Jim Medding’s Blog

This amusing quote can be found in Ann Coulter’s How to talk to a liberal (if you must):

The basic idea of a free market is that the consumer and the seller enter directly into mutually beneficial transactions. The consumer has the best information about what he wants and how much he is willing to pay; the seller has the best information about what he can provide and what it will cost him. That’s how we end up with great products like reasonably priced Chia pets in the shape of Jerry Garcia’s head.

Be willing to be defined by your contribution, not your title.

Lonnie Mays, Freescale (EE Times 9/19/05)

This 1956 quote by Dr Henry Kissinger from Reflections on American Diplomacy I find interesting after hearing talk about the need coalitions.

Either the alliances add little to our effective strength or they do not reflect a common purpose, or both…. We have to face the fact that only the United States is strong enough domestically and economically to assume worldwide responsibilities and that the attempt to obtain the prior approval by all our allies of our every step will lead not to common action but inaction…. We must reserve the right to act alone, or with a regional group of powers, if our strategic interest so dictates.

When I read a good history book, I’m frequently amazed at how relevant a quote from many years ago is to current affairs. Such was the case when I read the following quote in David McCullough’s John Adams. The time was early in the year of 1776. Belligerent actions had been taken on the part of both sides and the colonies had made numerous attempts to bring about peace all to no avail. Still, some wanted to try again. John Adams had the following to say about these conciliatory measures:

I constantly insisted that all such measures, instead of having any tendency to produce a reconciliation, would only be considered as proofs of our timidity and want of confidence in the ground we stood on, and would only encourage our enemies to greater exertions against us.

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.