e-musing

"Complete ‘realism’ is clearly unattainable, and the question whether a theory is..."

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:32:57 -0500

“Complete ‘realism’ is clearly unattainable, and the question whether a theory is realistic ‘enough’ can be settled only by seeing whether it yields predictions that are good enough for the purpose in hand or that are better than predictions from alternative theories.”

- Milton Friedman

"Having dealt with the clean reality of metals, technology, production all his life, he had acquired..."

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:30:00 -0500

“Having dealt with the clean reality of metals, technology, production all his life, he had acquired the conviction that one had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane—that one had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always won—that the senseless, the wrong, the monstrously unjust could not work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself. A battle against a thing such as that bill seemed preposterous and faintly embarrassing to him, as if he were suddenly asked to compete with a man who calculated steel mixtures by the formulas of numerology.”

- on Hank Rearden’s political views in Atlas Shrugged

"A plurality of Americans call themselves independents, and on the most divisive economic..."

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:14:45 -0500

“A plurality of Americans call themselves independents, and on the most divisive economic argument—how to solve the budget mess—two in three of them back a combination of spending cuts and tax rises. But politics is being driven by extremists who reject any such compromise.”

- The Economist

"Tablets” weren’t a category that anyone needed to give a damn about until the iPad. It was a massive..."

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:51:05 -0500

““Tablets” weren’t a category that anyone needed to give a damn about until the iPad. It was a massive hit not because it managed to remove any of the problems inherent to tablets, but because it was so delightful, fun, and pleasant to use that anyone who tried their friend’s iPad for a few minutes needed to have one of their own.”

- http://www.marco.org/2011/11/17/kindle-fire-review

President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:56:24 -0400

President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs:

…he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

"If Bernanke continues shoveling in hundreds of billions to needy bankers, five years from now..."

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:06:56 -0400

“If Bernanke continues shoveling in hundreds of billions to needy bankers, five years from now Americans (and the rest of the world) may look back fondly on the present the way the 2001 downturn now seems like a minor inconvenience.”

- The Importance of Capital Theory - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily

"In the fall of 1997, Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he were CEO of Apple. He answered..."

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:27:32 -0400

“In the fall of 1997, Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he were CEO of Apple. He answered that he would shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders (link). Today, nearly 14 years later, Dell (DELL) is worth $27 billion and Apple is worth 12.7 Dells.”

- http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/09/apple-is-briefly-the-worlds-most-valuable-public-company/

"Our economy is lubricated by a sophisticated and stable credit market whose most vital component is..."

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 10:21:16 -0400

“Our economy is lubricated by a sophisticated and stable credit market whose most vital component is also the most ephemeral: trust.”

- S&P’s credit rating cut: Downgrading our politics | The Economist

My afternoon

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:57:46 -0400

Vendor: Do you think you should have errors?
Me: If the program isn't giving me any results, it would nice if it told me why.

"The president and Congressional Republicans are locked in a staring contest over a pissing contest..."

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:19:34 -0400

“The president and Congressional Republicans are locked in a staring contest over a pissing contest over who will blink first. My bet: whoever gets their eyes pissed in.”

- Stephen Colbert

"I found out that it’s not good to talk about my troubles. Eighty percent of the people who hear them..."

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:22:11 -0400

“I found out that it’s not good to talk about my troubles. Eighty percent of the people who hear them don’t care and the other twenty percent are glad you’re having trouble.”

- Tommy LaSorda

Microsoft's innovation illness

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:49:12 -0400

Microsoft's innovation illness:

Microsoft’s Windows Phone president Andy Lees at the Worldwide Partners Conference once again tried to shoot down hopes for tablets based on Windows Phone 7. The use of the mobile OS would be “in conflict” with Microsoft’s notion of having the full speed of a computer in any design, including truly mobile tablets. He insisted that users would want to do PC-style activities on a tablet and saw Windows 8’s networking and printing support as being important.

“We view a tablet as a PC,” Lees said.

Microsoft is making a bet that technology (more specifically, how people use technology) won’t change. I’ll gladly take the other side of that bet.

(via DF)

"It is a natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a..."

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:31:03 -0400

“It is a natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance toward largeness and complexity—in a word, toward us. We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes—an interesting side branch. Of the twenty-three main divisions of life, only three—plants, animals, and fungi—are large enough to be seen by the human eye, and even they contain species that are microscopic… The world belongs to the very small—and it has for a very long time.”

- Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

"Water is strange stuff. It is formless and transparent, and yet we long to be beside it. It has no..."

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 18:05:37 -0400

“Water is strange stuff. It is formless and transparent, and yet we long to be beside it. It has no taste and yet we love the taste of it. We will travel great distances and pay small fortunes to see it in sunshine. And even though we know it is dangerous and drowns tens of thousands of people every year, we can’t wait to frolic in it”

- Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

"Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to..."

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 22:58:19 -0400

“Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn’t violate too many of Newton’s Laws!”

- Alan Kay, 1971

Photo

Mon, 23 May 2011 18:27:12 -0400

Apple's sentence

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:27:14 -0400

Apple's sentence:

“Keep in mind that Apple’s penalty for losing the PC war in the 1990s is that it is now the most profitable PC maker in the world.”

The most mystical benefit of writing is the way a page or screen becomes a medium through which my...

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:52:48 -0400

The most mystical benefit of writing is the way a page or screen becomes a medium through which my mind communicates with itself. The unintentional symbolism strikes me the most — the way certain thoughts have to leave my body, then re-enter before they can be realized.

It’s almost as if the full potential of human mind can’t happen absent writing.

Wonder who this fly on my wall could be.

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 09:50:30 -0400

Wonder who this fly on my wall could be.

Photo

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:39:27 -0400