va oltre... e allora si vince oppure no... e allora si perde.

Dal prologo del film Match point, Woody Allen, 2006