Miles's blog

Sometimes when I can’t think of what to blog about, or if I can but I think it is stuff you might not want to read, I turn to my favorite web surfing tool, stumbleupon.  It turns up all kinds of fascinating websites.  For example, I just watched a fascinating video where physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson explained why we probably are not alone in the universe and his curiosity about whether some species exists which is as much smart than us as we are from chimpanzees.  Apparently our DNA and chimp DNA are about 99 percent similar.  My question is more along the lines of if homo sapiens evolved the extra one percent from whatever came before (because I don’t believe we are evolved from chimps but both of us from a common ancestor) why would there not be a further evolution into the species Tyson wonders about?  Of course evolution takes a long time so we will never know.

When I use stumbleupon it often takes me to sites with the kind of positive messages that people put up in their workspace which allows them to dream of going somewhere else and doing something else while they toil away at a job they hate which allows them to make just enough money to be reasonably comfortable but not enough to actually allow them to do all the things they dream about.  Here are some of my favorite sayings:

“It is better to fail at something you love than succeed at something you hate.”  ­­-- George Burns.  (This clearly is written by someone who tried what he loved first and succeeded.  I would like to run this comment by actors who ended up working as waiters all their lives.)

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”  (I suppose they are driving at trying to write a best seller, climb Mt. Everest, or find a cure for cancer, but I can’t help but think about Bernie Madoff.)

“Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and think what could go right.”  (The exact thought process of millions of people who got in trouble failing to plan for what went wrong.)

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray.”  -- Rumi.  (Rumi?  Who the hell is Rumi?  ((Apparently a 13^th century Persian poet.))  This sounds great except I am drawn by the strange pull of a remote controlled, large-screen television.  Hard to believe I won’t go astray focusing on that.)

“Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.”  -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  (Quotes like that must be why nobody reads this guy.)

“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”  -- George Washington Carver  (Yeah, but it is not my fault, I have a lot of problems.)

“Ships in harbor are safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”  -- John Shedd.  (I think this quote was displayed on the Titanic.)

“Never, never, never give up.”  -- Winston Churchill. (Good thing the Germans and the Japanese did not listen to his advice.)

“Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.”  -- Maori proverb. (You also get a wicked sunburn.)

“Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.”  -- Albert Einstein  (True, but even more true is that mediocre minds seem to belong to the most vocal and most popular people.)

“Nothing is impossible.  The word itself says ‘I’m possible.”  -- Audrey Hepburn.  (I like Audrey’s movies, but really, can anything be more trite?  Audrey was a  movie star at 23, so wonder she thought nothing was impossible.  How about this, Audrey:  “Failure is inevitable.  The word itself says “Fail you are.”?)

“The best way out is always through.”  -- Robert Frost. (Of course, they had not discovered black holes when he lived.)

“The glow of one warm thought to me is worth more than money.”  -- Thomas Jefferson.  (He lived on an estate, in debt, and owned dozens of slaves.  Maybe a few too many warm thoughts.)

“Think with your whole body.”  -- Taisen Deshimaru (I don’t know who this is, but it sounds like good advice.  I have to stop now, writing this blog has made my appendix hurt.)