Quote of the Day

From the all powerful Tamara:

“Beware that, when hating on assholes, you yourself do not become an asshole... for when you shitpoast long into the abyss, the abyss shitpoasts also into you.”

This message brought to you by Nietzsche Cheese Doritos, food for thought.

Quote of the Day

Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day - @Merman_Melville

Via Victoria Scott via Tam

Quote of the Day

Richard Taylor

“In the Sermon on the Mount, the Divine Moralist instructed his hearers to forgive those who had injured them; but He knew too well the malice of the human heart to expect them to forgive those whom they had injured.” - Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War (1879).

Via JMSmith

 

Strange Ways

Stolen entire from The Orthosphere:

The Labyrinth of Strange Ways by JMSmith

“All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1878)

“For as health is but one thing, and has been always the same; whereas diseases are by thousands, besides new and daily additions: so all the virtues that have been ever in mankind, are to be counted upon a few fingers; but his follies and vices are innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap.”

Jonathan Swift, Tale of a Tub (1704)

The word wayward is a cropped version of the word awayward, and it may mean either strong-willed or disposed to act contrary to the way that is right.  As an accusation, the charge of waywardness may therefore be sinister or sincere.  A sinister accusation comes from overbearing and bossy accuser; a sincere accusation warns not to stray into the labyrinth of strange ways.

We all know that the world is full of meddlesome nags and scolds who are outraged and angered by anyone who deviates from their way.  We also know that there are dangerous ways that take men on a one-way trek into the labyrinth of strange ways.

It should be noted that Tolstoy’s famous line speaks of the “resemblance” that happy families have to one another.  He does not say they are identical or exactly alike.  Like happy individuals, they have the will to insist on their right to express their own natures and be themselves; but they also have the wisdom not to plunge through the gate of the labyrinth of strange ways.

I cannot distill that wisdom into a rule because wisdom is the knack for choosing rightly when there are no rules.  Wisdom laughs at those meddlesome nags and scolds but it does not laugh at the labyrinth of strange ways.

Swift tells us that health is simple and disease complex.  Likewise virtue and vice.  Virtuous men are not identical, but neither do they exude the off-putting odor of waywardness that we indicate with words such as odd, weird, peculiar and strange.  When we say a man is peculiar, we do not simply mean that he has the courage defy the herd and be himself.  We mean that there are strong and disquieting indications that he is a pervert trapped in the labyrinth of strange ways.

There is a profound difference between a free spirit and a man who is just plain weird.

Copybook Headings

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer circa 1498

Borepatch mentions The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling. You have certainly heard of this poem (if not you can follow the link), but just what were these horrible copybook headings that promised terror and death? After some Googling I finally found some on Badger & Blade.

Angels are guardian spirits.
Better to live well than long.
Criticise your own writing.
Doing nothing is doing ill.
Exercise strengthens the body.
Freedom is a precious boon.
Gaming has ruined many.
Hold truth in great esteem.
Industry increases wealth.
Kind words can never die.
Let your promises be sincere.
Modesty always charms.
Nature is imitated by art.
Opinion misleads many.
Quit not certainty for hope.
Reputation is not character.
Time present is our only lot.
Virtue commands respect.
Wisdom is better than riches.
Youth should listen to age.

Quote of the Day

"When you meet Jesus, be sure to call him Mr. Christ." - Ned Flanders (from The Simpsons)

Via Joe Sherlock

Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design

Spacecraft

Stolen entire from Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design

1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.
2. To design a spacecraft right takes an infinite amount of effort. This is why it's a good idea to design them to operate when some things are wrong .
3. Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time.
4. Your best design efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with the disappointment.
5. (Miller's Law) Three points determine a curve.
6. (Mar's Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.
7. At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader is least likely to be capable of it.
8. In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.
9. Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.
10. When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.
11. Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything out and start over.
12. There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though.
13. Design is based on requirements. There's no justification for designing something one bit "better" than the requirements dictate.
14. (Edison's Law) "Better" is the enemy of "good".
15. (Shea's Law) The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces. This is also the prime location for screwing it up.
16. The previous people who did a similar analysis did not have a direct pipeline to the wisdom of the ages. There is therefore no reason to believe their analysis over yours. There is especially no reason to present their analysis as yours.
17. The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the likelihood of its being correct.
18. Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. Too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile design, though.
19. The odds are greatly against you being immensely smarter than everyone else in the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity is twice the speed of light, you may have invented warp drive, but the chances are a lot better that you've screwed up.
20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.
21. (Larrabee's Law) Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which.
22. When in doubt, document. (Documentation requirements will reach a maximum shortly after the termination of a program.)
23. The schedule you develop will seem like a complete work of fiction up until the time your customer fires you for not meeting it.
24. It's called a "Work Breakdown Structure" because the Work remaining will grow until you have a Breakdown, unless you enforce some Structure on it.
25. (Bowden's Law) Following a testing failure, it's always possible to refine the analysis to show that you really had negative margins all along.
26. (Montemerlo's Law) Don't do nuthin' dumb.
27. (Varsi's Law) Schedules only move in one direction.
28. (Ranger's Law) There ain't no such thing as a free launch.
29. (von Tiesenhausen's Law of Program Management) To get an accurate estimate of final program requirements, multiply the initial time estimates by pi, and slide the decimal point on the cost estimates one place to the right.
30. (von Tiesenhausen's Law of Engineering Design) If you want to have a maximum effect on the design of a new engineering system, learn to draw. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like the initial artist's concept.
31. (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.
32. (Atkin's Law of Demonstrations) When the hardware is working perfectly, the really important visitors don't show up.
33. (Patton's Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.
34. (Roosevelt's Law of Task Planning) Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.
35. (de Saint-Exupery's Law of Design) A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
36. Any run-of-the-mill engineer can design something which is elegant. A good engineer designs systems to be efficient. A great engineer designs them to be effective.
37. (Henshaw's Law) One key to success in a mission is establishing clear lines of blame.
38. Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.
39. Any exploration program which "just happens" to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program.
40. (alternate formulation) The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule: 
1. No new launch vehicles. 
2. No new launch vehicles.
3. Whatever you do, don't develop any new launch vehicles.
41. (McBryan's Law) You can't make it better until you make it work.
42. There's never enough time to do it right, but somehow, there's always enough time to do it over.
43. Space is a completely unforgiving environment. If you screw up the engineering, somebody dies (and there's no partial credit because most of the analysis was right...)

 #40 is my favorite. #20 might be the most useful.
Via Detroit Steve.

Buffalo Theory

In one episode of "Cheers", Cliff is seated at the bar describing the Buffalo Theory to his buddy, Norm. I don't think I've ever heard the concept explained any better than this.

"Well you see, Norm, it's like this . . A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the heard is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.

And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers."

Stolen in its' entirety from Marty North & Greenfield Park.

Update January 2017 replaced missing picture.