andrewvs

The Enemy of Truth

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistant, persuasive and unrealistic.
John F. Kennedy (1917-63)

Science & Poetry

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

What They Don't Teach at Harvard Business School

Six years ago, Republican Jack McMullen suffered a humiliating U.S. Senate primary defeat at the hands of Tunbridge dairy farmer Fred Tuttle, who managed to portray the high-tech management consultant as a wealthy carpetbagger from Massachusetts.

Tuttle (and O'Brien, of course) provided one of the most dramatic moments in all of Vermont's political history during a Vermont Public Radio debate.

"Now Jack," Fred Tuttle asked, "How many teats on a milk cow?"

Jack McMullin, hazarded an answer. "Six," he said.

"No Jack. There's only four teats on a cow."

Vermonters doubled over with laughter and that pretty much decided the primary.

Note: McMullin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University with a degree in applied physics and electronics engineering, was a Navy lieutenant working on the Navy's top-secret nuclear program as a member of Admiral Hyman Rickover's staff and he holds both business and law degrees from Harvard.

Easy Solutions

There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken, 1917

Rejection Letter::Saving Face

This rejection was sent to an author of a paper submitted to a Chinese economics journal:

We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity.

When There's Too Much To Do

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
Mark Twain

Weight Loss Programs & Educational Programs

Substitute the word "education" everywhere you see the words "weight loss" or "weight reducing."

According to a leading weight loss researcher from the University of Pennsylvania:

"There is not one single commercial weight loss program that makes available any data on its results or even wants to know what they are...It isn't happenstance that there's not a single bit of scientific evidence that they are effective. The studies are actively opposed by the weight reducing industry."

Ornish, D. (1993). Eat more, weigh less (p. 4). HarperCollins Publishers: New York.

You can read the quote in the context of the chapter here, and the original quote can be found here:
(1986, June 25). Diets don't work, Obesity experts are told. The Washington Post, Health section, p. 10.

Reorganization Quote

This is one of my favorite quotes because it's so true. And notice the date.

We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
Petronius Arbiter, 210 BC

Nullius in Verba

I know that most [people], including those most at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
Leo Tolstoy

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents...What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.
Max Planck