Thanks, Dad.

Thank you for removing my training wheels, and untying Mother's apron strings.

The yardstick.

Three Standard Stoppages, Marcel Duchamp

"The great heresies in the early Church arose not from the rapid expansion result of these unknown [and untrained] teachers; but in those churches which were longest established, and where the Christians were not so busily engaged in converting the heathen around them. The Church of that day was apparently quite fearless of any dangers that the influx of large numbers of what we should call illiterate converts might lower the standard of church doctrine. She held the tradition handed down by the apostles, and expected the new converts to grow up into it, to maintain it and to propagate it. And so in fact they did. The danger to doctrine lay not in these illiterate converts on the outskirts; but at home, in places like Ephesus and Alexandria, amongst the more highly educated and philosophically minded Christians. It was against them that she had to maintain the doctrine."

... Roland Allen (1869-1947), "The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It", London: World Dominion Press, 1949, reprint, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1997, p. 64

Source: Hubblesite.org

"Whatever be our conception of the universe we must, it is obvious, start somehow; we must begin with something; and the something with which we begin, from the very fact that we do begin with it, must itself be without explanation, since, if something else were invoked to explain it, then the 'something else' must needs be logically prior to that which it is invoked to explain. Thus the 'something' being explained by a logically prior 'something else' could not have been ultimate."

-- C. E. M. Joad

Flung at random.

Hubble, NASA

"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."

-- Andre Malraux
French author & resistance leader (1901 - 1976)

Kunst.

SYMPHONIE NO.9
Ludwig van Beethoven
Wiener Philharmoniker
Claudio Abbado, cond.

Deutsche Grammophon


A beautiful recording, and perhaps the most stunningly beautiful LP jacket I have. Gold foil and Gustav Klimt.

Get an ear-bud full.