Forbidden Planet

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway. - Kent M. Kieth I also found this version, which, personally, I liked better: People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-...

to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived -- this is to have succeeded." - attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson

the chief guardian instructed. Vandara's voice was firm and bitter. "The girl should have been taken to the Field when she was born and still nameless. It is the way." "Go on," the chief guardian said. "She was imperfect. And fatherless as well. She should not have been kept." But I was strong. And my eyes were bright. My mother told me. She wouldn't let me go Kira shifted her weight, resting her twisted leg, remembering the story of her birth, and wondering if she would have an opportunity to tell it here. I gripped her thumb so tightly. "We have all tolerated her presence for these years," Vandara went on. "But she has not contributed. She cannot dig or plant or weed, or even tend the domestic beasts the way other girls her age do. She drags that dead leg around like a useless burden. She is slow, and she eats a lot." The council of guardians was listening carefully. Kira's face felt warm with embarrassment. It was true, ...

Yes. This is why movie stars, fashion models, politicians and pop singers have such dreadful personality and relationship problems - their souls have been severely depleted by all the photographs which have been taken of them. - from a very good Canon EOS Beginner's FAQ . Especially good is the section on lenses. I think the FAQ is general enough that any beginner with an SLR camera would benefit from reading it.

I think I have mice in the house. I'd found two dead mice in the basement last September, but saw nothing to indicate there might be any others, despite paying extra attention to it. Last Tuesday morning, when most Christian people are sleeping, I heard some scratching / scrabbling noise behind me as I lay in bed. (I sleep in a windowless room in the basement because it is nice and dark and quiet - my kids, who are with me in Ottawa over the summer, sleep upstairs in one of the bedrooms.) Later that morning I heard some scrabbling noise as I went into the laundry room. Wednesday night I heard quite a bit more scrabbling noise and even something that sounded like purring or growling. That was enough to send me upstairs to sleep. Last night, it sound like they were running in the ceiling above me - except the basement ceiling is unfinished, so it must have been a trick of sound reflection. Anyway, I decided it was better to sleep upstairs and so I dragged the mattress upstairs. Tonig...

Roswell is famous (or infamous) for the supposed crashing of a UFO there back in 1947 , from which there was apparently at least one alien recovered. The description of the "alien" has given rise to the familiar grey alien . I don't believe in aliens and UFOs any longer - I did when I was younger, but that is many decades behind (well, if 2 decades counts as many) - but there are better, more probable and less convoluted ways of explaining and understanding things. My take on it: (1) the crashed object was not a UFO, (2) it was a military test object, possible a style of plane or perhaps something along the lines of a balloon of connected to a balloon, (3) there was no alien recovered, (4) if a living being was recovered, it was human and very likely suffering from the genetic disease known as Progeria - characterized by accelerated aging, with death occurring in the early teens. Why would I come to this conclusion? Because people suffering from progeria look an awful lo...

it is many short races one after the other.” - Walter Elliot (1842-1928) Good advice for me. I have a tendency to look too far out and see that the final goal is seemingly unattainable. On the other hand, I have to work on reasonable short term goals. I find it easy to set trivial short term goals, unfortunately, achieving them doesn't satisfy; it is the difference between busy work and meaningful work. Also, I have a tendency to try to do too much, instead of just enough. For example, I might decide to reorganize my chemistry books (despite my best Hell paving intentions, my books have a tendency toward chaos), but I will end up trying to reorganize everything - possibly even catalogue them. Consequently, nothing gets done. Need to focus on just reorganizing what needs to be done and forget about the rest. Today's thought (no promise of thoughts tomorrow).

May and June saw a great upsurge in people searching for this SPAM . Normally, it makes up about half the search hits. During those months I saw it go up as high 85% of search hits. At the snapshot I have taken, it was making up 72% of search hits. I have highlighted in YELLOW two search hits that made me wonder what people are really looking for.

I don't know how many of you read the fine print when you sign up for things .. erm ... I generally don't. I used to, but always found them to be draconian terms of enslavement that that basically said they have all the power and rights and you have none, forever, in perpetuity. Recently I decided to read the Google terms of service , after all, I use Google to blog (Blogger is owned by Google), I have a gmail account, I have considered using their online office applications to store documents - leaving storage and backup to them (I reckon they are likely to be better at it than I am). Section 11 starts off promising enough: 11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. I own the rights to all the content (intellectual property) I post, store or transmit (e-mail) using Google services and tools. Then it goes downhill: By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a per...

for one simple reason: the pros hire really good-looking models... . They're models because they photograph really, really well. So, what makes our job so hard is that we are not surrounded by fabulous-looking models who just happen to be standing around not eating. Nope, we usually wind up shooting portraits of our friends, many of whom (on a looks scale) fall somewhere between Mr. Bean and Jabba the Hut. This is why our job, as portrait photographers, is actually substantially more challenging than that of a seasoned professional - we've got to make magic from some seriously un-model-like people. This is precisely why we're often so disappointed with our portraits (when its really not our fault)." - Scott Kelby, The Digital Photography Book: Volume 2 [Updated 02-July-2008 @ 10:26: added link to author's site selling the book (no, I don't get a commission)]

"Would someone go to Wimbeldon to play one match? Become a heart surgeon just to do one open-heart surgery and then go back to his regular life? Would someone go to law school to try just one case in court? Or go through all the trouble of opening a coffee shop to stay open for one day?" - Heather Sellers, Chapter after Chapter My response is "Yes! I would" , it is who I am. Some days, I feel I really need to be more passionate about one thing, rather than interested in many things. You can read a sample chapter (chapter 7) here . It is a pdf, so you might want to right click and download it first (for Windows users, I have no idea how a Mac user would do it). Loved the second and third paragraph on the second page. [Updated 02-July-2008 @ 10:27: provided link to author's site selling the book (no, I don't get any commission). Also added paragraph and link pointing to sample chapter pdf].