John Holsinger:  

John is from Modesto, California. John's schools include Beyer High School. John later attended Modesto Junior College (Sports Medicine) . Music John likes includes Brian Wilson, Led Zeppelin Official, Mike Post. Books John likes include Beverly Akerman's The Meaning of Children, Confessions of a Bookaholic, Fox in Socks. Movies John likes include Senna, The Hobbit, BASIC Series. TV shows John likes include Todd Hoffman from Gold Rush Alaska, Gold Rush, The Major League. One of John's favorite quotes is:""Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security as a whole does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger in the long run is no safer than exposure." -- Helen Keller ------------------------------------------------------------ "Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared." Edward "Eddie" Vernon Rickenbacker (World War I Flying Ace) ------------------------------------------------------------ "What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence; and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done something utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men." -- Godfrey Harold Hardy, mathematician (1877-1947) (Thanks to Jonathan Vos Post for publishing this quote.) ------------------------------------------------------------ "It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." --Theodore Roosevelt --------------------------------------------------------------- "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." ---Confucius --------------------------------------------------------------- "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather, the judgment that something else is more important than fear." -- Ambrose Redmoon (Thanks to Paul Jon, comic strip artist and creator of the Fort Knox comic strip, for publishing this quote beside a very moving and serious remembrance panel, on Sept. 11, 2011.) ------------------------------------------------------------- "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." (--Marianne Williamson: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles", Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3) (Often mis-attributed to Nelson Mandela, because he used this quote in his inaugural address.) ------------------------------------------------------------- ("A friend of mine of many years puts it this way...) 'YOU used to have ISSUES... you've dealt with that, and now you have HISTORY... ' "-- Lloyd Mcdaniel, webmaster to sci-fi writer Ben Bova ------------------------------------------------------------- There is a Latin phrase associated with military actions: “Amat victoria curam.“ It translates as “Victory loves careful preparation.” You would be amazed at what you can accomplish with planning. -- (Taken from a Washington Post online article, which appeared on 6.20.'11, called "7 Secrets Of The Very Rich.") --------------------------------------------------------------- If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. - Rene Descartes ------------------------------------------------------------- The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today. -- Chinese proverb. -------------------------------------------------------------- "I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle." -- Marilyn Monroe ------------------------------------------------------------ "A fool looks for happiness in the distance; a wise man finds it under his feet." --James Oppenheim ------------------------------------------------------------ Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." --Georges Santayana (full quote - not the shorthand, bowdlerized quote which is usually quoted. This puts a totally different spin on Santayana's point. ------------------------------------- (It is not so much Santayana's point, in writing the above passage, that, as a people, we must have an elephant's cultural ( or scientific) memory, that is, that we should remember memes --(that is, artifacts of behavior based on culturally- transmitted- by- imitation things in our lives) --forever. According to Spider Robinson's sci-fi story, Melancholy Elephants, there is a very real sense, indeed, in which too much of that good thing is a BAD thing for a society, No, Santayana's point is subtle but twofold: both that A) every cultural and meme-based change ( -- which is most of our daily behavior -- ) must ALWAYS function evolutionarily in its own right, "in the moment," as it were, on its own terms, and for its own survival's sake, and B) that wholesale change -- e.g., as exemplified and typified by what happened when the "Cargo Cults" took over after W. W. II in New Guinea and elsewhere in the S. Pacific, such changes being "cut from whole cloth" as they were-- is a sign and signal and symptom of a culture's lapse into poor memetic (cultural-transmission-of-behavioral) health. I am talking here about change which occurs without a full cultural context and without full cultural support backing it up, and which change indeed consists "merely" of those faddish elements which necessarily bring culture-clash with more "healthy" cultures; such change is always disastrous!) Editorial: I am personally a believer in the currently-radical notion that this necessary incrementalism, which tests the meme's survival skills at each step -- that is, it tests its sustainability, or "legs" -- is a necessary ingredient in any "culture-wars-" based or difficult- to- achieve or "sought- by- activists" radical social ( or scientific) change, as well. That includes you, both extremist Tea Partiers who want government out of their lives in all respects, while failing to realize that they depend on government too, and radical Occupiers who want to break into buildings and wreck things. John Lennon's quote from Revolution applies: "if you want money for minds that hate, all I can tell you is brother you have to wait." -------------------------------------------------------------- <This quote goes well with De Monchaux's, below, as well as Wil McCarthy's.; from my inventor's perspective, Santayana, De Monchaux, and McCarthy are all describing different perspectives on the inventive process; but, in describing it, they are all making practically the same point, from a different point of view.> ---------------------------------------------------- “Something is made of something else,” ( Nicholas De Monchaux explains, both in terms of material, but also structure.) (That is:) "A space suit is made out of a flight suit, a Goodrich tire, a bra, a girdle, a raincoat, a tomato worm. An American rocket ship is made out of a nuclear weapon, and a German ballistic missile; a “space program” — a new organization with new goals — is made out of preexisting military, scholarly, and industrial institutions and techniques." -- Nicholas De Monchaux, in Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo. (Source: "The ...Expand for more