"When he found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts, he preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. That is the heart of science." - Astronomer Carl Sagan referring to Johannes Kepler in the Cosmos series, The Harmony of the Worlds [Episode 3].
2/9/2016
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit" - Aristotle quoting from his writing in Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7.
2/2/2016, 2/28/2019
"It's an incredible success, and we physicists can boast about it." - Hitoshi Murayama, theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, in the October 2015 issue of Discover magazine, regarding "Pretty much everything is explained by the Standard Model" of quantum physics. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is considered to be the complex machine ever built. It's prime motivation for being built was to find the Higgs boson, which is responsible for the Higgs field that is thought to give mass to particles by virtue of how they interact with it. Photons, for instance have no mass because they do not interact. Photons, conversely, do have mass because of interaction. Interestingly - but not surprisingly - there is rigorous debate over whether or not the photon is massless.
1/26/2016
"I would have been sorry for the Dear Lord because the theory is correct." - Albert Einstein, in response to a student's question regarding what he would have thought if the observations of astronomers did not agree with general relativity's prediction. This was part of a story in the October 2015 issue of Smithsonian magazine. 2015 marked the 100-year anniversary of Einstein's public presentation of his theory of general relativity.
1/19/2016
"Burt and I were issued flight plans instead of birth certificates." - Dick Rutan, record-setting test pilot and brother of equally accomplished flyer and aircraft designer Burt Rutan. This comment is the opening sentence in an article in the October 2015 issue of Popular Science magazine. Scaled Composites is responsible for many aerospace and aviation 'first,' with a concentration on composite airframes.
1/12/2016
"There's more than one way to look at a problem, and they all may be right." -- General Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army, leader of all Coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War.
1/5/2016
"If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons." - Anon. This part of a quotation is ascribed to various economists (most often Milton Friedman) and commentators in regard to people and systems which buck modern mechanization while touting the virtues of manual labor. The story's setting is usually a canal project, ore mine, or other venue requiring massive digging and a proprietor's boast of greater concern for the rapid replacement of human workers with machines. An amazingly thorough investigation into the matter is presented by The Quote Investigator. See also Techno-Skeptics' Objection Growing Louder
12/29/2015
"There needs to be something to connect the shield of the transmission line to, otherwise it is a bit like one hand clapping." - Joel Hallas (W1ZR), January 2016 QST column: "The Doctor Is In"
12/22/2015
"Personally, I liked the University. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college, you don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector. They expect results." Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), in Ghostbusters. While funny, it must be recognized that a lot of valuable research and applications adaptable to industry comes from universities and a lot of crap comes from "out there."
12/15/2015
"Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable." – Joseph W. Krutch, writer and naturalist. Having passed on in 1970, he wrote this without even imagining how nearly half a century later entire populations would be walking around with their gazed inexorably fixed on a small, thin communications box, while being largely unaware of what was happening around them.
12/8/2015
"We have heard that some cats have seven and others nine lives, but darned if we don't believe radio bugs have cats outclassed." - Hiram Percy Maxim, in the April 1919 edition of QST magazine, commenting in "QST" Again (this is the actual document), on the surge of requests for the publication to resume printing after the amateur radio broadcasting ban was lifted once World War I ended. Further, "As we think over the dreary two years of amateur deadness, it's a real hard job to believe that any of us are still in existence ..."
12/1/2015
"For most of us, the times when we go astray are happily forgettable. In Einstein's case, even the mistakes are noteworthy." - Lawrence M. Krauss, in What Einstein Got Wrong, appearing in the September 2015 issue of Scientific American.
11/24/2015
"Sometimes someone would stand behind the airplane and start whistling through the tailpipe like the engine was starting and you'd scramble out of there real quick!" - John Borry, a plane captain and jet mechanic with VF-13 aboard Shangri La, who didn't like crawling down the Vought F-8 Crusader engine intake (October 2015 Air & Space magazine).
11/17/2015
"The postmodernists are right about science, just up to the point that they are terribly wrong. Let me offer a piece of advice. Never get on an airplane designed by a postmodernist! Scientific knowledge deserves special status for an obvious reason: Science works. When you need real answers, nothing else even comes close." - Jeff Hester, columnist, November 2015 Astronomy magazine.
11/10/2015
"Anything that's always connected, always sending data—that's something a nearby attacker can latch on to," says Craig Young, senior security researcher at the risk management firm Tripwire, as quoted in October 2015 issue of This Old House magazine column "How to Hack-Proof e."
11/3/2015
"Still have my 'RF Engineers' mug. To this day, I still ain't got a clue what all the charts and graphs on it mean, but I sure feel smart when I'm drinking coffee from it." - Mr. Kim Stricker. Kim is a fellow model airplane builder and flyer who lives and thrives in the Midwest. He is a huge aficionado of / cum lay expert on the vintage Cox engines. He and I both owned Jetco Shark 15 control line airplanes as kids; that is the model in the picture. Kim is also a licensed pilot and owns a homebuilt Pietenpol. Big motorcycles and 2nd Amendment hardware are also among his many interests. Many of his aviation photos have been featured in the local newspaper. Kim has my vote for the "Man Most Living Life to the Fullest" award (if, of course, there was one).
10/27/2015
"Sometime in the past 30 years, electronics got so complex and automated that product manufacturers took control away from us, and radio stations became a number. But a radio station is not a number. It is a place, and it has 'width.' How wide it is depends on how far away you are from the station, how powerful it is, and how your radio was designed." - Heathkit Explorer Jr.™ webpage note.
10/20/2015
"I would rather be a great scientific investigator than a great engineer; but would rather be a second-rate engineer than a second-rate investigator." - Heinrich Hertz in a letter to his parents in October, 1877
10/13/2015
"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems." - John W. Gardner, Stanford University alum and former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.
10/6/2015
"Nothing is impossible for the man that doesn't have to do the work." This is universally attributed to someone named Cohn; i.e., Cohn's Law.
9/29/2015
The number of statements
uttered verbally and/or in print is uncountable. Some are more noteworthy than others either
because of sheer brilliance, good humor, or utter inanity. We all hope our own remembered
words, if any, fall into one of the first two categories rather than the third. I do a lot
of reading and find many notable quotes to use that fit the theme of RF Cafe; they fall into
all three categories. I always try to verify quotes from original sources or at least from
printed books like
