Brian's Notebook

Month

March 2010

4 posts

“An expert is someone who starts knowing something about some things, goes on to know more and more about less and less, and ends up knowing everything about nothing. Whereas a philosopher is someone who starts out knowing something about some things, goes on to know less and less about more and more, and ends up knowing nothing about everything.” —Niels Bohr’s “favorite definition of a philosopher,” quoting Abraham Pais
Mar 26, 2010
“Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done…” —Solitude and Leadership
Mar 17, 2010
“

It isn’t that people don’t have time to go to the polls, it’s that they (er, I mean “we”) aren’t spending the time to be informed enough to prefer one candidate over the rest. … By not showing up, people are essentially “voting” to defer to that 40% of people who vote. That is an informed-enough decision based on past experience that that has turned out ok.

As for online voting, I think that notion is probably far too simplistic. Taking the same old practice of voting and simply putting it online isn’t going to be any more successful than putting the same old newspapers online.

”
—My comment last week at Cool Blog Name to Come | Blogs | London Free Press
Mar 15, 2010
“Perhaps it is as absurd to talk about progress in literature as it is to talk about progress in electricity—both are natural resources awaiting different forms of activation.” —James Wood
Mar 12, 2010
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