These are quotes which stood out to me, possibly for use in a sermon someday. Their presence here does not mean I agree with them, it merely shows that I might want to reference them later. The default view is five random selections. Use the tag list on the right to view all quotes relevant to that theme.
[The following was taken from an actual bug report that I have seen myself. It shows an edited bug report from a customer and an edited response. I did the editing, to protect the customer and company involved. - dhelrod] CUSTOMER BUG REPORT: The [...]Library service "incorrectly" assumes the year 2000 is a leap year. RESPONSE: Thank you for your forward-looking bug report. Various system services, such as [the one you reported] assume that the year 2000 will be a leap year. Although one can never be sure of what will happen at some future time, there is strong historical precedent for presuming that the present Gregorian calendar will still be in affect by the year 2000. Since we also hope that [our system] will still be around by then, we have chosen to adhere to these precedents. The purpose of a calendar is to reckon time in advance, to show how many days have to elapse until a certain event takes place in the future, such as the harvest or the release of [the next version of our system]. The earliest calendars, naturally, were crude and tended to be based upon the seasons or the lunar cycle. The calendar of the Assyrians, for example, was based upon the phases of the moon. They knew that a lunation (the time from one full moon to the next) was 29 1/2 days long, so their lunar year had a duration of 354 days. This fell short of the solar year by about 11 days. (The exact time for the solar year is approximately 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.) After 3 years, such a lunar calendar would be off by a whole month, so the Assyrians added an extra month from time to time to keep their calendar in synchronization with the seasons. The best approximation that was possible in antiquity was a 19-year period, with 7 of these 19 years having 13 months (leap months). This scheme was adopted as the basis for the religious calendar used by the Jews. (The Arabs also used this calendar until Mohammed forbade shifting from 12 months to 13 months.) When Rome emerged as a world power, the difficulties of making a calendar were well known, but the Romans complicated their lives because of their superstition that even numbers were unlucky. Hence their months were 29 or 31 days long, with the exception of February, which had 28 days. Every second year, the Roman calendar included an extra month called Mercedonius of 22 or 23 days to keep up with the solar year. Even this algorithm was very poor, so that in 45 BC, Caesar, advised by the astronomer Sosigenes, ordered a sweeping reform. By imperial decree, one year was made 445 days long to bring the calendar back in step with the seasons. The new calendar, similar to the one we now use was called the Julian calendar (named after Julius Caesar). It's months were 30 or 31 days in length and every fourth year was made a leap year (having 366 days). Caesar also decreed that the year would start with the first of January, not the vernal equinox in late March. Caesar's year was 11 1/2 minutes short of the calculations recommended by Sosigenes and eventually the date of the vernal equinox began to drift. Roger Bacon became alarmed and sent a note to Pope Clement IV, who apparently was not impressed. Pope Sixtus IV later became convinced that another reform was needed and called the German astronomer, Regiomontanus, to Rome to advise him. Unfortunately, Regiomontanus died of the plague shortly thereafter and the plans died as well. In 1545, the Council of Trent authorized Pope Gregory XIII to reform the calendar once more. Most of the mathematical work was done by Father Christopher Clavius, S.J. The immediate correction that was adopted was that Thursday, October 4, 1582 was to be the last day of the Julian calendar. The next day was Friday, with the date of October 15. For long range accuracy, a formula suggested by the Vatican librarian Aloysius Giglio was adopted. It said that every fourth year is a leap year except for century years that are not divisible by 400. Thus 1700, 1800 and 1900 would not be leap years, but 2000 would be a leap year since 2000 is divisible by 400. This rule eliminates 3 leap years every 4 centuries, making the calendar sufficiently correct for most ordinary purposes. This calendar is known as the Gregorian calendar and is the one that we now use today. (It is interesting to note that in 1582, all the Protestant princes ignored the papal decree and so many countries continued to use the Julian calendar until either 1698 or 1752. In Russia, it needed the revolution to introduce the Gregorian calendar in 1918.) This explains why [our system] chooses to treat the year 2000 as a leap year. Despite the great accuracy of the Gregorian calendar, it still falls behind very slightly every few years. If you are very concerned about this problem, we suggest that you tune in short wave radio station WWV, which broadcasts official time signals for use in the United States. About once every 3 years, they declare a leap second at which time you should be careful to adjust your system clock. If you have trouble picking up their signals, we suggest you purchase an atomic clock (not manufactured by [our company] and not a [system] option at this time).
Doughboy Dead at 71...
Veteran Pillsbury spokesman Pop N. Fresh, died yesterday
of a severe yeast infection. He was 71. Fresh was buried in
one of the largest funeral ceremonies in recent years.
Dozens of celebrities turned out including: Mrs.Butterworth,
the California Raisins, Hungry Jack, Betty Crocker and the
Hostess Twinkies. The gravesite was piled high with flours
and longtime friend, Aunt Jemima, delivered the eulogy,
describing Fresh as a man who "never knew how much he was
kneaded."
Fresh rose quickly in show business, but his later life was
filled with many turnovers. He was not considered a very
smart cookie, squandering much of his dough on half-baked
schemes. Still, even as a crusty old man, he was a roll model
for millions. Fresh is survived by his second wife. They
have two children and one in the oven. The funeral was held
at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.
"I once worked for a manager who was very flexible--he could use all four leadership styles--he just used the wrong style with the wrong people at the wrong time."
"Really?" asked the entrepeneur.
"Yes," said Marshall. "He was always telling his best people what to do because he knew his career depended on them, but they resented it because they already knew what to do. With his poorer performers, he didn't respect them so he left them alone. Since they didn't know what to do, they floundered."
Frost: Do you believe in the Sermon on the Mount?
Gates: I don't. I'm not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I'm a huge believer in. There's a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very very positive impact.
Frost: I sometimes say to people, do you believe there is a god, or do you know there is a god? And, you'd say you don't know?
Gates: In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-baumeister25jan25,1,1775592.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions&ctrack=1&cset=true
Roy F. Baumeister, a professor in the department of psychology at Florida State University, is the author of "The Cultural Animal," just published by Oxford University Press.
Does low self-esteem lie at the root of all human suffering, failure and evil? When I ran my first research study on self-esteem in 1973, that certainly seemed to be the case. Psychologists everywhere were persuaded that if only we could help people to accept and love themselves more, their problems would gradually vanish and their lives would flourish. They would even treat each other better.
Not surprisingly, California led the way, establishing a task force for exploring ways to boost healthy self-esteem to solve personal and social problems. The task force members — like many of us — were undeterred by the weakness and ambiguity of the evidence suggesting a benefit in boosting self-esteem; we all believed the data would come along in good time.
Then-Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (and many other experts) predicted that self- esteem could solve, or at least help solve, such problems as crime, teen pregnancy, pollution, school failure and underachievement, drug abuse and domestic violence. (Vasconcellos even expressed the hope that higher self-esteem would one day help balance the state budget — a prospect predicated on the observation that people with high self-regard earn more than others and therefore pay more in taxes.)
A generation — and many millions of dollars — later, it turns out we may have been mistaken. Five years ago, the American Psychological Society commissioned me and several other experts to wade with an open mind through the enormous amount of published research on the subject and to assess the benefits of high self-esteem.
Here are some of our disappointing findings. High self- esteem in schoolchildren does not produce better grades. (Actually, kids with high self-esteem do have slightly better grades in most studies, but that's because getting good grades leads to higher self-esteem, not the other way around.) In fact, according to a study by Donald Forsyth at Virginia Commonwealth University, college students with mediocre grades who got regular self-esteem strokes from their professors ended up doing worse on final exams than students who were told to suck it up and try harder.
Self-esteem doesn't make adults perform better at their jobs either. Sure, people with high self-esteem rate their own performance better — even declaring themselves smarter and more attractive than their low self-esteem peers — but neither objective tests nor impartial raters can detect any difference in the quality of work.
Likewise, people with high self-esteem think they make better impressions, have stronger friendships and have better romantic lives than other people, but the data don't support their self-flattering views. If anything, people who love themselves too much sometimes annoy other people by their defensive or know-it-all attitudes. Self-esteem doesn't predict who will make a good leader, and some work (including that of psychologist Robert Hogan writing in the Harvard Business Review) has found humility rather than self-esteem to be a key trait of successful leaders.
It was widely believed that low self-esteem could be a cause of violence, but in reality violent individuals, groups and nations think very well of themselves. They turn violent toward others who fail to give them the inflated respect they think they deserve. Nor does high self-esteem deter people from becoming bullies, according to most of the studies that have been done; it is simply untrue that beneath the surface of every obnoxious bully is an unhappy, self-hating child in need of sympathy and praise.
High self-esteem doesn't prevent youngsters from cheating or stealing or experimenting with drugs and sex. (If anything, kids with high self-esteem may be more willing to try these things at a young age.)
There were a few areas where higher self-esteem seemed to bring some benefits. For instance, people with high self- esteem are generally happier and less depressed than others, though we can't quite prove that high self-esteem prevents depression or causes happiness. Young women with high self- esteem seem less susceptible to eating disorders. In some studies (though not all), people with high self-esteem bounce back from misfortune and trauma faster than others.
High self-esteem also promotes initiative. People who have it are more likely to speak up in a group, persist in the face of failure, resist other people's advice or pressure and strike up conversations with strangers. Of course, initiative can cut both ways: One study on bullying found that self-esteem was high among the bullies and among the people who intervened to resist them. Low self-esteem marked the victims of bullying.
In short, despite the enthusiastic embrace of self-esteem, we found that it conferred only two benefits. It feels good and it supports initiative. Those are nice, but they are far less than we had once hoped for, and it is very questionable whether they justify the effort and expense that schools, parents and therapists have put into raising self-esteem.
After all these years, I'm sorry to say, my recommendation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline.
Recent work suggests this would be good for the individual and good for society — and might even be able to fill some of those promises that self-esteem once made but could not keep