Jim Medding’s Blog

Andrew Tanenbaum is reported to have said:

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

Here’s a tongue-in-cheek quote from Raymond Chen:

Bloggers are just idiots with a web site.

So far, I’ve read two books which were truly disturbing – Sheriff David Reichert’s Chasing the Devil and James Bradley’s Flyboys. I mention this to provide context for the following quote from Bradley’s book:

Few people reflect now that samurai swords killed more people during WWII than atomic bombs. WWII veteran Paul Fussell wrote, “The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war.”

Senator Joe MacCarthy is reported to have said, about George Marshall, “If Marshall was merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve America’s interest.” I bring this quote up, not because I agree with the statement, but because I find it an interesting assertion concerning incompetency. The assertion is that an incompetent decision maker is not likely to “never get it right” where as a destructive decision maker is.

In Henry Petroski’s The Evolution of Useful Things, he defines, I think quite eloquently, the process of product evolution:

The evolution of form begins with the perception of failure, but is propagated through the language of comparatives. ‘Lighter,” “thinner,” “cheaper” are comparative assertions of improvement, and the possibility of attaching such claims to a new product directly influences the evolution of its form. Competition is by its very nature a struggle for superiority, and thus superlatives claims of “lightest,” “thinnest,” “cheapest” often become the ultimate goals. But, as with all design problems, when there is more than a single goal, the goals more often than not are incomparable. Thus the lightest and thinnest crystal can be expected also to be the most expensive. But limits on the form of artifacts are also defined by failure, for too light and too thin a piece of crystal might hardly be usable.

I plucked the following quote from John Keegan’s A History of Warfare. John had the good fortune when early in his career as a military historian he obtained a post at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. While at Sandhurst he had the opportunity to observe the officers of the British army up close. John’s conclusion as to what motivated these men -

Officers, of course, hankered for advancement , but it was not the value by which they measured themselves. A general might be admired, or he might not. Admiration derived from from something other than his badges of superior rank. It came from the reputation he held as a man among other men and that reputation had been build over many years under the eyes of his regimental tribe. That tribe was one not only of fellow officers but of sergeants and ordinary soldiers as well. ‘Not good with the soldiers’ was an ultimate condemnation. An officer might be clever, competent, hard-working. If his fellow soldiers reserved doubt about him, none of these qualities countervailed. He was not one of the tribe.

Here’s a joke from A Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book that’s too true to be funny:

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

In the Internet driven, post 9-11 world, I was struck by the universality of this quote of Richard Feynman from a public address given at the 1955 autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.

Communications between nations must promote understanding - so went another dream. But the machines of communication can be manipulated. What is communicated can be truth or lie. Communications is a strong force, but also for either good or evil.

Some time ago I got a fortune cookie which changed my life. I no longer have the need to read any more fortune cookies.