People From California

"We spent three trillion dollars in the Middle East, right now, where that money could have been used to take care of our veterans, first and foremost, who've been over there fighting, but also take care of the people that need help here in the United States instead of wasting it overseas."

"I keep up on the news, and there's all this noise out there, with all of the media and people on their phones all the time. I think we've become a schizophrenic culture primarily as a result of the genie getting out of the bottle with all this media stuff."

"[T]here has never been a time, when I’ve been completely satisfied with myself. . . . I’ve very much appreciated the respect that my peers have given me throughout a fairly long life. Nowadays I try to spend at least half my time continuing to be useful, still making a contribution, while getting whatever rest, recreation, and diversification I believe is essential if one is to go on living a happy and useful life."

"It had three real purposes. One purpose was to give the folks at home the first good news that we'd had in World War II. It caused the Japanese to question their warlords. And from a tactical point of view, it caused the retention of aircraft in Japan for the defense of the home islands when we had no intention of hitting them again, seriously in the near future. Those airplanes would have been much more effective in the South Pacific where the war was going on."

"One of the things that we considered was being apprehended before we got to Japan. And the plan was that if we were within range of Japan, we would go ahead and bomb our targets, fly out to sea and hope, rather futilely, to be picked up by one of the two submarines that were in the area. If we were within range of the Hawaiian Islands—say, Midway—we would immediately clear their decks and proceed to Midway so they could utilize the task force properly."

"I will not be able to do anything until the air fields are captured and supplied with fuel, oil, ammunition, bombs, spare parts, and all the necessary ground personnel."

"It was a dangerous area, for certain. There were saloons, prostitutes, everything. The real Wild West. There was no law to speak of; everyone carried weapons, and they used them. Gambling was rampant, and crime increased with the growing population."

"From the time I was a very young fellow, I knew I wanted to do two things. I wanted to build things, and I wanted to see the world. It seemed to me that the best way to build things was to be an engineer, and the best way to see the world was to be the kind of engineer that went to different parts of the world. In those days that meant either a civil or a mining engineer. I decided to become a mining engineer."

"Well, I have always been highly competitive, and that is useful no matter what sport you go into. And in those days flying was to a considerable degree a sport, yes. But what really helped me in aviation was to have fast reactions and a good sense of balance. I think I got those from my tumbling, not my boxing."

"When the wreckage was cleared, Mr. Todd [the instructor] looked at me carefully and said we should get on with our business. I was shaken up by what I had seen but nodded in agreement, and we went up for the first lesson. If there is such a thing as love at first sight, my love for flying began on that day during that hour."

"That was perhaps the greatest tragedy of our mission. All of that horror was retribution against the Chinese for helping us…. They also exacted their revenge against our captured men, which I learned of later… The loss of those men has always stayed with me. When people ask about the atomic bombs and their justification, they come to mind."

"I will say that in those days the pilot was very important, and his skill in manipulating the airplanes, which were not as reliable as they are today, was very important indeed. The airplanes today are mechanized to such a degree that the pilot no longer depends on the seat of his pants to the extent that he did in the early days. What has happened to aviation has happened to almost everything else. The day of the rugged individualist, the day of the inventor, is almost over. The Ben Franklins and Henry Fords are pretty much a thing of the past. It has just become too complicated. Everything now is a team operation, and if a truly new concept is developed, it means that there will be a large number of people knowledgeable in various scientific disciplines involved. And this requires a different philosophical outlook. I cannot see, for instance, how we could ever have another Lindbergh. Things have changed too much for that sort of competence to be rewarded the way it justifiably was. Still, I think that aviation will continue to develop, and each era will be interesting. But interesting in different ways."

"You look for a chap who has good eyesight, who has fast reactions, who has a good sense of balance, but most important, you look for someone who really loves to fly. It would be very difficult to make a good pilot out of a chap who hated it. We always incline to do best those things that we enjoy doing. Another thing you look for is a pilot who can learn his limitations. A poor pilot is not necessarily a dangerous pilot as long as he remains within his limitations. And you find your limits in the air, by getting closer and closer and closer and sometimes going beyond them and still getting out of it. If you go beyond and don’t get out of it, you haven’t learned your limitations, because you are dead."

"I felt lower than a frog’s posterior. This was my first combat mission. I planned it from the beginning and led it. I was sure it was my last. As far as I was concerned, it was a failure, and I felt there was no future for me in uniform now. Even if we successfully accomplished the first half of our mission, the second half had been to deliver the B-25s to our units in the China-Burma-India theater of operations."

"Item: Retirement party for Joanne Elliott. One of my (male) colleagues reminisced about seeing Joanne as an attractive young woman in the common room at Princeton surrounded by young men eager to be near her. The comment made me very uncomfortable, since it placed emphasis on her attractiveness in a setting where conversations are often mathematical. If only the men had been clustered around her because they were eager to hear her theorems and conjectures! But at least as the story was related, that was not the case."

"Grain boundaries and surfaces of crystalline materials have a surface free energy which in general depends on the normal direction of the interface relative to the crystal lattice(s). Determining the surface energy minimizing configurations of such interfaces, for a given surface free energy function, is an interesting mathematical problem; it reduces in the case of isotropic (i.e. constant) surface energy to the minimal surface problem. A first step is to classify minimizing cones, since they can arise as tangent cones to minimizing or asymptotically minimizing surfaces. In the isotropic case for two-dimensional surfaces in R^3, the only minimizing cones are planes. For anisotropic surface energy functions, we give here a catalog of 12 types of embedded minimizing cones, and prove that it is a complete catalog among embedded minimizing crystalline cones ..."

"The subject of motion by crystalline curvature is of interest for three quite distinct reasons. One is that some physical surface energies and physical models of crystal growth simply do give rise to such motion. Another is its use as a way to approximate motion of curves by curvature, both for computation and possibly for proving theorems. The third is that this motion simply is interesting and beautiful in its own right, having results that sometimes parallel those for ordinary curvature and sometimes are strikingly different."

"Surface tension is commonly thought of as a fluid phenomenon; the mere mention of the term brings to mind bugs skimming over water, liquids rising or falling in capillary tubes—and soap films and soap bubbles. But there is in fact a notion of surface tension (which is surface energy per unit surface area) for the interface between any two substances, or even between one substance and a vacuum. This surface energy arises from the fact that atoms (or molecules, or ions) of a given substance have a different environment at the interface between that substance and another than those in the bulk of the substance. (Sometimes even the composition of the surface is different from the bulk; this occurs for instance in soapy water having an interface with air.)"

"A surface free energy function is defined to be crystalline if its Wulff shape (the equilibrium crystal shape) is a polyhedron. All the questions that one considers for the area functional, where the surface free energy per unit area is 1 for all normal directions, can be considered for crystalline surface free energies. Such questions are interesting for both mathematical and physical reasons. Methods from the geometric calculus of variations are useful for studying a number of such questions; a survey of some of the results is given."

"In all of German Occupied Europe, there resided 2.4 million Jews before the war, according to the world Jewish encyclopedia. After the war, 3.8 million Jewish ‘Holocaust survivors’ were receiving pensions from the German government … Tragically, the remaining 6 million were lost."

"Holiness isn’t something that just happens. It’s something that is nurtured, something that grows, something that is benefited by things like rhythm, stability — if you're always rushing and never quite can fit in your nightly prayers, well, then you wind up not praying a lot of times."

"In the past, some media has tried to portray this effort as inimical to the ecumenical effort, and that cannot be further from the truth. For one thing, Anglicanorum coetibus was a generous, pastoral response by Pope Benedict XVI to groups of people who were making a direct request of the Holy See. It is also ecumenically significant in that it demonstrates, perhaps for the first time, that corporate, Eucharistic unity is possible in a way that does not simply assimilate. The ecumenical principle that informs Anglicanorum coetibus is that unity in the profession of Catholic faith allows for a vibrant diversity in the expression of that same faith. That is, to my mind, exactly what ecumenical dialogues have been building towards."

"You can’t take the parish priest out of this bishop. I certainly admire those in specialized ministry, but all I wanted to be was a parish priest. I saw growing up in Oxnard these wonderful young priests, reaching out—they used to come and take us out of school, we would be spread-eagled over a U-Haul with food for the poor. That really attracted us. So many of us feel we were called to follow the example of many of those priests who really lived their ministry."

"Until the Chinese are more cooperative with us in specific areas, maybe we’ve made a mistake in growing China into a great power when its hostility towards us is higher than we realized."

"I had not realized myself that it’s actually gotten worse. The Chinese treatment of the United States has gotten more unfair, if I can put it that way, than was the case three years ago when I wrote my book trying to sound the alarm."

"I think if anything is malicious… when somebody can look at harvesting and selling the little heart… of a baby who has been freshly killed — if someone can look at trading that body part for money — if anything is malicious, I think that’s malicious: treating people like things."

"When you get to do a one-shot, the whole world is open to you. It’s almost harder to decide what story to tell when you have the freedom to do anything you want!"

"For me, the story always comes from character whether they're ponies or robots or aliens."

"Normally death don't really bother me, I'm from southside Stockton. I’m all too familiar with how some family reunions only ever take place on graveyard grass, and a hole can be a safe haven for a soul in this mortal game of hide and go seek. But, there is something so different about Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and the countless others."

"She was gone into the mass of thousands of worshipers painting white tilaks on their foreheads and purifying themselves with Puja as they recited sutras over candles and milk with coconut shells. I walked on, with a sorrow that time has never extinguished."

"To leave this region with a rupee may be immoral."

"We feel society would best be served, not so much by a pill for intellect or sexuality, but by one for compassion. A medicine for altruism. Perhaps we have one."

"It would be naïve to conclude there are no unknown extra-dimensional fields. Writing his equations by a whale oil lamp, Maxwell characterized electromagnetism. Newton's gravity was discarded by Leibnitz as occult."

"Remember not to let your head get too far from your heart."

"We bent to our task, the relentless assessment of our minds. There was only ink and haste, ghostly recall, hopeful conjecture, and the rare minor certainty."

"We have found noble action is not elitist or affluent, but conferred by the democratic vision; our duty is to everyone. Ultimately, our effort is for the smallest of things, for the children."

"I dress, act, and speak quite conservatively, striving to be forgettable, to leave no memory. One must be a gray man, perhaps a mild accountant of little means, to hide without a trace personal responsibility for the ecstacies, the orgasmic religiosities in millions of minds."

"She is a reminder of why we risk our lives for medicines. Much of the world is like this precious one, locked in a cruel room. We wish to be, if you will, the firemen."

"There is fission then fusion of thought and feeling, as forgiveness for all blasts heavenward. Dissolute chaos renders to absolute certainty; wrenching ignominy and confusion transmute to clarity and peace. The tranquil vales of Elysium are welcoming us."

"There is no cure-all. Every species needs its own management, its own policies, and everything needs its own strategy. There’s no magic button. I take that back. There is a magic button, right? There is one magic button and that is to cease all habitat destruction and hunting practices immediately. But there’s a very big difference between being an optimist and being a realist. And that “magic button” is unrealistic. There’s absolutely no way the entire world stops encroaching on wildlife habitat and taking wildlife. So without that being a possibility, and it’s not, the thing that makes wildlife sciences so difficult is that each animal, whether it’s an insect or a rhinoceros, needs its own management plan."

"it’s so important to understand why these creatures went extinct. What mistakes we as humans made to drive them to extinction and learn from that and implement techniques to avoid that for other species. So, for me, every expedition is a learning process because there’s such an important biological takeaway that we as humans have made. And the best way to learn from them is to experience them."

"Our dating of the Indo-Aryan element in the Mitanni texts is based purely and simply on written documents offering datable contexts. While we cannot with certainty push these dates prior to the fifteenth century BC. It should not be forgotten that the Indic elements seem to be little more than the residue of a dead language in Hurrian, and that the symbiosis that produced the Mitanni may have taken place centuries earlier."

"Mallory ended his overview of the “IE problem” (1973: 60) with this perceptive statement: “a solution to the problem will more than likely be as dependent on a re-examination of the methodology and terminology involved as much as on the actual data themselves.”"

"In his earlier works, Mallory himself, acknowledged that theories pertaining to an Asian homeland had long fallen out of repute, "but one wonders if this is not just partly due to the ridicule heaped upon them by their opponents rather than reasoned dismissal" ... "all too often has one discredited line of argument been used to ridicule another theory which came to the same conclusion" (Mallory 1975, 56)."

"‘The temptation to read every cline on a map of genetic features as a migration and tie it to a putative linguistic movement has led to ostensibly circular reasoning. … [T]here is an assumed correlation between language and human physical type. … [But] there is no requirement whatsoever that the trail of language shift should also leave a clearly defined genetic trail as well. Nor for that matter can we assume that if we do find a genetic trail, this necessarily resulted in a language shift favourable for those carrying the gene rather than their absorption by local populations’"

"For the present it will be better to hold all of these mutually conflicting theories in the backs of our minds and preclude no solution to the homeland problem."

"One linguist’s Indo-European names become another’s proto-Basque, or Caucasian or anything else."

""as the IE homeland problem involves a spatial definition of a prehistoric linguistic construct, the utility of any other discipline, such as archaeology, depends on whether a linguistic entity can be translated into something discernable in the archaeological record. In short, any solution not purely linguistic must involve some form of indirect inference whose own premises are usually, if not invariably, far from demonstrated" (Mallory 1997, 94)."

"Will the 'real' linguist please stand up? It should be obvious that linguists have as much difficulty in establishing the chronological relationships between loanwords as any other 'historical science'" (98)."

"Mallory (1997) agrees that there is solid evidence in both European and Asiatic stocks for Proto-Indo-European cereals, as well as the agricultural terminology required to process them. He notes that "while the economic emphasis of the immediate ancestors of the Indo-Iranians may have been towards pastoralism there is good evidence that they too are derived from a mixed agricultural population" (236-237)"