#toms

Santa Claus has nothing to do with it," the latke said. "Christmas and Hanukah are completely different things." "But different things can often blend together," said the pine tree. "Let me tell you a funny story about pagan rituals. ↗

— Lemony Snicket

#customs #hanukkah #time #funny

If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that "thing" walking back and forth in front of you, talking to you, is a great glob of these atoms in a very complex arrangement, such that the sheer complexity of it staggers the imagination as to what it can do? When we say we are a pile of atoms, we do not mean we are merely a pile of atoms, because a pile of atoms which is not repeated from one to the other might well have the possibilities which you see before you in the mirror. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#physics #richard-feynman #six-easy-pieces #change

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist's view, 'justice' is a search for workable customs. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#justice #society #men

Traditions that cease to evolve render themselves irrelevant or obsolete. And what's the problem with inventing new performance practices? Are customs being slandered? Do successful alternative diminish the value of traditional ones? *The argument that musicians must embrace conventional rituals is just as perilous as unilaterally rejecting them.* ↗

— David Cutler

#music #musicians #performance #performance-practice #traditions

[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#barbarism #customs #law #nature #self-centered

Future warns us through current symptoms in nature. ↗

— Toba Beta

#nature #present #symptoms #warning #nature

I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn't based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn't true. ↗

— Andy Rooney

#customs #falsehood #falsehoods #hoax #institutions

The void is 'not-being,' and no part of 'what is' is a 'not-being,'; for what 'is' in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not 'one': on the contrary, it is a 'many' infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk. ↗

— Aristotle

#atom #atomic #atomic-science #atoms #democritus

Now, come over here so I can pat you down." "But you don't have-" Percy stopped. "Uh, sure." He stood next to the armless statue. Terminus conducted a rigorous mental pat down. "You seem to be clean," Terminus decided. "Do you have anything to declare?" "Yes," Percy said. "I declare that this is stupid. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#declare #mental-pat-down #no-arms #percy-jackson #terminus

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. ↗

— Richard Adams

#belief #contingent #forces #heart #human