Letter Q
Why wouldn't an enhanced deterrent, a more stable peace, a better prospect to denying the ones who enter conflict in the first place to have a reduction of offensive systems and an introduction to defensive capability. I believe this is the route the country will go.
This man, who was for a while one heart-beat away from power, found himself "explaining" the need for so-called "Star Wars" weapon systems during the 1988 presidential campaign. Incredible, if you recall that piece of acceptable IBM jargon.
When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism, or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, 'Man, that doesn't do us any good, women in politics, or women in general, trying to progress this country.
I thought I should be even-handed in picking on US VPs and VP candidates. Ms Palin was commenting on Hilary Clinton's complaint about sexism in media coverage.
...and it is at this scale [the "Planck length"] that we might expect to see some effects of quantum gravity. However, before embarking on a "do-it-yourself" kitchen sink experiment, the prudent reader should note that the sizes of an atom and nucleus are approximately 10-10m and 10-15m, respectively. So we are contemplating a distance that is twenty orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of a proton; not perhaps the easiest regime to explore, even with the aid of the implements in a modern kitchen....
In "Quantum Gravity". One of the essays in "The New Physics" [1989] edited by Paul Davies.
I used this quotation, and the horrendous (from a typesetting point of view) equation:
that accompanies it, under the not very original heading "What goes up, must come down...." to illustrate a Ron Cobb cartoon that shows a Valley Sky Diver falling upwards and looking somewhat bemused.
Did you spot the editorial "we" above? Read on...
Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial "we".
Barring sociology (which is yet, of course, scarcely a science at all, but rather a monkeyshine which happens to pay, like play-acting or theology), psychology is the youngest of the sciences, and hence chiefly guesswork, empiricism, hocus-pocus, poppycock. On the one hand, there are still enormous gaps in its data, so that the determination of its simplest principles remains difficult, not to say impossible; and, on the other hand, the very hollowness and nebulosity of it, particularly around its edges, encourages a horde of quacks to invade it, sophisticate it and make nonsense of it.
In "The Genealogy of Etiquette".
So it struck me as entirely fitting to offset the hard science with the, then certainly, softer science
as distilled through HL Mencken's astringent filter.
At least one mortician has promoted himself to the estate and dignity of a mortuary consultant, and another has become a funeral counsellor, but so far I have heard of none who calls himself a mortuary, obituary, or obsequial engineer. No doubt it will come.
Mr Mencken left few stones unturned.