Friday Musings 02/09/2007

By lex, on February 9th, 2007

Got home early today – class ended at about 1100. A guest lecture by Stanford engineering professor Sam Savage. Used to teach OR, wrote one of the best textbooks I’ve ever read on analytical decision making as well as writing some pretty cool software plugins for Excel that allow it to do things Bill Gates had never thought of. Brilliant man and witty too. The two do not always go hand in hand. It’s funny to watch two PhDs interact on screen, especially those who have immersed themselves in the more technical fields, where the answer is either right or it is wrong, and there are no extra credit points for linguistic presentation.

I realized that I have spent the last 18 months of my life pursuing a master’s degree whose chief purpose was to inform me how very much I have to learn.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex