The Painted Porch

The Painted Porch

Our understanding of nature (outside a nucleus):

Kinetic Energy + Potential Energy = Total Energy
(Conservation of Energy.  The 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics)

How we model it (to predict things):

For big or slow things:  Classical Mechanics
(1/2)mv² + (1/2)kx² = E
(Everything is deterministic. No “probability.”)

For ultra-small or ultra-fast things:  Quantum Mechanics

The Schrodinger Equation
(Nothing is deterministic. Everything is “probability.”)

…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Thomas Jefferson
1776

A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good just because it’s accepted by a majority.
Booker T. Washington, 1901

To understand God’s thoughts, we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.
Florence Nightingale, 1860

Take a walk.
Seneca, 60 A.D.

Life is simple:
You do some stuff.
Most fails. Some works.
You do more of what works.
Leonardo da Vinci, 1510

Ask questions.  Learn.  As you do, your chance of doing the right thing will improve.
Socrates, circa 400 B.C.

Everything happens by nature’s design – even the death of a sparrow.  If I am to die now, then it will not be later.  If I am to die later, then it will not be now.  All that matters is being at peace with the certainty.  Since no man knows about what he leaves behind when he dies, then what’s it to him if he leaves early?  Let it be.
Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. William Shakespeare,  1601

The world cares very little what you or I know, but it does care a great deal about what you or I do.
Booker T. Washington, 1903

If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.
David Marvin “DJ Quik” (aka Da Quiksta) Blake
Dollaz + Sense, Safe + Sound, 1995

The Four Fundamental Forces of Nature

Gravity
Weak Nuclear
Strong Nuclear
Electromagnetic

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.

Warning
By Jenny Joseph, 1961

If it is not right, do not do it.
If it is not true, do not say it.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations, 89 A.D.

The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he.
Col. Thomas Rainsborough
Putney Debates, 1647

The Seven Deadly Sins of Speaking

Gossip
Judging
Negativity
Complaining
Excuses
Lying
Dogmatism

The Three Deadly Sins of Being

Envy
Jealousy
Ego

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.
John Stuart Mill, Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion, Chapter II, 1859

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
John Stuart Mill, On Education, 1867

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the 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 strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
Invictus, 1875

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyad Kipling
‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies

You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago, 1973

What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I’ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary — property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life — don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart — and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing:  the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Victor Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946

“A poet once said, ‘The whole universe is in a glass of wine.’ We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough, we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth’s rocks, and in its composition, we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all!”
Richard P. Feynman

Please
Help me do the right thing today.
Help me realize that I can fix my nature to have
the humility to value only that within my control,
the prudence needed to judge correctly what is right and what is wrong,
a steadfast sense of justice, capable of discerning what is fair and rightfully owed,
the temperance to keep my thoughts, words, and actions dispassionate,
the generosity to provide what is needed when it would be helpful,
the fortitude to act,
the discipline to stay on task,
a recognition of the divine in virtuous actions,
and the grace to be thankful.