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. . . COMPOSERS see "MUSIC" for related links Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle. --Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) English conductor. Nobody will ever write anything better than this symphony. {Beethoven's 9th} --Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) Russian composer and pianist. Quoted in Sergei Bertenssen and Jay Leyda's _Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music_ [1965] Having some words with soprano Francesca Cuzzoni on her refusing to sing "Falsa imagine" in _Ottone_, Handel said "Oh! Madam, I know well that you are truly a She-Devil; but I will have you know that I am Beelzebub, chief of the Devils." With this he took her by the wrist, and if she made any more words, swore that he would fling her out of the window. --William Rockstro, _The Life of George Frederick Handel_ [1883] Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour. --Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) Italian composer. Said to Emile Naumann [April 1867] in E Naumann _Italienische Tondichter_ [1883] An orgy of vulgar noise. --composer Louis Spohr on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony [1823].   COMPROMISE . . see "COMMUNICATION" for related links The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway. --Henry Boye A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes that he has got the biggest piece. --Ludwig Erhard (1897-1977) German politician. Quoted in _Readers Digest_ [March 1959] An agreement between two men to do what both agree is wrong. --Lord Edward Gascoyne-Cecil (1867-1918) British soldier and colonial administrator in Egypt. {Defining "compromise"} If you live in the river, you should make friends with the crocodile. --Indian proverb ^ Hence Henry Clay, by furious and skillful activity behind the scenes and on the House floor, ensured that Maine and Missouri were admitted together, along with a compromise amendment prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36.30 (March 1820). And by even greater prodigies of skill he resolved the constitutional question provoked by the extremists in the Missouri convention by what is known as the Second Missouri Compromise, the local legislature solemnly pledging never to enact laws depriving any citizen of his rights under the US Constitution (February 1821). As a result President Monroe was able to sign Missouri's admission to the Union in August. This was the first of three compromises Clay brokered (the others were 1833 and 1850) which defused the periodic explosion between North and South and postponed the Civil War for forty years. Indeed Senator Henry S. Foote, who had watched Clay weave his magic spells to disarm the angry protagonists in Congress, later said: 'Had there been one such man in the Congress of the United States as Henry Clay in 1860-1, there would, I am sure, have been no Civil War.' --Paul Johnson (1928- ) British conservative historian. _A History of the American People_ [1997] p. 325 ^ My point? Simple: we live in an era of non-contiguous information streams. I believe one thing; someone else believes another - and the bedrock assumptions are utterly contradictory. This is what drives me nuts about discussing current events with some people. It’s like discussing the Apollo program with people who think it was all faked, or discussing archeology with those who believe the world is six thousand years old. I think the Iraq Campaign was part of a broad war against Islamicist fascism and the states that enable it; others think it’s all about oil and Halliburton jerking the strings of a Jeebus puppet. No. Middle. Ground. --James Lileks (1958- ) American journalist, columnist, and blogger. Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship. --James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat. . . see "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for related links [Nikola Tesla] records that the compulsion to finish everything, once started, almost killed him when he began reading the works of Voltaire. To his dismay, he learned that there were close to one hundred volumes in small print "which that monster had written while drinking seventy-two cups of black coffee per diem." But there could be no peace for Tesla until he had read them all. --Margaret Cheney _Tesla: Man Out of Time_ [1981], "A Gambling Man"  . . see: "TECHNOLOGY" see "COMMUNICATION" for other related links see "KNOWLEDGE" for other related links The computer world has a language all its own, just like Hungary, the difference being that if you hang around with Hungarians long enough, you eventually start to understand what they're talking about; whereas the language used in the computer world is specifically designed to prevent this from happening. --Dave Barry (1947- ) American humorist. _Dave Barry in Cyberspace_ [1996] Silicon Valley is the Florence of the late 20th century. --Francis Fukuyama (1952- ) American historian. In "Independent" [19 June 1999]. - Everything that I've learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles: Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, he can make it work. Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't. PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't. --Philip Greenspun (1963- ) American computer scientist. - The 88% rise in Microsoft stock in 1996 meant [Bill Gates] made on paper more than $10.9 billion, or about $30 million a day. That makes him the world's richest person, by far. But he's more than that. He has become the Edison and Ford of our age. A technologist turned entrepreneur, he embodies the digital era. --Walter Isaacson (1952- ) American journalist and author. "In Search of the Real Bill Gates" "Time" [13 January 1997] One reaction to the growing presence of cyberspace is to see it as a threat to the traditional human value of social, face to face exchange. Glued to the screen, chained to the keyboard, alone at the workstation, the addicted hacker is the very picture of a lone individual enslaved by the machine. Yet this is a false appearance. Note the feverish pace of the hands typing. Nothing to be alarmed about, for it is the eagerness to communicate and the desire to be heard by another that activate those fingers. The fact is that when we use computers we are having an exchange with other humans, through the machine, not with the machine. --Leon James, "Computer-mediated Communication" ^ At the end of the Nineties, an internal IBM paper recounted a long-forgotten article published in the summer of 1945 during the closing weeks of World War II. In it, Vannevar Bush Bush described a theoretical machine he called the Memex, never built, that could extend human memory by mechanically organizing information and making it readily accessible through a web of associations. A Memex, he explained to readers of the Atlantic Monthly in July 1945, "is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility." Through it, people would be able to store, retrieve, consult, and learn from the information it contained and from the cumulative record of human success and failure to that point in history. By providing people greater access to the bewildering store of knowledge that science was accumulating, the Memex would allow mankind to profit from the inherited knowledge of the ages. Looking ahead, Bush envisioned machines capable of compressing a library of a million volumes into a box placed on the end of a desk before the person operating it from a keyboard. A "slanting translucent screen" extending from the machine would display information the user wanted. "The world," he noted that July of 1945, "has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it." In recalling Bush's Memex more than half a century later, IBM said his article describing it "turned out to be of those time-bomb essays - a piece so far ahead of its time that it takes decades to recognize its genius. For the Memex in essence is a personal computer, and more than that it is a personal computer in which information is bound together by links of association. Every time a Web user fires up her browser and navigates from site to site, following threads of relationship as she roams, she is, in effect, continuing a journey that began with Vannevar Bush more than half a century ago." Vannevar Bush's prototype of the personal computer introduced into the American, and world, market thirty-six years after his article has become an innovation so familiar that grandparents - and great-grandparents! - use it to communicate with their families, conduct personal business, and access a variety of information daily. They do so without a clue as to who Vannevar Bush was or the great debt they owe him and other Technotimes pioneers. --Haynes Johnson (1931- ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] ^ Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing. --Wendy Kaminer, _Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials_ The PC is the LSD of the '90s. --Timothy Leary (1920-1996) American psychologist. _Guardian_ [1 June 1996] {Remark made in early 1990s.} The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. --Edward R. Murrow [Egbert Roscoe Murrow] (1908-1965) American broadcaster and journalist. Upon receiving the "Family of Man" Award in 1964. - We were frustrated with computers a decade ago, we are frustrated with them now, and will continue to be frustrated in the future. As long as technology offers enticing new products and services, we will continue to live on the edge of intolerable frustration. If the level of frustration is not going to decrease, is there any point in developing new technologies, and in paying any attention to ease of use? There certainly is. We will still be frustrated, but at a higher level of functionality, and there will be more of us willing to be frustrated. --Andrew Odlyzko, "The visible problems of the invisible computer: A skeptical look at information appliances", revised [7 Sep 1999] - Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person. --Sherry Turkle (1948- ) American clinical psychologist. _The Second Self_ [1984], Chapter 9 - Two men were examinig the output of the new computer in their department. Eventually one of them remarked: "Do you realize it would take 400 men 250 years to make a mistake this big?" --Far Side cartoon The computer is down. I hope it's down with something serious. --anon. - A HISTORY OF SILICON VALLEY: http://www.businessweek.com/1997/34/internal.htm - Q. How many Microsoft tech-support people does it take to change a light-bulb? A. Please continue to hold. Your call is very important to us. - Trying to Remember New Passwords Isn't As Easy as ABC123 Codes in Flux Have Employees Jotting, Not Memorizing; Long Lists on a Post-It By Scott Thurm and Mylene Mangalindan The Wall Street Journal December 9, 2004 Before she begins work each morning, Kate Prior must enter eight computer passwords. Each must contain at least eight characters, and most require letters and numbers. Every three months, she must change them all. How does the 28-year-old monitor of drug trials remember her passwords? Easy: They're written on a blue Post-It note affixed to her computer. [. . . ] Petri Darby, a 31-year-old marketing manager for a Houston law firm, used sticky notes for a while. When his stack of eight notes became unwieldy, Mr. Darby transferred the 25 or 30 passwords he needs for work tasks and to access various Web sites to a small piece of paper he kept in his wallet. But the password list kept growing and the paper became unreadable. "It's driving me absolutely batty," Mr. Darby says. "I'm thinking that tattoos are the way to go." [. . . ] The thought drives some computer users up the wall. "Who has a brain to remember all these?" asks Alex Ramsey, chief executive of LodeStar Universal, a 10-person management-consulting firm in Dallas. Ms. Ramsey stashes her roughly 75 passwords in a computer file, named "Password." As a back-up, she printed out a copy that she hides under her keyboard. --- The tech support problem dates back to long before the industrial revolution, when primitive tribesmen beat out a rhythm on drums to communicate: This fire help. Me Groog Me Lorto. Help. Fire not work. You have flint and stone? Ugh You hit them together? Ugh What happen? Fire not work (sigh) Make spark? No spark, no fire, me confused. Fire work yesterday. (sigh) You change rock? I change nothing You sure? Me make one change. Stone hot so me soak in stream so stone not burn Lorto hand. Small change, shouldn't keep Lorto from make fire. Grabs club and goes to Lorto's cave. *WHAM*WHAM*WHAM*WHAM* --- This e-mail has been printed on paper treated with a deadly Chinese poison - using herbs so deadly that it will do you no good to wash your hands. As soon as you opened this e-mail you became infected. Unless you take the special antidote, you will die a horrible and lingering death within five hours. Said antidote will be e-mailed to you upon my receiving $50,000 in wired funds. Hurry! --- CD-ROM = computer device, rendered obsolete in months . . see: "BRAGGING" see: "SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESSS" see: "SNOBS" see "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for other related links Nature has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making. --Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, and dramatist. The smaller the mind the greater the conceit. --Aesop (c.620 B.C.-c.560 B.C.) (thought to be a legendary figure) Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him. --Bible Proverbs 26:12 The certain way to be cheated is to fancy one's self more cunning than others. --Pierre Charron (1541-1603) French moralist. Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength. --C.C. Colton (1780-1832) English clergyman and writer. Man believes himself always greater than he is, and is esteemed less than he is worth. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself. --Fulke Greville (1554-1628) English philosophical poet. General Peckem liked listening to himself talk, liked most of all listening to himself talk about himself. --Joseph Heller (1923-1999) American novelist. _Catch-22_ [1961], Chapter 29 Talk about conceit as much as you like, it is to human character what salt is to the ocean; it keeps it sweet and renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the natural unguent of the seafowl's plumage, which enables him to shed the rain that falls on him and the wave in which he dips. When one has had all his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American physician, poet, and essayist. The more any one speaks of himself, the less he likes to hear another talked of. --Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) Swiss writer, Protestant pastor, and founder of physiognomics. An eagerness and zeal for dispute on every subject, and with every one, shows great self-sufficiency, that never-failing sign of great self-ignorance. --William Pitt, the Elder, also called (from 1766) 1st Earl of Chatham (1708-1778) British statesman, twice virtual prime minister [1756-1761, 1766-1768]. Don't let your head get too big, it'll break your neck. --Elvis Presley (1935-1977) American singer. We go and fancy that everybody is thinking of us. But he is not; he is like us--he is thinking of himself. --Charles Reade (1814-1884) English novelist and playwright. I would have been bored silly if I hadn't been there myself. --George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Quoted in _San Francisco Chronicle_ [10 June 1993] I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious. --Walt Whitman (1819-1892) American poet. _Leaves of Grass_ [1855-1892] "Song of Myself" ----- coxcomb KOKS-kohm, noun: A vain, showy fellow; a conceited, silly man, fond of display; a superficial pretender to knowledge or accomplishments; a dandy; a fop. . . see "KINDNESS" for related links It is a general error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare. --Edmund Burke (1729—1797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. _Observation on a late Publication on the Present State of the Nation_ [2nd ed. 1769] A lament in one ear, maybe; but always a song in the other. And to me life is simply an invitation to live. --Sean O'Casey (1880—1964) Irish dramatist and memorist. In David A. Wilson _Ireland, a Bicycle, and a Tin Whistle_, p. 1 [1995]. ;void(0)) CONDUCT . . see "CIVILITY" for related links Our characters are a result of our conduct. --Aristotle (384—322 B.C.) Greek philosopher. It is like sport to a fool to do wrong, but wise conduct is pleasure to a man of understanding. --Bible "Proverbs" 10:23 RSV Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct. --Thomas Carlyle (1795—1881) Scottish historian and political philosopher. A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity. --Jimmy Carter (1924— ) American Democratic statesman, President [1977-1981]. Speech in New York City [14 October 1976]. But a perverse temper and fretful disposition make any state of life unhappy. [Latin: Importunitas autem, et inhumanitas omni aetati molesta est.] --Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BC) Roman orator and statesman. _De senectute_ [45—44 BC] I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances. --Confucius (551—479 B.C.) K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher. A refined simplicity is the characteristic of all high bred deportment, in every country. --James Fenimore Cooper (1789—1851) American novelist. _The American Democrat_ [1838] - He is not well-bred, that cannot bear Ill-Breeding in others. --Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. _Poor Richard's Almanack_ [1748] Act uprightly, and despise Calumny; Dirt may stick to a Mud Wall, but not to polish'd Marble. --Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. _Poor Richard's Almanack_ [1757] - Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly. --Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826) American statesman and president [1801—1809]. In a letter to Peter Carr [19 August 1785]. We give advice, but we do not inspire conduct. --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) French classical author. _Maxims_ [1665] #403 Whoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times. --Niccolò Machiavelli (1469—1527) Florentine statesman and political philosopher. _The Discourses_ [1517] The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil in someone else. The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. --John Stuart Mill (1806—1873) English philosopher and social reformer. _On Liberty_ [1859], ch. 1 If you are a man who leads, a man who controls the affairs of many, then seek the most perfect way of performing your responsibility so that your conduct will be blameless. --Ptahhotpe 24th century B.C. philosopher. In _The Teachings of Ptahhotep: The Oldest Book in the World_ Asa G. Hilliard III, Larry Williams & Nia Damali, eds. [1987]. No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people. --William Howard Taft (1857—1930) 27th President of the United States [1909—1913] and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [1921—1930]. Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. --George Washington (1732—1799) American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution [1775—1783] and first president of the United States [1789—1797]. In _Maxims of Washington_ [1942]. ----- dissolute [DIS-uh-loot], adjective: Loose in morals and conduct; marked by indulgence in sensual pleasures or vices. opprobrium (noun) [ê-'pro-bri-êm] Disgrace or reproach brought on by extremely shameful conduct. punctilious (adj.) [pêngk-'ti-lee-ês] Strict about or attentive to details of proper conduct and conventional matters. This word is similar to meticulous, but the two are not interchangeable. Meticulous means careful and precise about details. Punctilious" adds the dimension of being careful and precise about the details of conventional conduct. . . see "MUSIC" for related links see "WORK" for related links Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands - and all you can do is scratch it. --Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) English conductor, to a lady cellist during a rehearsal from DR. MARDY'S QUOTES OF THE WEEK - April 24 - 30, 2005: On April 29, 1879, Thomas Beecham was born into a wealthy family (of "Beecham's Pills" fame) in St. Helens, Lancashire, England. After attending Oxford, Beecham went on to become one of the most influential conductors of the 20th century, using his personal fortune to help establish a number of famous orchestras, including the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic. In the 1930s, while serving as artistic director of London's Covent Garden Opera, Beecham was taking the orchestra through a dress rehearsal for a full-scale production of "Aida." Originally composed by Verdi for the opening of Cairo's new opera house in 1871, "Aida" is one of the most lavish operas of all time, calling for horses and, if they are available, even elephants. When a horse was brought on stage for the rehearsal, it immediately began to do what stage managers and directors fear an animal will do in such a situation. Thomas, who was noted as much for his great wit as his musical abilities, found the whole episode quite amusing. He stopped the orchestra and observed to the players: "You see, gentleman, not only a great performer, but a critic, too!" more about Beecham: His rounded, dignified figure bounces and cavorts like that of an exciting [sic] racing fan whose horse is winning by a nose. He will lunge like a fender, crouch as if he expected to bring his oboist down with a flying tackle, and when signalling the brass for a powerful entrance he will go through the motions of a baseball pitcher. Frequently in his excitement he lets slip his baton. Sometimes he even falls off the podium. 'Podiums,' he once remarked loftily after such a mishap, 'are expressly designed as part of a conspiracy to get rid of conductors.' Once, at a Carnegie Hall concert, he reached such a peak of artistic exuberance that he broke his suspenders and had to leave the stage clutching his trousers. --Winthrop Sargent, _Life_ magazine If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong. --Simon Rattle (1955- ) English conductor, in "Guardian" [31 May 1990] end page | CALAMITIES - CALM | CALUMNY - CAMPAIGN FINANCING | CAMPAIGNS & CANADA | CANCER - CAN'T WIN | CAPITALISM | CAREFREE - CARPE DIEM | CARTER (JIMMY) - CATS & DOGS | CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES - CENSORSHIP | CERTAINTY - CHANGE | CHANGING (ONE'S MIND) & CHANGING TIMES | CHARACTER | CHARACTER ASSASINATION - CHEERFULNESS | CHEER UP! - CHILDHOOD | CHILDREN | CHILDREN'S RHYME | CHILE & CHINA | CHOCOLATE - CHRISTIANITY | CHRISTMAS | CHURCH - CIGARS | CIRCUMSTANCES & CITIES | CIVILITY - CIVIL RIGHTS | CLARITY - CLICHES | CLOTHES - COFFEE | COLD - COLORS | COMEDY | COMFORT - COMMON SENSE | COMMUNICATION | COMMUNISM | COMPANIONSHIP - COMPASSION | COMPETITION - COMPLIMENTS | COMPOSERS - CONDUCTORS | CONFESSION - CONQUEST | CONSCIENCE - CONTENTED | CONTEXT - CONVENTIONAL WISDOM | CONVERSATION | CONVICTION & COOKING | COOLIDGE - CORPORATIONS | CORRECTING - COURAGE | COURT - COWS | CREATIVITY - CRIME | CRIME & PUNISHMENT - CROOKS | CRITICISM & CRITICS | CROWD (THE) - CUBA | CULTURE - CYNICS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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