Johannes Kepler was born today in 1571. Using the work of Tycho Brahe, he confirmed and expanded Copernicus’ theories that the sun was the center of the planetary system and not the earth (which ran counter to official teaching at the time). Kepler was at the forefront of what would become the Scientific Revolution and an understanding of the principles and the laws of planetary motion that were further confirmed by Newton almost 70 years later. Kepler lived during a period when the understanding of everything in Europe was changing: religion, society, finance, and cosmology. The Reformation was taking place, the crusades had exposed Europe to other complex cultures, free markets were developing, and the globe had been circumnavigated.
Category Archives: Quotes
Remember How We Forgot—Shane Koyczan and Hannah Epperson
Watch this and remember how beautiful, brief, wonderful, and so full of potential this life is. So good.
More about Shane Koyczan here. Hannah Epperson music here.
Share This
A Different Category
A scene rom the movie Gandhi:
Prosecutor: [reading from Gandhi’s material] “‘…Non-cooperation has one aim: the overthrow of the [British] government. Sedition must become our creed. We must give no quarter nor can we expect any.’ Do you deny writing it?”
Gandhi: “Not at all. And I will save the courts time by stating under oath that to this day I believe that non-cooperation with evil is a duty, and that I believe British rule of India is evil.”
Prosecutor: “The prosecution rests, my lord.”
Judge: “I presume you are conducting your own defense, Mr. Gandhi?”
Gandhi: “I have no defense, my lord. I am guilty as charged. And if you truly believe in the system of law which you administer in our country, then you must inflict on me the severest penalty possible.”
[The judge hesitates…seemingly overwhelmed and awed by Gandhi’s words.]
Judge: “It is impossible for me to ignore that you are in a different category from any person I have tried, or are likely to try. Nevertheless, I sentence you to six years in prison [murmuring and shouting among those gathered in the court]…But if our Majesty’s government should, at some later date, see fit to reduce the term, no one will be better pleased than I.”
Share This
Institutionalized
“These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.”
—Morgan Freeman’s character “Red” in The Shawshank Redemption
Share This