Tony's Garden

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “That you can now be called adult does not mean you have achieved your full power, only that you are able to acquire other and larger powers.” — E.E. “Doc” Smith BIRTHDAYS: 1601 Athanasius Kircher, German Jesuit priest, scholar, and polymath whose prolific work spanned natural philosophy, linguistics, geography, music, and…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Utopias seem to be much more achievable than we formerly believed them to be. Now we find ourselves presented with a completely different question: How can we avoid their definitive realization? … Utopias are achievable. Life marches toward utopias. And perhaps a new century is beginning, a century in which intellectuals…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right!” — Larry Niven BIRTHDAYS: 1777 Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician and physicist (often called the “Prince of Mathematicians”; contributions to number theory, statistics, electromagnetism,…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking.” — Henri Poincare BIRTHDAYS: 1854 Henri Poincaré, French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science who exerted profound influence across multiple disciplines through his prolific output of over 500 papers and 30 books.…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” — Harper Lee BIRTHDAYS: 1874 Karl Kraus, Austrian…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.” — Mary Wollstonecraft BIRTHDAYS: 1759 Mary Wollstonecraft, English writer, philosopher, and advocate for women’s…

Richard Mitchell THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “There is only one Education, and it has only one goal: the freedom of the mind. Anything that needs an adjective, be it civics education, or socialist education, or Christian education, or whatever-you-like education, is not education, and it has some different goal. The very existence of modified “educations”…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Don’t walk in front of me… I may not followDon’t walk behind me… I may not leadWalk beside me… just be my friend.” — Albert Camus BIRTHDAYS: 1677: Guillaume Coustou Sr., French sculptor (Chevaux de Marly). 1723: Giovanni Marco Rutini, Italian composer. 12 divertimenti, and Allegro from Sonata in F major…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “This is how we grow: by being defeated by greater and greater things.” — Rainer Maria Rilke BIRTHDAYS: 1620 John Graunt, English statistician and founder of demography. 1706 Giovanni Battista Martini, Italian composer. Domine, Ad Adjuvandum Me Festina, and Beatus Vir & Lauda Jerusalem 1743 Edmund Cartwright, English inventor of the…

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “All really great things are happening in slow and inconspicuous ways.” — Leo Tolstoy BIRTHDAYS: 1658, Giuseppe Torelli, Italian composer (Concerti Grossi). Trumpet Concerto in D Major, complete. 1682 Willem Ignatius Kerricx, Flemish architect, sculptor, and painter. MISCELLANEOUS: COULD THEY HAVE PICKED ANYTHING HARDER TO DO? Japan’s audacious sample-return mission to…