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Shawn
https://www.goodreads.com/shawn
“The greatest disgrace of humankind is the failure of the strong to protect the weak.
“There is nothing that exists so great or marvelous that over time mankind does not admire it less and less.”
― On the Nature of Things
― On the Nature of Things
“Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky”
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“That there is a silent genocide of women and girls in the homes, communities and just everywhere is not a new story. That my great grandmother, grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, aunt, sister, cousin, niece, housemaid, co-worker, friend, neighbor and just about every female shares the same pain is not a new story. What is new in this story is how I stood up to say, “Never again.” Never again will a girl or woman get raped, killed, drop out of school, be harmed by our culture or be sexually enslaved. That is as long as I know about it. Never Again--not to any woman or girl again is the new story.”
― Never Again: Not to Any Woman or Girl Again
― Never Again: Not to Any Woman or Girl Again
“Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.”
― On the Nature of Things
― On the Nature of Things
“But Mandelbrot continued to feel oppressed by France’s purist mathematical establishment. “I saw no compatibility between a university position in France and my still-burning wild ambition,” he writes. So, spurred by the return to power in 1958 of Charles de Gaulle (for whom Mandelbrot seems to have had a special loathing), he accepted the offer of a summer job at IBM in Yorktown Heights, north of New York City. There he found his scientific home. As a large and somewhat bureaucratic corporation, IBM would hardly seem a suitable playground for a self-styled maverick. The late 1950s, though, were the beginning of a golden age of pure research at IBM. “We can easily afford a few great scientists doing their own thing,” the director of research told Mandelbrot on his arrival. Best of all, he could use IBM’s computers to make geometric pictures. Programming back then was a laborious business that involved transporting punch cards from one facility to another in the backs of station wagons.”
― When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought
― When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought
Shawn’s 2025 Year in Books
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