#ect

Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives. ↗

— William A. Dembski

#biology #id #intelligent-design #optimisation #optimization

As the connections have been broken by the fragmentation and isolation of work, they can be restored by restoring the wholeness of work. There is work that is isolating, harsh, destructive, specialized or trivialized into meaninglessness. And there is work that is restorative, convivial, dignified and dignifying, and pleasing. Good work is not just the maintenance of connections - as one is now said to work "for a living" or "to support a family" - but the enactment of connections. It is living, and a way of living; it is not support for a family in the sense of an exterior brace or prop, but is one of the forms and acts of love. (pg. 133, The Body and the Earth) ↗

— Wendell Berry

#living #love #wholeness #work #art

A hundred francs! Oh, dear me! It is worth millions of francs, my child. But my -- dealer -- here tells me that in fact a picture is worth only what someone will give for it. How much money do you have?" Julia took out her purse and counted. "Four francs and twenty sous," she said, looking up at him sadly. "Is that all the money you have in the world?" She nodded. "Then four francs and twenty sous it is. ↗

— Iain Pears

#money #perception #subjectivity #value #art

I'd rather be called a boy and play with paper airplanes than be called a man and play with a girl's heart. ↗

— Niall Horan

#niall-horan #one-direction #play

I knew you'd kiss me." "How?" I say. Because I didn't know myself. "Because I am in pain," He say's. "That's the only way I get your attention. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#suffering #games

If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law. ↗

— Lysander Spooner

#authorize #government #judge #jury #justice

Law and custom are becoming the subjects of a new field of learning. The anarch endeavors to judge them ethnographically, historically, and also – I will probably come back to this – morally. The State will be generally satisfied with him; it will scarcely notice him In this respect he bears a certain resemblance to the criminal – say, the master spy – whose gifts are concealed behind a run-of-the-mill occupation. ↗

— Ernst Jünger

#ernst-jünger #society #respect

He just waited until I stopped talking and said, 'Jesus, kid, you're almost a detective. All you need now is a gun, a gut, and three ex-wives. So what's your theory? ↗

— John Green

#police #sarcasm #guns

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. ↗

— William Faulkner

#memory #recollection #belief

Hope drowned in shadows emerges fiercely splendid–– boldly angelic. ↗

— Aberjhani

#angels #courage #faith #haiku #haikus