Quotation of the Moment: Pi Day (#2)

"Frustra laborant quotquot se calculationibus futigant pro inventione quadraturae circuli."

"Futile is the labor of those who fatigue themselves with calculations to square the circle."

--Michael Stifel (1544)

People who attempt to "square the circle" are trying to prove that the perimeter of a square is equivalent to the circumference of a circle.  Their proofs usually generate rational values of pi.
Hat tip: History of Pi by Petr Beckmann 

 

 

 

Quotation of the Moment: Known & Unknown

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."


--Donald Rumsfeld

Quotation of the Moment: Annoying Software Note

While dealing with a sample robot for DSC that dropped a pan, the controlling software gave me this note, following a string of comments that told me the autosampler was having a problem--

"Warning: unknown warning"

That sounds ominous.

Quotation of the Moment

"Ask the material how it deforms, because the only the material knows."

Joachim Meissner, as noted in the latest Rheology Bulletin.

Quotation of the Moment: Evaluation Time

At ConAgra, we are approaching the end of the fiscal year, which means performance reviews.  As I was working on mine today, I thought of this rant from Dr. Cox in the TV show Scrubs--

I wanted you to think about yourself...And I mean really think! What are you good at? What do you suck at? And write it down. Not so I could read it, or anyone else could read it. But so you could read it! You see in the end, Newbie, you don't have to answer to me, or to Kelso, or even to your patients, for God's sake! The only one you have to answer to Newbie, is you! There, you are evaluated. Now get out of here, because you truly make me so damn mad I might just hurt myself!

 (Season 1: My Fifteen Minutes)

Quotation of the Moment: Dr. Jones Lectures

"Quicksand is a mixture of sand, mud, and water, and depending on the viscosity, it's not as dangerous as people sometimes think."
--Dr. Henry Jones Jr., in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

(Video can be seen here, in a Slate presentation on quicksand.)

Quotation of the Moment: Flowing Like a River

And so, like water, we flow. Or, let's try to imagine ourselves flowing. We may not realize it when we're in the flow, but take a look at these pictures from St. Petersburg. Russian photographer Alexey Titarenko sees city crowds as a stream of hands, heads and coats rushing along stairs and streets, in and out of buildings...rushing like water...
--Robert Krulwich, reflecting on the photographs of Titarenko

I have to admit, when I saw the pictures, I thought of the smoke monster from Lost.

Quotation of the Moment: Rock'n'Roll Fantasy

"He thought it was very funny to talk about his drummer complaining that the caviar in their dressing room was the wrong viscosity - for throwing."

Pete Townshend, in the liner notes for the album White City: A Novel

Quotation of the Moment: Pi Day

"The sea was then cast; it was made with a circular rim, and measured ten cubits across, five in height, and thirty in circumference"

I Kings 7:23

This refers to a large circular tank at the Temple of Solomon that held about 12,000 gallons of water.

Hat tip: History of Pi by Petr Beckmann

Quotations of the Moment: Bad Examples Edition

"If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning."
--Catherine Aird

"A man who swings a cat by a tail will learn something he can learn in no other way."
--Mark Twain

Quotation of the Moment: Corporate Culture

This anecdote, by Robert Townsend (1920-1998), shows how one person can have an effect on corporate culture.  It comes from his book Up the Organization.

When I became head of Avis [in 1962--EFB] I was assured that no one at headquarters was any good, and that my first job was to start recruiting a whole new team. Three years later, Hal Geneen, the President of ITT (which had just acquired Avis), after meeting everybody and listening to them in action for a day, said, “I’ve never seen such depth of management; why I’ve already spotted three chief executive officers!” You guessed it. Same people. I’d brought in only two new people, a lawyer and an accountant.

Quotation of the Moment

A mere elementary knowledge of any natural science is a proposition from which reason starts; it is a foundation on which thought builds, and a height from which imagination takes its flight. It is an education in all other knowledge, because it demands attention, observation and accuracy with well-defined expression.

Helen Harlin Walworth Science 1880, 1, pp 198–199.

Hat tip: Sharon Neufeldt at icanhasscience.com

Quotations of the Moment: Better Off Ted

I just finished working my way through Better Off Ted, a short-lived sitcom that ran for two years on ABC.  Both seasons are available on Netflix.  The show centers around Ted, a the head of Research and Development at Veridian Dynamics, a do-everything company that is an amalgam of GE and Kraft Foods.  The show is a great business satire that avoids the Dilbert trap of smart engineers working for stupid bosses.  Everyone on the show is smart and good as his or her job.  My favorite episodes out of the first 13 are the ones on affirmative action "Racial Sensitivity" and the project everyone wants to work on "Jabberwocky".  The scientists on the show work on everything.  Here are the materials-related lines I was able to pull from the first season.  (Veronica is a VP, and Phil and Lem are the main scientists.)

Veronica: We want to make a metal that is hard as steel but bounces like rubber...and is edible.

Phil: The plastic [in a solar-powered oven] we're using leaches toxins into food.
Lem: However, the toxins are only released when the ovens are exposed to sunlight.
Phil: Which is the only time solar ovens work.

Phil: You were right.  That polymer could burst into flames on high impact.
Lem: You owe me a smoothie.

After the jump, one of the fake Veridian Dynamics commercials.

Quotation of the Moment

"Last week, in between leading a graduate seminar on Proust and delivering a long-scheduled lecture on mass spectrometry, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin ventured a few ticks beyond her acknowledged area of expertise and reflected on monetary policy at a convention in Phoenix."  Noam Schieber, The New Republic

 I look at those phrases and wish I could write like that.  Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish

Quotation of the Moment

"Hey, got any gum?"

Norm McDonald's impression of David Letterman (seen on Saturday Night Live in the '90's).

Quotation of the Moment

"Tanquem ex ungue leonem"

"As the lion is known by its claw"

Jean Bernoulli I, after Newton anonymously solved a difficult math problem in one afternoon.

Quotation of the Moment

"Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

Brian O'Driscoll, Irish rugby player

(Thanks to Eric Zorn's blog Change of Subject for the tip)

Quotation of the Moment

"Lisa, in this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

Homer Simpson, after Lisa builds a perpetual motion machine
(Episode: The PTA Disbands)

Quotation of the Moment: Romy & Michele

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the Post-It note, I present this quotation.

"No. Um, well, ordinarily when you make glue first you need to thermoset your resin and then after it cools you have to mix in an epoxide, which is really just a fancy-schmancy name for any simple oxygenated adhesive, right? And then I thought maybe, just maybe, you could raise the viscosity by adding a complex glucose derivative during the emulsification process and it turns out I was right."

From Romy and Michele's High School Reunion

According to IMDb, this is one of five movies that uses the word viscosity in the screenplay.  The book ReAction!: Chemistry in the Movies by Griep and Mikasen says this movie covers the chemistry of sticky notes.

Quotation of the Moment

"The great tragedy of science--the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."

Thomas Henry Huxley