for a recent birthday

a period of time

a few minutes long
fifty eight years wide.
 
-- Tomas Transtromer ["the sad gondola"]

recently found pieces of wisdom

"The clock is ticking. Life is fleeting. If you don’t feel alive now, when will you?" -- guy tal

"forget the big picture. look at everything close-up." -- jethro gibbs [ncis]

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- leonard nimoy

"escapism isn't good or bad in itself. what is important is what you are escaping from and where you are escaping to." -- terry pratchett 

"History tends to change people who think they're changing it." -- terry pratchett

“The first time, I usually skim off the outer layer and end up with photographs that are fairly obvious. The second time, I have to look a little deeper. The images get more interesting. The third time it is even more challenging and on each subsequent occasion, the images should get stronger, but it takes more effort to get them.” – Michael Kenna

Q: How many Sad Puppies does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 100, one to change the bulb and 99 to say, “Gosh, I hope this makes Scalzi’s head explode!” -- john scalzi

"above all, never lose your enthusiasm." -- ernst haas

"if history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an unsufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us." -- sam harris ["the end of faith"]

"you know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious." -- daniel kahneman

"I'm not dangerous; I just understand the basics of value." -- eren yigit [quipped during a munchkin game]

"frozen margaritas cut through space and time." -- the katering show

"dad, what part of you said "i must watch "pitch perfect""?" -- eren yigit [critiquing my desperate netflix choices - tomatometer says 81% which is twice the netflix average]

"a picture may be worth a thousand words, but the order of the words matters when constructing meaning." -- dean kessman ["ninety nine pictures"]

"Visualization - the ability to see in the "mind's eye" a finished image before making an exposure (or other technical choices) is very different from vision. Vision is the passive seeing of light reflected off objects; visualization is projecting, consciously and deliberately, the light of our thoughts and feelings onto objects. Vision is about what there is; visualization is about what could be. Vision happens; visualization makes happen. Vision is about what things are; visualization is about what things mean." -- guy tal

"Your sensei didn't hold anything back, you just couldn't hear it. So it's no wonder when you go back to visit you hear brand new stuff." --kim taylor [mjer iaido, renshi, 7th dan]

"The one and only sole purpose of today's confederacy is to bring the plantation lords... I mean oligarchs... back to their rightful place atop the 6000 year feudal hierarchy." -- david brin

The whole vaccine mess, in the United States and abroad, is a story of allowing anecdotes to trump statistical reasoning."  -- chris mooney

"Everyone likes to pretend that he or she is more rational, more responsible, and more immune to the risks that gun ownership poses relative to the average American. Yet, we know from gun violence statistics that many are simply misjudging their own competency. Everyone thinks he or she is above average, but half are mistaken." -- evan defilippis and devin hughes [slate]

"It’s hard enough for gondolas to negotiate the inner canals of Venice, let alone a sub the size of an ocean liner, but no problem; The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen either knows absolutely nothing about Venice, or (more likely) trusts that its audience does not." -- roger ebert [review of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"] 

"It is not always necessary to take a scissor to a country’s social fabric — as the Front National so consistently does in France — to rip it. Pulling at it one loose thread at a time can achieve the same result." -- Chantal Hébert