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Cosmic Quote(s) #16// Summer Rerun

July 15, 2013 by 3 Comments

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my works. I want to achieve it through not dying.”–Woody Allen

“I’m very pleased to be here.  Lets face it, at my age, I’m very pleased to be anywhere.”–George Burns

I’ve had enough of it for now.  I’m calling a moratorium on in memoriam memeranda, momentarily.   (Try saying that five times fast.)  So if you are planning on dying, please have the courtesy to hold off for at least a few weeks.  My attention now turns back to the living, at least while I’m still breathing.

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The Sackler Laws #4: The Law of Political Activism

July 6, 2013 by 12 Comments

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, things are not going to get better.  They’re not.”–Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

“If god had not intended us to eat sugar, he wouldn’t have invented dentists.”–Ralph Nader

Note:  In general, I have avoided the controversies of religion and politics in this blog, though there have been hints at my views on both.  This post tiptoes dangerously towards the precipice of both, though it clearly points no finger at any specific political or religious viewpoint.  I’m bound to get flamed, anyway.

For the fourth and final** installment of the Sackler Laws, I bring you Law #4: The Law of Political Activism.  This is not to be mistaken for Law #1, The Law of Bumper Sticker Activism.  On the other hand, maybe it should be.  Both have to do with taking a good thing too far.  It is simply stated:

First class activists remain forever activists.  Second class activists run for office.

The greatest first class activists of all time, if you look at it carefully, rarely if ever ran for office.  Think Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Susan B. Anthony.  Yes, it’s true that great activists for freedom such as Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa ultimately became president of the entities their activism wrought; but they were effectively drafted by popular acclaim that arose from the ultimate success of their leadership, they did not attempt to become politicians.

As a primary example of the type of second class activist I present to validate this law, I give you two words.

Ralph Nader.

Here is a guy who pissed off half the country–mostly the corporate world and the Republican right–with decades of pain-in-their-asses activism and left-wing proselytizing.  Then he ran for president on a 3rd party line and pissed off most of the other half of the country.  His siphoning of votes from the left in 2000 almost certainly enabled the election of the candidate most diametrically opposed to his beliefs.  Not satisfied with having made the world, as he saw it, worse, he ran again in 2004 just to thumb his nose at those that might have otherwise been his ally.

That’s about all there is to that.  The only one thankful to him, other than a few diehard loyalists, is me, if only because he gave me the best real world validation I’ve ever had for this aphorism.

But the question then arises.  If we know what a second class activist looks like, what does a third class activist look like. That one’s even easier.

Robertson

Robertson

Sharpton

Sharpton

And you were wondering how I would manage to piss off the religious nuts as well?  If you want inspiration for political activism, the Dr. Seuss quote above is a good place to start.  If you want religious inspiration–you’ve come to the wrong place.

200px-The_Lorax

**Nothing is final except death and…well, except death.  This will only be the final installment of the Sackler laws if I die before thinking up another one.

Signature       @MarkSackler

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Tales of a Veterinary Spouse #5: Count the Cats!

June 18, 2013 by 25 Comments

“Dogs are my favorite people.”–Richard Dean Anderson

9c) Mark Anderson www.andertoons.com

(c) Mark Anderson
http://www.andertoons.com

Bethany, CT is just a typical, quiet New England exurban town.  Now.  But some thirty years ago, when Cheryl started working there, it was still imbued with a certain quirky character hailing from its agrarian Yankee roots.  The vet she worked for was a lanky, laconic and formal kind of guy who actually wore a tie to work, even on the road for large animal barn calls.  If Dickens were alive in the 1980’s and living in New England,  he would have found all the persona inspiration he could ever need right there in Bethany.   This story hails from that era.

The client, Cathy X, was a groom at a local stable.  She was short, chubby, slovenly and smelled like her work.  It seems her dog, a massive Russian Wolfhound, was in distress, and she let Cheryl know about it the instant she walked in the clinic door.

Borzoi, or Russian Wolfhound

Borzoi, or Russian Wolfhound

“He’s got a twisted gut, I just know it.”

“What’s going on, Cathy?” My wife was a bit skeptical up front.

“Well…um…,” the exasperated woman could hardly get her words out, ” he’s  lethargic, not eating,  and his stomach is distended.”

Cheryl felt around and disagreed, it just didn’t feel like a torsion.  She thought it was just an upset stomach.  But the client persisted.

“Ok, Cathy, I’ll try a stomach tube and see what that yields.”

The idea here was simple, if the gut was twisted, the stomach tube would not pass.  In went the tube–all the way in.   Seek and ye shall find.   VARRROOOOM.   Almost immediately there arose a torrent of projectile vomiting.   But it was not just gunk.  It was black and white fur, followed by a completely intact trachea and set of lungs!

“OH MY GOD!  I BETTER GO HOME AND COUNT THE CATS!”

Momentary silence (while everyone in the office painfully held back laughter).

“Um, maybe not,” my wife protested, “these organs are way too big to be a cat.  And the smell…ugh.”

I assume by now you have figured it out.  If not, let’s just say it was a mistake worthy of Pepe Le Pew.

You now have permission to hold your nose pending my next smelly post.

Signature    @MarkSackler

wallpapers_pepe-le-pew_04_1024

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Cosmic Quote #23: Happy Birthday MC

May 23, 2013 by 31 Comments

“I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but I almost always wind up where I need to be.”-Douglas Adams

“There still is no cure for the common birthday.”–John Glenn

The Millennium Conjectures™ turns one today.  On May 23, 2012 my life was in turmoil.   My father had just passed away,  one of my best friends was in the process of being diagnosed with an incurable cancer and I was feeling more than a bit burned out.  Was this the cure?  Life still has its vicissitudes, but I am certainly doing a lot better than a year ago.   This blog has helped, and it has survived.   To paraphrase Douglas Adams, it hasn’t always gone where I thought it would go, but it has always gone where I needed it to be.  Amazingly,  I have amassed a decent sized audience and have received no death threats or arrest warrants.   And as there is no truism greater than the John Glenn quote above, I will relentlessly keep going where I need to be, as long as I am still breathing.   Below is the first post from one year ago today.  Where has it taken me?  Where has it taken you?

Signature        @MarkSackler

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May 23, 2012:  What is This?

These are my musings, both ridiculous and sublime.  I would have made “Ridiculous and Sublime” the primary title of this blog, but I am vain.  I want some semblance of uniqueness and there are many other bloggers using this theme.   But I will explain both title and subtitle before proceeding.

So what are Millennium Conjectures?  I’ll explain that in a bit as well.  But first, I present a word about the overall content and nature of my posts.  And why I, and my posts, are both ridiculous and sublime.

This is not a personal journal.  Who would be interested in reading my personal journal online?  I wouldn’t even be interested.  No, these are musings, observations and conjectures from a journalistic standpoint, a way of looking at things you might find interesting or funny.  You might also find some silly and trivial.  I do have some past background in both broadcast and print journalism, but that is not my professional livelihood these days; I do this for the satisfaction and outlet.

So—I’ll get back to the subtitle.

Let’s face it: I am both ridiculous and sublime.  To start with, the two most famous people whose birthday I share (October 2) are Mohandas Gandhi and Groucho Marx.

Gandhi

What could be more sublime and ridiculous than those two?  And to boot, the most famous thing, arguably, that happened on the very day of my birth (Oct 2, 1950), was the appearance of the very first syndicated Peanuts cartoon.  Good ‘ol Charlie Brown was born the same day as me.  He is most certainly a perfect blending of the two qualities we are talking about.  Wishy-washy? Maybe. But that is only because he is so torn by these conflicting aspects of the universe that surrounds him.  Yes, the silly and profound seem both to be bound into my DNA.

Content herein will then consist of both the trivial/silly (WheresGeorge.com, history of CT license plates, Pearls Before Swine) and the profound (Quantum Physics, Cosmology, Existentialism, Opera and the philosophy of science).  There will also be topics that engender a bit of both characteristics; baseball, for example, and especially baseball statistics.  Yes, Baseball is a game, but as George Will so astutely observed, “if baseball is just a game, then the Grand Canyon is just a hole in the ground.”   This will happen solely because my cluttered mind embraces all of these endeavors, and for some strange reason, I think that somewhere out there one or two people might be interested in my insights.

So, back to the Millenium Conjectures.  My posts will be marked as either Ridiculous or Sublime or Ridiculous AND Sublime.  The lion’s share of the Sublime category—indeed of all the content– will be a series I call The Millenium Conjectures.  These will deal with my views and speculations on the nature of reality, the universe and  scientific philosophy.  Everything else will be a time-out to blow off steam. But lest my head explode, let alone yours, this is enough for now.

Text in this post ©2012 Mark Sackler

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Cosmic Quote #22

May 12, 2013 by 3 Comments

“I like physics, but I love cartoons.”–Stephen Hawking

Who knew Hawking had such a sense of humor.  No wonder he hasn’t won a Nobel Prize.  Remind me to introduce him to Stephan Pastis; they might like each other, as the strip below suggests.

This one reads like it was written for Hawking!

This one reads like it was written for Hawking! (click for full image)

(Previously published in my review of Pearls Before Swine. Cartoon ©2012 Stephan Pastis)

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@MarkSackler

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Time out: I am not a twit–er, am I?

April 19, 2013 by 18 Comments

“Twitter is the devil’s playground.”–Albert Brooks

Twit–Verb,  to taunt or tease.  Noun,  an insignificant, silly or bothersome person. Neologism-any dork who uses twitter.

Mwahaha

Mwahaha

I have finally done what I said I would never do: use twitter.   The vanity urgency of my posts herein require I find ways to seek more lemmings a wider audience.   And seeing I am far too cheap modest to take out a billboard on I-95, I had to do something.  So if you can’t stand get enough of my inane profound rantings pronouncements, @MarkSackler is the place to avoid like the plague be.

[Note: To fully understand the gibberish in the above paragraph, read it with the crossed out words and phrases and without the italicized ones.]

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Cosmic Quote(s) #20

April 16, 2013 by 5 Comments

“The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.”–Albert Einstein

“The income tax has made more liars out of Americans than golf”–Will Rogers

“Be wary of strong drink.  It can make you shoot at tax collectors…and miss.”–Robert Heinlein.

Hahaha.  I can laugh now.  It’s April 16.  It’s all over….except the crying.

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1001: A Blogging Odyssey

April 4, 2013 by 20 Comments

“Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining ‘blog’ is a fool’s errand.”–Michael Conniff

“Blogging is pure vanity.”–Unknown

1001 HITSLet’s not get all misty eyed here, but yesterday The Millennium Conjectures™ passed the 1,000 subscriber threshold.  This presents an opportunity to wax poetic on the nature of blogging itself.  Oh, wait, I forgot–you don’t care, and my poetry stinks.  I’ll spare you the agony;  if you are one of my followers it is probably because of the humor, satire or metaphysics.  Thanks for being here.  Thanks for liking my posts and commenting on them.   The onus is now on me to keep delivering–with a little help from my friends, of course. 😉

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Cosmic Quote #18

March 25, 2013 by 4 Comments

“Quantum mechanics is magic.”–Daniel Greenberger.

Image credit: Matthias Giesen http://matthiasgiesen.wordpress.com/page/8/

Image credit: Matthias Giesen http://matthiasgiesen.wordpress.com

Quantum mechanics.  Niels Bohr said if you’re not shocked by it, you don’t understand it.  Richard Feynman said nobody understands it.  Albert Einstein said god does not play dice. Stephen Hawking said god does play dice and sometimes he hides the results.  I say who the hell cares, as long as they give me fodder for my blog.  Or my wife’s horse.  Or my accountant’s newt.  It all fills  space, thus proving the vacuum is not empty.  Isn’t physics fun?  [Note: vacuum is one of the few words in the English language containing “uu.”   But it’s not as cool as muumuu, duumvir or menstruum, proving that linguistics is fun, too.]

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Cosmic Quote(s) #16

February 15, 2013 by 13 Comments

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my works. I want to achieve it through not dying.”–Woody Allen

“I’m very pleased to be here.  Lets face it, at my age, I’m very pleased to be anywhere.”–George Burns

I’ve had enough of it for now.  I’m calling a moratorium on in memoriam memeranda, momentarily.   (Try saying that five times fast.)  So if you are planning on dying, please have the courtesy to hold off for at least a few weeks.  My attention now turns back to the living, at least while I’m still breathing.

Filed Under: Quotes, Ridiculous Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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