MarkItUp

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)

Source: Quote Details: Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nothing great was ever... - The Quotations Page

Source: YouTube - Pink Floyd - The Great Gig in the Sky (1988)

Source: YouTube - Green Day - Brain Stew/Jaded

In my known universe everything sits on a plane - and there are many planes. Some planes are close together and some are far apart; some are thick and some are thin; some are wide and long while others are short and narrow; others still intersect. Most importantly some planes can be grouped together to form larger entites. When planes are grouped together they form a hierarchy and within that hierarchy each plane contains the knowledge that is required to understand the plane and also information regarding the plane(s) that it is preceded by.

You can traverse planes by locating gates but, as a general rule you cannot simply open the gates - although you can get through that way - but you must climb, or transcend them.

I can still remember my first plane traversal, it was only 3 years ago but it stands as a significant achievement. At that moment I stood in a new place amid rare air and could survey all planes that I had travelled to arrive there. Looking back through them gave me a view that, until that moment I had never seen.

I am reminded of some words that belong to someone that I believe has been to that place:

"My comprehension of things at this level of abstraction usually only lasts for a few hours (at best) but at least it's fun once in a while to climb up to the mountaintop and breathe the fresh air!"

Where am I now? Why transcending new planes of course!

Source: ShowUsYour : Death by Abstraction

There are times when only a Mother's love
Can understand our tears,
Can soothe our disappointments
And calm all of our fears.

There are times when only a Mother's love
Can share the joy we feel
When something we have dreamed about
Quite suddenly is real.

There are times when only a Mother's faith
Can help us on life's way
And inspire in us the confidence
We need from day to day.

For a Mother's heart and a Mother's faith
And a Mother's steadfast love
Were fashioned by the Angels
And sent from God above.

- Michael Olakunle Adesanya

"...An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced..."

A lengthy excerpt of Francisco's money speech:

"Francisco's Money Speech" by Ayn Rand -- Capitalism Magazine

What Hank said to Dagny after they sleep together for the first time:

What I feel for you is contempt. But it's nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don't love you. I've never loved anyone. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I wanted you as one wants a whore - for the same reason and purpose. I spent two years damning myself, because I thought you were above a desire of this kind.  You're not.  You're as vile an animal as I am.  I should loathe my discovering it.  I don't.  Yesterday, I would have killed anyone who'd tell me that you were capable of doing what I've had you do.  Today, I would give myu life not to let it be otherwise.  Not to have you be anything but the bitch you are.  All the greatness that I saw in you - I would not take it in exchange for the obscenity of your talent at an animal's sensation of pleasure.  We were two great beings, you and I, proud of our strength, weren't we?  Well this is all that's left of us - and I want no self-deception about it.

p236.

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along the unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Till ringing, singing on its way

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head

“There is no peace on earth,” I said,

“For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Historical Note: This hymn was written during the American civil war, as reflected by the sense of despair in the next to last stanza of the current, common presentation (above). The original stanzas 5 and 6 (below) speak of the battle, and are usually omit­ted from hymnals:

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound the carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn, the households born

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Heard_the_Bells_on_Christmas_Day"

Donald Rumsfield is an intruiging character and one that I would not for a moment presume to pass judgement on - I'll be interested to see how history remembers him though. 

Whether you love him or hate him you have to love the energy that he displays and just how animated the guy is.  My favourite Donald Rumsfield quote can easily be applied to the estimation process for software development:

"There are things that we know we know.  There are known unknowns... things that we now know we don't know.  But there are also unknown unknowns.  There are things we don't know we don't know."

Rumsfield got a caning from the media when he uttered that truth - and you'll get a caning from any customer that you try it on too.  It appears that sometimes people just hate to hear the truth

And here comes your cake!
Cooked by Snookers and Snookers,
The official Katroo Happy Birthday Cake Cookers.
And Snookers and Snookers, I'm happy to say,
Are the only cake cookers who cook cakes today
Made of guaranteed, certified, strictly Grade-A
Peppermint cucumber sausage-paste butter!
And the world's finest cake slicers, Dutter and Dutter
And Dutter and Dutter with hatchets a-flutter,
High up on the poop-deck, stand ready to cut her

Today you are you!  That is truer than true!
There is no one alive who is you-er than you!
Shout loud "I am lucky to be what I am!
Thank goodness I'm not just a clam or a ham!
Or a dusty old jar of sour gooseberry jam!
I am what I am!  That's a great thing to be!
If I say so myself, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!"

I found the remainder of Dr. Seuss's "Happy Birthday to YOU" here.

The classic poem by Lewis Carroll:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

My all-time favorite Robert Frost poem:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
 
Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim, 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as for that the passing there 
Had worn them really about the same,
 
And both that morning equally lay 
In leaves no step had trodden black. 
Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 
I doubted if I should ever come back.
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh 
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference.

The unbelievable thinking of the US Government to want to build a massive fence along the US/Mexico border, reminded me of a poem by Robert Frost:

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say '.Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as a Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the Captain of my soul.

- Willian Ernest Henley (1875)

Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work.
- Gallagher