30/06/10

Completely forgot the attribution.  Sorry.

Lost time is never found again.
Benjamin Franklin

29/06/10

The Frog Prince -- Walter Crane

You can observe a lot by just watching.

-Yogi Berra

28/06/10

Sunset in rural southern China, uncredited from a travel website

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

-Pearl S. Buck

27/06/10

View of Mt. Fuji by Hiroshige

The sweetest of all sounds is praise.
-Xenophon

26/06/10

Letter from the Front by Alexander Laktionov

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de Tocqueville

25/06/10

Antoni Gaudi sun mosaic, Park Güell, Barcelona

photo by Brian Hewitt

Great acts are made up of small deeds.

Lao Tzu

24/06/10

Uncredited, from Uppsala University's Nationellt resurscentrum för biologi och bioteknik website.

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Don Marquis

23/06/10

Sunset from the International Space Station

NASA photo of the day

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which 

the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

-Thomas Hardy

22/06/10

Stoat or Ermine (Mustela erminea), youngs playing in Aran valley, Pyrenees, Spain by Oriol Alamany

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.

-René Descartes

21/06/10

The Arch by Henry O. Tanner

 Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

20/06/10

Happy Father's Day!

It doesn't matter who my father was; 

it matters who I remember he was.

-Anne Sexton  

19/06/10

Lightning, South Africa

Mitchell Krog

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

-Nelson Mandela 

18/06/10

Microbe vs. Mineral - A Life and Death Struggle in the Desert
Credit: Michael P. Zach, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

Æsop

17/06/10

Doubts are more cruel that the worst of truths.

-Moliere

16/06/10

Rape field in Skåne by Frederik Ekblad

http://ystaddailyphoto.blogspot.com 

I have an unfortunate personality.
Orson Welles

15/06/10

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Tom Stoppard (1937 - )

14/06/10

The Red Rectangle Nebula

NASA's photo of the day

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

13/06/10

Rather than revert to the "on this day" format, I thought I'd try this out.  I'll do an image of the day and a quote of the day -- not related, unless by serendipity.  I can go back to the old format if people prefer.  Today's image is a Hong Kong night scene from National Geographic.

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. 

Bernard Berenson (1865 - 1959)

12/06/2010 - a typical UT reunion ;-)

469 comments - what an epic UT day, harsh words, misunderstandings, baseless insults, great tunes, new faces, old faces, what more could you need?


"So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information."

If its good enough for Georgey...


England game today, too, I know Duke's ordered himself a Rooney shirt and a couple of St George's flags for the car.

"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God save the King than of stealing from a poor box."

11/06/2010

That photo, thats you old folk reeling in shock at the new colour scheme, thats what that is. I was considering volunteering to help out at those "silver surfer" courses teaching old people to use the net but I think I've got my hands full with you lot ;)

I changed it back, then few said "no i like it, easier to read", then others said "harder to read, dont like it". But this is the UT after all so to be expected...

Anyway, perhaps we give it till Monday, so we get a bit used to it, and can make an informed choice. I prefer it because its less obvious when boss walks by, the white that is, and the old colour scheme felt a bit drab to me at times. But we'll have it for a couple of days and then have a vote maybe.


Madison and the financial crisis:

"In fact, our current crisis and power structure were summed up with stunning accuracy by the Founding Fathers themselves. What James Madison called, “the daring depravity of the times.” As he described, “The stock-jobbers will become the praetorian band of the government, at once its tools and its tyrants, bribed by its largesse, and overawing it by clamors and combinations. Substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty, leading to a real domination of the few under an apparent domination of the many.”



Leave it to Madison, the Father of the Constitution, to give us one of the most prescient quotes on modern-day America you can find. For those of you who have never heard the term “stock-jobbers,” here’s the definition from a dictionary written in 1811:

“Stock Jobbers -

Persons who gamble in Exchange Alley, by pretending to buy and sell the public funds, but in reality only betting that they will be at a certain price, at a particular time; possessing neither the stock pretended to be sold, nor money sufficient to make good the payments for which they contract: these gentlemen are known under the different appellations of bulls, bears, and lame ducks.”

10/06/2010

Only joking, no more number puzzles today... Though it is mildly amusing...

Anyway, I thought we'd start today with a quote from an unlikely source. I like this, it has an amusing cynicism...

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good
of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live
under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may
at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end for they do so with the approval
of their own conscience."

09/06/2010

Ok, i couldnt resist another puzzle because this is an interesting one in a lot of ways (no more puzzles tomorrow I promise):

You are on a game show and there are three doors. The presenter tells you that behind one of doors there is a car and behind the other two are goats. If you pick the car you win it. After you have picked a door the presenter opens a different door with a goat behind it, he then gives you the chance to change what door you open. What should you do? Stick with your door, or change?



I remember this puzzle from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, about the boy with aspergers. In case anyone isnt familiar with it, i wont say what the answer is. But in the book, apparently this question was put to some Indian woman with an absurdly high IQ, she may have been a professor or something, i cant remember. Anyway, she got the answer right.

But because its quite an unintuitive answer, she received shedloads of angry emails, some from other professors I believe, saying she was talking bollocks and they couldnt believe she'd made such an error.

So do you stick with your door, or change?

08/06/2010

You've got 27 coin, each of them is 10 g, except for 1. The 1 different coin is 9 g or 11 g (heavier, or lighter by 1 g). You should use balance scale that compares what's in the two pans. You can get the answer by just comparing groups of coins.
What is the minimum number weighings that can always guarantee to determine the different coin?

07/06/10

Some musical dates

1959 - Buddy Holly killed in air crash
1963 - The Rolling Stones' first record, "Come On," was released
1968 -Musical Hair opens in UK as censors withdraw
1969 - Blind Faith made its British debut with a free concert at London's Hyde Park.
1969- Woodstock music festival ends
1970: Rock legend Hendrix dies after party
1980: John Lennon shot dead
1971: Doors' singer Jim Morrison found dead
1977: EMI fires Sex Pistols
1985: Live Aid makes millions for Africa
1994: Rock musician Kurt Cobain 'shoots himself'

God its all DEATHS!

Born today (not all musicians!)
Beau Brummel 1778 - Paul Gauguin) 1848 - Dean Martin 1917 Virginia McKenna 1931 - Tom Jones 1940 - Liam Neeson 1952 - Prince 1958 -

6/4/2010

Lots of things happened on this day and lots of people were born or died, some of the famous. I've gone for this...

05/06/2010

Today is the Great Get-together in Sheffield.

04/06/2010

Henry III became Holy Roman Emperor in 1039. Sir Walter Raleigh established the first English colony on Roanoke Island in 1584. Suffragette Emily Davison was killed by the king's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby. The Battle of Midway began in 1942.

Birthdays: King George III (1738); Geoffrey Palmer (1927); Dr Ruth Westheimer (1928); John Barrymore (1932); Michelle Phillips (1944); Val McDermid (1955); Cecilia Bartoli (1966); Angelina Jolie (1975).

It is Independence Day in Tonga.

03/06/2010

Biden: ...Well, we had made it clear, the President of the United States has spoken three times, yesterday with Bibi, or the day before yesterday, he's spoken once yesterday with a guy that I have spent a fair amount of time with, with Prime Minister Erdogan in Turkey; the Turks, we passed a resolution in the UN saying we need a transparent and open investigation of what happened. It looks like things are...

Rose: International investigation?

Biden: Well, an investigation run by the Israelis,

02/06/2010

Last year was talked about expenses scandal, Patricia Hewitt's dubious commcercial links, Hazel Blears and the etiquette of the C word.

I also posted the most banal comment in history, in response to Montana's intro blurb.

"I used to have Freddy Adu in my champ man team".

So in honour of banality and its historic roots on the UT, contrary to recent claims, here's the man himself: Freddy Adu.

01/06/2010