According to the story, Morgenbesser was in a New York diner ordering dessert. The waitress told him he had two choices, apple pie and blueberry pie. "Apple," Morgenbesser said.

A few minutes later the waitress came back and hold him, oh yes, they also have cherry pie.

"In that case," said Morgenbesser, "I'll have the blueberry."

Cherry pie is what Arrow calls an "irrelevant alternative." It is irrelevant because, given the chance to order cherry pie, Morgenbesser rejected it. But something you don't want anyways shouldn't cause you to change what you do want.

...

The Great Flip-Flop is an example of a vote failing to meet independence of irrelevant alternatives.

Doctors are gentlemen and a gentleman's hands are clean.

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man learned in seven years.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

...

If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that's below. And they haven't even begun to pull the knife out, much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.

The main job of theoretical physics is to prove yourself wrong as soon as possible.

He who knows one, knows none.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

It is because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that’ll do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he can’t escape from.

“Tommy,” Willie said. “I love you, you son of a bitch, and don’t die.”

Thomas Hudson looked at him without moving his head.

“Try to understand if it isn’t too hard.”

Thomas Hudson looked at him. He felt far away now and there were no problems at all. He felt the ship gathering her speed and the lovely throb of her engines against his shoulder blades which rested against the boards. He looked up and there was the sky that he had always loved and he looked across the great lagoon that he was quite sure, now, he would never paint and he eased his position a little to lessen the pain. The engines were around three thousand now, he thought, and they came through the deck and into him.

“I think I understand, Willie,” he said.

“Oh shit,” Willie said. “You never understand anybody that loves you.”

...

'Warren,' she said, 'he has come home to die: 
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.' 

'Home,' he mocked gently. 

'Yes, what else but home? 
It all depends on what you mean by home. 
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more 
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us 
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.'

'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, 
They have to take you in.'

'I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.'

...

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Half awake and sleeping on my feet

wrapped up in life. be back shortly.

"Now statistics prove, prove that you’ve one birthday. Ahhh, but there are 364 unbirthdays!"

"Why, then today is my unbirthday too!"

"It is? In that case… a very merry unbirthday!"

on this international women's day, here's a photo of a formidable women from my family: Eduwiges de Villers (my great grandma). who, along with my great grandfather, governed the beautiful state of chiapas in southern mexico in the 1930s.

here she is chilling.

You never had a camera in my head!

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.