Speaker for the Diodes

5:24AM - QotD

"[...] when Steele says, 'I think that's an important opportunity for us' in reference to reaching out to the gay and pro-choice crowd, he steps in it anyway. How? By calling these groups 'opportunities' to freshen and rehab their brand, not as groups of humans to include, help and/or serve. He might as well have just come out and said, 'These people can help our image'... the very same people they used to use as fodder guaranteed to incite their pitchfork and torch carriers." -- ExGrifter, 2009-02-01

5:24AM - QotD

"So it turns out the real danger of dressing androgynously is the possibility of your kid growing up to get elected president of the U.S. four times in a row." -- J.F. Sargent, 2012-04-24, "5 Gender Stereotypes That Used To Be the Exact Opposite", Cracked.com

5:24AM - QotD

"The way we vote is not some abstract thing about you like our hair color or our shoe size - it is a moral decision, part of the way that we choose to treat the people around us. And that's the only real important choice we ever get to make. We deserve to be judged for it. So when we make choices that hurt people, then they are not obligated to be polite to us, or to pretend that we are better than what we are. We make our choices, and if the consequences are heavy, we pick them up and we carry them our fucking selves." -- snarp, 2011-03-18

5:24AM - QotD

"To make one me you just add
 Half of mom and half of dad
 That is what I once believed
 But I know now that I was wrong
 I got so much more from you mom
 Than just half a set of genes
 I got nutrients and transcription factors
 and nearly everything that matters
 plus my prenatal environment (transplacental inheritance)
 mRNA, mitochondria,
 That back in the day once belonged to ya (theyre cytoplasmic)
 and I just want to thank for supplying them
[...]"
    -- Adam Cole, "A Biologist's Mother's Day Song", ( YouTube, CD Baby)

(a) Thanks to drglam for linking to this earlier (uh, about two years earlier), and (b) Go listen to the whole thing. Especially if you're even the tiniest bit of a science geek (which I think covers the majority of my friends).

5:24AM - QotD

"To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose" -- infographic pioneer, first female member of the Royal Statistical Society, author, and administrator, Florence Nightingale (b. 1820-05-12, d. 1910-08-13) ... who also had some impact on the profession of nursing.

4:48PM - Reminder: HCB @ Green Man Festival on Sunday

A quick reminder: The Homespun Ceilidh Band will be performing on Mothers Day -- this Sunday, 2012-05-13 -- at the Green Man Festival in Greenbelt, MD. We're hoping that a bunch of the drummers at the festival will hang around for the end of our set. (We're the last act scheduled for the day. So make sure you come early so you can see the rest of the festival first.)

Bring your mother! If you're a mother, bring your kids!

5:24AM - QotD

"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it." -- Richard P. Feynman (b. 1918-04-11, d. 1988-02-15)

5:24AM - QotD

"All models are wrong, but some models are useful." -- George Box [ thanks to tdj for pointing it out]

5:24AM - QotD

"When an archer misses the mark he turns and looks for the fault within himself. Failure to hit the bull's eye is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim improve yourself." -- Gilbert Arland

[To anyone celebrating Lag BaOmer tonight/tomorrow, have a good holiday!]

5:24AM - QotD

"If you ever find yourself raising log(anything)^e or taking the pi-th root of anything, set down the marker and back away from the whiteboard; something has gone horribly wrong." -- Randall Munroe, xkcd, 2012-04-25

5:24AM - QotD

"The problem with those who choose received Authority over fact and logic is how they choose which part of Authority to obey. The Bible famously contradicts itself at many points (I have never understood why any Christian would choose the Old Testament over the New), and the Koran can be read as a wonderfully compassionate and humanistic document. Which suggests that the problem of fundamentalism lies not with authority, but with ourselves." -- Molly Ivins (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)

5:24AM - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-05-03:

"I will boldly announce that it is my considered opinion that the human race is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams. These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter." -- Noel Coward, in a 1936 letter. Quoted in The Letters of Noel Coward, edited by Barry Day.

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

5:24AM - QotD

"Household tasks are easier and quicker when they are done by somebody else." -- James Thorpe [thanks to blueeowyn]

3:22PM - Ceilidh Band and Kitties

First, lest I forget to mention it here: The Homespun Ceilidh Band ( @HomespunCeilidh, Facebook) will be performing on Mothers Day -- 2012-05-13 (Sunday of next weekend, not this weekend) at the Green Man Festival in Greenbelt, MD. We're the last act scheduled for that day, at 5:00 PM, so come much earlier than that and enjoy the rest of the festival before our set. (I know some of you are familiar with KIVA -- they're playing earlier in the day.)

The other thing I wanted to share was a pair of related photos -- of two different cats, taken thirteen years apart, joined across the years by a guitar in common. (I dug out the second and scanned it after a comment elsewhere in response to the first reminded me of it.)

5:24AM - QotD

"How many gay parents tell their kids that they'll kill them if they ever come out as fundie Xians?" -- Didactylos, 2012-03-26 [thanks to realinterrobang for quoting it earlier]

(The recent 'sermon' by that rabid preacher reminded me of this quote.)

5:24AM - QotD

"They believe that the rich are rich because they 'worked hard' -- harder than everyone else. Well, if that were true, our cleaning lady would be rolling in dough." -- MaikeH, 2012-04-25

5:24AM - QotD

"I used to enjoy vicious book reviews a lot more before I wrote a book." -- Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes), 2012-04-25

5:24AM - QotD

[To my many friends wo celebrate it, happy Beltane!]

"Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day." -- Eric Chase, "The Brief Origins of May Day"

"Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began." -- ibid.

5:24AM - QotD

"There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science." -- German mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss (b. 1777-04-30, d. 1855-02-23)

5:24AM - QotD

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2012-04-23:

"In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner. This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician and corporate leader: the future, eventually, will find you out. The future, wielding unimaginable tools of transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you will be seen to have done that which you did." -- William Gibson, in The Road to Oceania, The New York Times, 25 June 2003. Reprinted in Gibson's 2012 essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor.

(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)