This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We in the US can learn a good deal from studying those who achieve great things without having huge resources. this video is a strong statement against the mistake of Big Government thinking. imagine the access to health care we could achieve if we simply stepped back from our current unthinking debates and refactored the broken system.
Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer
The use of text messaging for propaganda purposes – known as “red-texting” – reveals another creative streak among China’s propaganda virtuosos. The practice may have grown out of a competition organized by one of China’s mobile phone operators to compose the most eloquent Party-admiring text message. Fast forward a few years, and senior telecom officials in Beijing are already busily attending “red-texting” symposia. “I really like these words of Chairman Mao: ‘The world is ours, we should unite for achievements. Responsibility and seriousness can conquer the world and the Chinese Communist Party members represent these qualities.’ These words are incisive and inspirational.” This is a text message that thirteen million mobile phone users in the Chinese city of Chongqing received one day in April 2009. Sent by Bo Xilai, the aggressive secretary of the city’s Communist Party who is speculated to have strong ambitions for a future in national politics, the messages were then forwarded another sixteen millions times. Not so bad for an odd quote from a long-dead Communist dictator.
Care | Corruption | Darkness | Education | Efficiency | Fear | Government | Justice | Model | Preference | Reading | Receive | Government |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?" She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands."
Children |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
It is fast approaching the point where I don't want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job.
Children |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.
Technologies that are "bad smart," by contrast, make certain choices and behaviors impossible. Smart gadgets in the latest generation of cars—breathalyzers that can check if we are sober, steering sensors that verify if we are drowsy, facial recognition technologies that confirm we are who we say we are—seek to limit, not to expand, what we can do. This may be an acceptable price to pay in situations where lives are at stake, such as driving, but we must resist any attempt to universalize this logic. The "smart bench"—an art project by designers JooYoun Paek and David Jimison that aims to illustrate the dangers of living in a city that is too smart—cleverly makes this point. Equipped with a timer and sensors, the bench starts tilting after a set time, creating an incline that eventually dumps its occupant. This might appeal to some American mayors, but it is the kind of smart technology that degrades the culture of urbanism—and our dignity.
Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease. With "smart" technology in the ascendant, it will be hard to resist the allure of a frictionless, problem-free future. When Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, says that "people will spend less time trying to get technology to work…because it will just be seamless," he is not wrong: This is the future we're headed toward. But not all of us will want to go there. A more humane smart-design paradigm would happily acknowledge that the task of technology is not to liberate us from problem-solving. Rather, we need to enroll smart technology in helping us with problem-solving. What we want is not a life where friction and frustrations have been carefully designed out, but a life where we can overcome the frictions and frustrations that stand in our way. Truly smart technologies will remind us that we are not mere automatons who assist big data in asking and answering questions. Unless designers of smart technologies take stock of the complexity and richness of the lived human experience—with its gaps, challenges and conflicts—their inventions will be destined for the SmartBin of history.
Achievement | Balance | Behavior | Better | Failure | People | Regret | Right | Shame | Space | Failure | Trial | Happiness |
Estelle R. Ramey, born Stella Rosemary Rubin
As an endocrinologist in good standing, I was startled to learn that ovarian hormones are toxic to brain cells.
Hospitality | Listening | Men | Thinking | Tradition | Old |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
In general, my children refused to eat anything that hadn't danced on TV.
Children |
From our position of being reasonably well off and comfortable, [perhaps] university professors, we tend to be patronizing about the poor in a very specific sense, which is that we tend to think, ‘Why don’t they take more responsibility for their lives?’ And what we are forgetting is that the richer you are the less responsibility you need to take for your own life because everything is taken care for you. And the poorer you are the more you have to be responsible for everything about your life… My lesson is to stop berating people for not being responsible and start to think of ways instead of providing the poor with the luxury that we all have, which is that a lot of decisions are taken for us. If we do nothing, we are on the right track. For most of the poor, if they do nothing, they are on the wrong track.
Aid | Capitalism | Conversation | Good | Ideas | Play | Policy | Reason | Work | Think |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.
Children |
The greatest power in the world is the power our thought, for it is Creative Mind in action.
Education | History | Sense | Skepticism |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
Children |
Since technology, like gas, will fill any conceptual space provided, Leo Marx, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes it as a “hazardous concept” that may “stifle and obfuscate analytic thinking”. He notes, “Because of its peculiar susceptibility to reification, to being endowed with the magical power of an autonomous entity, technology is a major contributant to that gathering sense… of political impotence. The popularity of the belief that technology is the primary force shaping the postmodern world is a measure of our.. neglect of moral and political standards, in making decisive choices about the direction of society.”
Cost | Day | Knowledge | Men | Opposition | Organization | Public | Will |
Now listen, Lam, he said, youÂ’re a nice egg but youÂ’ve got yourself poured into the wrong pan.