Posts from — June 2009

I bought a book (an actual book, without pictures or anything) waaaaay back in February when I was on a business trip, and last week I finally got around to finishing it. And there were two quotes that really stuck me from it that I’m relating to quite a bit right now. The first is this:

Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe… Belief fixes a granular universe and causes that universe to persist. Nothing can be allowed to change because that way your non-moving universe vanishes. Bit it moves of itself when you do not move. It evolves beyond you and is no longer accessible to you.

The way this strikes me is something which I’ve got a long and rambling post in a rough form that will hopefully get ejected from my head and onto the blog soon.

And then there was this, which I’m relating right now to the current healthcare debate/legislative process:

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

If you’re curious, the book was the fifth in the Dune series by Frank Herbert, which I reread for the first time since I was a teenager — man, did I not get that book back then. I’m still trying to figure it all out even now, as it’s stuffed with ideas about society and government and religion and addiction (drug and sex) and bioethics and race relations and more. Good, good stuff.