My meeting with the lawyer went very well today. At the conclusion of business, we yakked a bit and turns out he wanted to be a History Major, but called it off as a bad career choice. Though he still reads much history and loves the subject. He then made an observation that I enjoyed, and is summed up by a P.G. Wodehouse saying: there are wheels within wheels. And this goes on and on down into the rabbit hole of human forgetfulness. Or something like that. Or not.

It is difficult to get students to think to so abstract an end. Even through it is very important. And they automatically think the end product is the most important and don't understand that the process is the more illuminating.

Or so I remember a professor saying all those years ago.

It's not about the destination, it's about the trip.

In reality not even poets that talk about it understand how important that is.

Add to that that patience is the faster way to something usually vs the usual alternatives.

Hence the saying "youth is wasted on the young".

(in Greek it goes like "my final wisdom, oh how i wish you were my first" )

May we rise to defeat that statement one day and be forever young and patient instead.

Absolutely. That is why I just drive to the beach and then turn back around and go home.

If the beach itself is not part of the greater "trip" then yes that may be true in some interesting routes that are scenic and beat the beach of crowded morons and chaos.


The point is always that in large projects that take a lifetime, such as synthesis in physics, the true gain is the adventure itself, the wisdom gained and the tools built not the final destination of eg quantizing gravity etc. Adversity builds character and wisdom. A quick success that is usually the result of great luck will not have the same lasting value often.

In another example if the destination is to become the first 100 bil $ person in the world then probably the trip is the most interesting part not the arrival there. The arrival is only important as the new trip it will enable.

If the destination is Fermat's last theorem then in relative terms who on earth even cares now about the fact it's a theorem and not in reality about the endless tools the process to get there created! The theorems and connections between different mathematical fields recognized or proved to get there can now enable so much more.

In other words the greatest gift of Einstein to Physics is not Relativity but how to do science.

Hey Masque, you're Greek right? Hey, in Greece do they have statues of Lord Byron? He was a most vile and despicable person but very handsome and loved by all women who didn't want to kill him. At the end, he spent his wealth fighting and dying for Greek independence. Do the Greeks love the guy?
I think I found the right forum, I'm drunk with some nice pain killers and a touch of a fever and this is a random thought.

edit - ok I did find a statue of Lord Byron in Athens, he's being cuddled by what looks like a bare breasted Goddess.

double edit - I'm not picking on you Masque, I find your posts among the very best of all time. I'm just trying to get a Greek's thoughts of Lord Byron. And now, I'll shut up and go to sleep and when I awake, I'll probably hope I never wrote any of this.

triple edit - In case anyone's wondering where their mind is, I think, by Jove, I've found it . . .
here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iC0YXspJRM

He did love Greece a lot. He died there during its quest for freedom almost 200 years ago. A true friend of the country, culture and people. That is well documented even in primary school stories taught about the revolution. They did love him back. There are many streets in his name even today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron

Hey, thank you buddy for your comments, I wasn't even expecting that. This is actually pretty cool studying this strange but incredible character. Look at the site, Interesting Things Explained Well and they have a cool story about lord Byron. Way before Errol Flynn, there was Lord Byron.

Many times when I go to the beach, I take a chair and cigars and sit down and watch the waves crash in. Then I lite up the cigar and puff away. And thumb my nose at God, The Ocean, and the whole universe in general. It is an exhilarating thing to do. And I'm not kidding, I just did it a few days ago when the weather was so nice ocean nymphs were cavorting in the waves. So yeah, you need to sit and enjoy getting to a destination or end point. Or not. Beer helps also - but then beer always helps.

It could be true that in anticipation of getting to the beach you were happier than when you were actually at the beach.

"A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes" - Arthur Schopenhauer

I doubt there's any truth to this, but it sounds sexy. And sometimes thats more important.

I'm going to start a dastardly thread. Gird up your loins.

Random help in addressing people: Just say "hey you" to everyone. As innocuously gender neutral as it gets. Or, "hey Fathead". Or, "you all" if addressing a large group. Moron or ****** also works. And the list can grow and get better with more thought and input.

Hay is for horses. But we all knew that already.

I wouldn't know. I drove back home.

It is a quote about managing expectations. I'm usually pleasantly surprised by life, and this may or may not be because of a number of reasons.

It's damn true for me when I go to play poker. Love getting the Starbucks coffee for the drive, love listening to Limbaugh for the lolz, love getting on a list but then, when I get seated, it takes less than a minute to start thinking 'wtf am I doing here w/ these morons?'

Although, I will admit, playing poker became far less fun once I decided to try to actually win.

The Piccadilly line wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs today.

lol winning and the trying to win properly process (even if its a cover story for the real attack that comes later) is the fun damn it! Being logical and imaginative against morons is nice! I will agree though the drive and other things are probably better.

There is a nice fish and calamari tavern by half moon bay few miles from here that can easily take 30 min of drive but its not ugly landscape, its interesting, and then you have the ocean. The food and the drive is the real thing including the views of the ocean etc. The rest i dont mind so much like the people and noise at the restaurant or the indoors environment or the actual walk by the beach. It feels like Greece though without being greek which is precisely the point (the coincidence in style and menus plus sea in certain ways is more authentic that way)!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_M...%2C_California

There isn't a single decent Greek restaurant in Metro-Phoenix. That's one of the things that I had to get used to after moving here from the NYC area. No really good Italian and mediocre Chinese. PLUS, I'd thought at least I'd be getting good Mexican but most of the places are chains.

I wasn't exaggerating, btw. The drive w/ the coffee is much nicer than being glued to a seat at a poker table for 9 hours. I do it bec I don't have anything else to do - I can read for only so long - and it pays some of the bills.

Excellent post. As to the part I bolded: those are my precise thoughts whenever I log onto the SMP forum and I have to read the posts because as Mod I'm required to do so.

Faulty train caused delays. Praise the lord for the internet and Google, nothing escapes its claws.

Piccadilly was a tangled up circus today, would be another way to put it.

Go to the pub and suck down some ales for compensation.

Hah. You have to start drinking more beer, if that's possible. I wish I could but I take Metformin and the advice is not to drink too much but they don't say how much and the only thing that happens if I drink a beer is I want another beer so I don't drink at all. TBH, though, I prefer gin and tonic.

"Minor" delays, according to the announcements at Hounslow East.

My way out of one more OCD check of things is the dictum, "let's gamble".


PairTheBoard

It's Friday. The Weekend is looming. Let's Drink. And leave Rampaging Rape by the wayside for the moment.

That's depressing on many levels

Getting a pub and selling top quality beer in it seems like a good business model. Why don't more do it? Do the major breweries form that much of an oligopoly?