Daily Random Thoughts

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-18951112-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[randomdailythoughts]

Coin magic after running - bound by the spell?

[randomdailythoughts]

card magic - colour change finesse

[randomdailythoughts]

If it gobbles like a turkey and tastes like a turkey, it seems a reasonable assumption that it is a turkey

The Daily Telegraph on the Kasparov vs Short match

[randomdailythoughts]

I read the prescription. It ran:         1 lb beefsteak, with         1 pt bitter beer                         every 6 hours.         1 ten-mile walk every morning.         1 bed at 11 sharp every night.     And don't stuff your head with things you don't understand. I followed the directions, with the happy result - speaking myself - that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

Three men in a boat. Jerome K. Jerome.

[randomdailythoughts]

After their demise, artists are at the mercy of history. The ones who survive are the ones who are malleable, who can ride the shifting tides of ideology, ideals, theory, fashion, catastrophe, and shibboleth that constitute the zeitgeist.

"Too Bizarre, Mozart!", Jan Sawfford, The Guardian 4/6/2014, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/jun/04/classicalmusicandopera

[randomdailythoughts]

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Luwdig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung) (1922)

[randomdailythoughts]

For thus is that fear restrains all men, because they observe many things effected on the earth and in heaven, and therefore think that they are wrought by a divine power. For which reasons, when we shall have clearly seen that nothing can be produced from nothing [nil posse creari de nihilo] , we shall then have a more accurate perception of that of which we are in search, and shall understand whence each individual thing is generated, and how things are done without the agency of the gods.

Lucretious. De rerum natura / On the nature of things.

[randomdailythoughts]

Class is an anachronism. It finished in 1914. Nothing remains but a vast proletariat, including kings, aristocrats, squires, millionaires and working people, men and women alike. And them a few individuals who have not been proletarianised.

D.H. Lawrence. The second lady Chatterley’s lover.

[randomdailythoughts]

- "What it comes to, is that they are another race, the plebs, and they've got to be ruled and we've got to be content to rulr them, however much we dislike it." "I hope you think you'll be able to do it," she said. "I known I can do it! - And give me a child, and I'll train him up to do it too." "Even if it's not your child?" "What difference does make? It doesn't matter who begot you. What matters is, who brought you up!"

D.H. Lawrence. The Second Lady Chatterley's Lover.

[randomdailythoughts]

It is useless to talk of the future of our society. Our society is insane. Its most normal activities, money-getting and love, are a special form of mania. And for tge maniac there is no future. None, either, for a maniacsl society. Insanity can only be cured by death. The devil is the arch-alienist.

D.H.Lawrence. The second Lady Chatterley's Lover.

[randomdailythoughts]

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 1542). Lyrical English poet who introduced the sonnet into English literature and presumably had an affair with Anne Boleyn. The poem's references to hunting seem to be directed to a woman.

[randomdailythoughts]

John Cage's 4'33" is a piano composition that calls for four minutes and thirty-three seconds of total silence as the player sits frozen on the piano stool. The duration of the silence is 273 seconds. This corresponds, Cage has explained, to -273 degrees centigrade, or absolute zero, the temperature at which all mo- lecular motion quietly stops. I have not heard 4'33'' performed, but friends who have tell me it is Cage's finest composition.

Martin Gardner (1914-2010), Mathematical Magic Show (1977)

[randomdailythoughts]

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Ecce Homo (1908), section 10:[3]

[psych-facts]

You have to learn the rules of the game and then you have to play better than any one else. -Albert Einstein

(via psych-facts)

[randomdailythoughts]

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,  Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

[randomdailythoughts]

Engraving by Lucas Jennis, in De Lapide Philosophic depicting the Ouroboros or 'tail devourer', one of the oldest mystical symbols in the world. It represents the concept of eternity

[magicianscorner]

Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur (The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived)

A phrase coined by Petronius, a Roman satirist from the first century AD and used by professor Hoffmann in Modern Magic (via magicianscorner)