John Brockman has asked his Edgy band of scientists, futurists, writers, and philosophers about "some bit of wisdom, some rule of nature, some law-like pattern, either grand or small, that you've noticed in the universe that might as well be named after you", like those of Newton, Moore, or Murphy. Here are the results.
The more general of such laws are the most interesting because they can enrich our understanding of diverse subject areas and can be very instructive in how they fail. I think maybe this is what Alan Alda was getting at with his First and Second Laws of Laws:
1. All laws are local.
2. A law does not know how local it is.
Here's a few of my other favorite laws from the list, general and not:
Pimm's First Law: No language spoken by fewer than 100,000 people survives contact with the outside world, while no language spoken by more than one million people can be eliminated by such contact.
Gopnik's Gender Curves: The male curve is an abrupt rise followed by an equally abrupt fall. The female curve is a slow rise to an extended asymptote. The areas under the curves are roughly equal. These curves apply to all activities at all time scales (e.g. attention to TV programs, romantic love, career scientific productivity). (see the graphs)
Morgan's Second Law: To a first approximation all appointments are canceled.
Pöppel's Universal: We take life 3 seconds at a time. Human experience and behaviour is characterized by temporal segmentation. Successive segments or "time windows" have a duration of approx. 3 seconds.
Brand's Pace Law: In haste, mistakes cascade. With deliberation, mistakes instruct.
Kai's Example Dilemma: A good analogy is like a diagonal frog.
Rushkoff's Law: A religion will increase in social value until a majority of its members actually believe in it--at which point the social damage it causes will increase exponentially as long as it is in existence.
Humphrey's Law of the Efficacy of Prayer: In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not.
Minksy's Second Law: Don't just do something. Stand there.
Sterling's Corollary to Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic.
Bill Murray doesn't want an Oscar for his excellent performance in Lost in Translation:
It's a really unattractive sight to see an actor or actress who really wants an Oscar. And you often see it on the show, you see their faces and the desperation is so ugly.
Desperation is not a quality I long for. I'm over the Oscar. Sometimes people win it and you think, "This can't be true." It's a little bit of a popularity contest, too.
Sometimes it's right, but it's wrong just as often, so I don't care. I'd rather make movies that lots of people saw and liked. I'm happy with the results.
From Leslie Harpold's The Morning News article on How to Road Trip:
Your hair looks fine
On the road even the most meticulous must let go of the expectations they have of their hair. Strange water, sample-size shampoos, the wind, and tiny mirrors all conspire to make your hair so willful it may seem like an additional passenger at times. Let it go. This isn't about looking good, it's about feeling something new; all new feelings worth their salt eventually mess up your hair.
Not just good road trip advice, that's good life advice.
David Galbraith on recent events:
People complain about costly things such as space exploration and high energy physics experiments. Why spend money on these things when we have issues like poverty?
This argument is nihilistic. Why do we build monuments, paint, make films, write music, when there is still poverty all around? There is enough food in the world; poverty is the result of politics, exploitation and war above all.
Human space exploration is one of our greatest achievements. To try and rationalize unmanned space flight on the grounds of practicality misses the point, it is like saying that the Sistine Chapel would be brighter if it were whitewashed.
I'm beginning to understand what the critics see in Eminem. Contrary to most of Mr. Mathers' other material -- of the look-at-me/fuck-you variety -- Lose Yourself, off the soundtrack for 8 Mile, is surprisingly uplifting, positive, and even poignant. Dr. Dre's beats have always been top notch and they're put to excellent use here by Eminem with each verse powerfully building to the chorus. The first bit of the song is especially good...everyone is familiar with the feeling of nervous anticipation and potential for failure you experience when attempting something that's important to you and Eminem captures it perfectly:
snap back to reality
oh, there goes gravity
oh there goes rabbit
he choked, he's so mad
but he won't give up that easy
nope he won't have it
he knows his whole back's to these ropes
it don't matter he's dope
he knows that but he's broke
he so sad that he knows
when he goes back to this mobile home
that's when it's
back to the lab again, yo
this whole rhapsody
better go capture this moment
and hope it don't pass him (you betta)
lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it
you better never let it go
you only get one shot
do not miss your chance to blow
cuz this opportunity comes once in a life-time, yo
"lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go"...that's good advice no matter who it's coming from.
"It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them." --Robert Oppenheimer
This is what Milton Glaser has learned (full PDF transcript): "Less is not necessarily more. Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. 'Just enough is more.'" (boldface mine, via bbj)
I *love* that. Just enough is more.
"If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You're a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle." -- Richard Rhodes, How to Write
The latest issue of Shift magazine contains a letter to the editor about the 100 Sites We Love feature they ran a few months ago. Travis Nolastname, if you're out there, I'm flattered that I rank right up there with The Onion and the Holy Bible in your estimation. Kottke.org: Bigger Than Jesus. You heard it here first, folks. (thx to Jish for the photo)
"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
This photo sums up how I feel about the Web right now.
Never mind the rest of the article, this is the best line from this Independent interview with Jonathon Ive, the designer of the new iMac:
"He often struggles for words, sounding like a man trying to describe God to a world without religion."
Unless you've got good preachin' skills, that pretty much sums up what it's like being a designer. For me at least. Your mileage may vary.
"The problem with the global village is all the global village idiots." -Paul Ginsparg
The movie going public needs a way to distinguish bad Hollywood movies from good, well-made films. The Sixth Sense had all the trappings of a bad movie: typical hype-filled previews, Bruce Willis, a precocious kid in the lead role, etc. Imagine my surprise that the movie was actually quite good. The story, the dialogue, the acting, and the cinematography were all solid, even great in parts. And no cheese to be found anywhere.
A favorite line from The Sixth Sense: "they don't have meetings about rainbows".
Not everyone wearing a Tommy Hilfiger tshirt is selling out.
Men and women are not equal.
Ethnic group A and ethnic group b are not equal.
Big business is not always a bad thing.
There are good television shows.
Not everyone with long, nappy hair smokes pot.
Stereotypes work.
Stereotypes suck.
