Copyright Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved. Powered by Blogger.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

April 2016 Quotations (55)

"What is needed is more, more, and always more consciousness, both in art and in life."
~~ Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962]

“The true journey implies a complete change of nutrition, a digesting of the visited country – its fauna and flora and its culture (not only the different culinary practices and condiments but the different implements used to grind the flour or stir the pot).”
~~ Italo Calvino [1923-85]

"I believe that every writer needs a guide, because writing is an exploration and the exploration is not only for me, it's for the reader."
~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya

"Books are the mirror in which we see ourselves."
~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
~~ photographer Dorothea Lange [1895-1965]

"It's true that nothing is certain except death and taxes. Sometimes I wish that they came in that order."
~~ TV comedian Sam Levenson [1911-80]

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf."
~~ American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"The way taxes are, you might as well marry for love."
~~ comedian Joe E. Lewis [1902-71]

"I wouldn't mind paying taxes . . . if I knew [that] they were going to a friendly country."
~~ comedian-activist Dick Gregory

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
~~ philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky

"Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care that can be inflicted on sick or well."
~~ Florence Nightingale [1820-1910]

"Money, like vodka, turns a man into an eccentric."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]

"Power worship blurs political judgment. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"Human beings can get used to virtually anything, given plenty of time and no choice in the matter whatsoever."
~~ British novelist Tom Holt

"After a time, all losses are the same. One more thing lost is one thing less to lose; and we go stripped at last the way [that] we came."
~~ poet Catherine Breese Davis [1924-2002]

"The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably."
~~ novelist Julian Barnes

"Music is God's little reminder that there's something besides us in the universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars."
~~ comedian-actor Robin Williams [1951-2014]

"There are always people who think [that] they have a hilarious height joke [that] you haven't heard before."
~~ basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

"The value of things is not the time [that] they last, but the intensity with which they occur."
~~ Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]

"A character is defined by the kinds of challenges [that] he cannot walk away from. And by those [that] he has walked away from that cause him remorse."
~~ Arthur Miller [1915-2005]

"Life is like a suitcase, you can squeeze a lot in."
~~ Yoko Ono

"Sometimes your best investments are the ones [that] you don't make."
~~ Donald J. Trump

"Who discovered [that] we could get milk from cows, and what did he think that he was doing at the time?"
~~ Scottish comedian Billy Connelly

"Poor is the man whose pleasure depends on the permission of another."
~~ singer Madonna

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

“Life must go on / I forget just why.”
~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]

"Democracy has never been and can never be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
~~ Pres. John Adams [1735-1826]

"The most dangerous world view is the world view of those who have not viewed the world."
~~ naturalist Alexander von Humboldt [1769-1859]

"Most critics are educated beyond their intelligence."
~~ critic Kenneth Tynan

"Storytelling is the best way [that] we have of coming up with new ideas."
~~ Richard Branson

“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.”
~~ Jenny Han, in "The Summer I Turned Pretty", 2009

“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
~~ Henry James [1843-1916] , quoted in Edith Wharton's "A Backward Glance", 1934

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], in "The Great Gatsby", 1925

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60], in "The Stranger", 1942

"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
~~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical [world]."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"Maybe stories are just data with a soul."
~~ author Brené Brown

"The longest way is the most efficient way."
~~ American poet John Ashbery

"When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don't get to decide that you didn't."
~~ comedian Louie C.K.

"Reality is hard. It's no walk in the park, this thing called life."
~~ actress Patty Duke [1946-2016]

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"Create a concept, and reality leaves the room."
~~ philosopher José Ortega y Gassett [1883-1955]

"Artists are the elite of the servant class."
~~ painter Jasper Johns

"Everyone is so obsessed with themselves nowadays that they have no time for me."
~~ author Louise Rennison [1951-2016]

"[The German] educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past. But looking forward, things are barely discernible."
~~ astrophysicist Hermann Oberth [1894-1989]

"Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegatating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Evil is unspectacular and always human."
~~ W.H. Auden [1907-1973]

"Marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years, you don't need a husband."
~~ Helen Gurley Brown [1922-2012]

"As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]

"There is only one thing certain. That is one's own inadequacy. One must start from that."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]

"Joy, it must be remembered, is nothing like happiness, its milquetoast cousin. It is instead a vivid and extreme state of being, often arrived at in the aftermath of great pain."
~~ novelist Ayana Mathis

"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Methane Factoids

By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.

Trace gases together traditionally compose about 0.038% of the atmosphere (or 0.043% with CO2 at the increased 2014 concentration).
0.0400% carbon dioxide / CO2
0.001818% neon/Ne
0.000524% helium/He
0.00018% methane/CH4 - the main component of natural gas
0.000114% krypton/Kr
0.000055% hydrogen/H2

The Earth's atmospheric methane concentration has increased by about 150% since 1750, from approximately 0.00007.2% by volume. The current rapid methane increase that is already started from melting of ocean-bottom methane crystals could begin killing forest biomass and food crops in as little as five or ten years.
Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved