Wordgrove Post & Review ~ 12/13/20

12/13/2020 by Dan Jack/BarTalk

Quoted in The Grove: machine

If you want a machine to be able to interact with people, it better not do things that are surprising to people.
~Rodney Brooks

It’s hard to guess how smart the machines are, but a good rule of thumb is that they’re always smarter than you think.
~Daniel H Wilson

Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
~Alan Turing

EndQuote:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
~Arthur C Clarke

Exercise Prompt for 12/20: gift

Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is.
~Robert M Pirsig

Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.
~Whoopi Goldberg

I watched the piles of feces go up the conveyor belt… They made their way through the machine… A few minutes later I took a long taste of the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water.
~Bill Gates

The chrysanthemums’ astringent fragrance comes
Each year to disguise the clanking mechanism
Of machine within machine within machine.
~Wallace Stevens

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.
~Alan M Eddison

~ ~

Posted from the Grove

Remember, machines don’t forgive.
~Joel Salatin

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.
~Lou Gerstner

Compassion–that’s the one thing no machine ever had. Maybe it’s the one thing that keeps man ahead of them.
~D C Fontana

We are all a people in need. We are not perfect. We are not machines. We make mistakes. We need grace. We need compassion. We need help at times. We need other people. And that’s okay.
~Jamie Tworkowski

The thing that we possess, that machines don’t, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.
~Herbie Hancock

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
~Isaac Asimov

~Andrea Dorfman: Flawed (12:35)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc5bSu1QMrE

How to Show, Not Tell: The Complete Writing Guide (27:18)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAKcbvioxFk

Wherever you see a man who gives someone else’s corruption, someone else’s prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us.
~John Jay Chapman

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.
~Will Durant

I can make them voting machines sing Home Sweet Home.
~Earl Long

The machine conceals the machinations.
~Ursula K Le Guin

Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.
~Walter Benjamin

The single best machine to measure trust is a human being. We haven’t figured out a metric that works better than our own sort of, like, ‘There’s something fishy about you.’
~Simon Sinek

I think politics is like an X-ray machine: Everything is found out eventually.
~Nicolle Wallace

Parties don’t lose overnight, there is a gradual erosion of their base and electoral machine, which leads to sometimes cataclysmic defeat.
~John McDonnell

If you knew how much information the campaigns had on you, you’d turn off your machines. And I mean that literally.
~Joe Trippi

I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.
~Edward Snowden

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
~Henry David Thoreau

I spend all day figuring out how to beat the machine and knock the crap out of the political power structure.
~Bella Abzug

VIDEO:

We all use something – you can’t drill holes with your fingers. Whether it’s a knife, a needle, or a machine, we all need the help of a device.
~Jonathan Ive

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man’s back and place it on the broad back of the machine.
~Henry Ford

Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
~W H Auden

I see through my eyes; the camera is just a machine to record it for me.
~Juergen Teller

The Balopticon [a machine that projects photos on canvas to trace the lines] is an evil, inartistic, habit-forming, lazy and vicious machine! It also is a useful, time-saving, practical and helpful one. I use one often – and am thoroughly ashamed of it. I hide it whenever I hear people coming.
~Norman Rockwell

If someone is trying to skip the struggle – which is the creative job – our machines today, the technology that we have, can help the person, but it is only momentary. On the other hand, if you are creative, you have the skill, and you are hardworking, technology can only make you superior.
~Arijit Singh

If the machines can take the drudgery out of it and just leave us with the joy of drawing, then that’s the best of both worlds – and I’ll use those computers!
~Don Bluth

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.
~Lewis Mumford

The soul paints itself in our machines.
~Joseph Joubert

~Dust: The Stowaway (12:13) consequences
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHp7ngBVnQs

~Dust: Sunshine Room (11:33) generations in their time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A9yTBqwgCk

~Charlie Chaplin: The Feeding Machine (4:10) classic frenzy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwahG1s4dqI

Technology: “the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.”
~Max Frisch

Suppose you could be hooked up to a hypothetical ‘experience machine’ that, for the rest of your life, would stimulate your brain and give you any positive feelings you desire. Most people to whom I offer this imaginary choice refuse the machine. It is not just positive feelings we want: we want to be entitled to our positive feelings.
~Martin Seligman

Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
~Bertrand Russell

The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that gets staged over a sequence of dramatic moments, so you empathize with the characters without really thinking about it too much. It is a really powerful tool for imagining yourself in other people’s situations.
~Ira Glass

Virtual reality is the ‘ultimate empathy machine.’ These experiences are more than documentaries. They’re opportunities to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.
~Chris Milk

Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.
~Donna J Haraway

The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things.
~Sherwood Anderson

Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being?
~Ray Bradbury

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?
~Pablo Casals

MUSIC:

The planet’s spinning a thousand miles an hour around this gigantic nuclear explosion while these people roll these machines with rubber tires over this hard surface that we’ve laid down over the planet so that we can easily move ourselves back and forth.
~Joe Rogan

Listening to music and driving – that’s the best way to listen to music. You just kind of zone out. Driving’s so futuristic – you’re barely putting in any effort, and this huge machine is pummeling down a strip of concrete.
~Galcher Lustwerk

Jazz is the folk music of the machine age.
~Paul Whiteman

Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.
~Hans Zimmer

~Michael Peterson: Wichita Lineman (3:30) Glen Campbell tribute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9zziTq3tE&ab_channel

-or-

~Ozark (Netflix): Wichita Lineman (4:19) a mercy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M7my1jISxE&ab_channel

~Florence + The Machine: Hunger (4:31) something, it’s universal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GHXEGz3PJg

~Animusic: Resonant Chamber (4:27) pluckin’ good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toXNVbvFXyk

~MisterWives: Machine (3:57) shades of mad max
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhC2c6N-cFM

~Postmodern Jukebox: Blue Christmas, feat. Kate Davis (3:29)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F47GKeoRo_s

-or-

PostModern Jukebox (Scott Bradlee/Hannah Gill): White Christmas (3:20)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB2xGzZ81N0

Jazz is the folk music of the machine age.
~Paul Whiteman

Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.
~Hans Zimmer

Do you realize if it weren’t for Edison we’d be watching TV by candlelight?
~Al Boliska

As far as I’m concerned, progress peaked with frozen pizza.
~Steven E. de Souza/Doug Richardson

Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, “I’m almost out of typing paper. What do I do?” “Just use copier machine paper,” she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.
~Dave Barry

I have the oldest typewriter in the world. It types in pencil.
~Steven Wright

#WhenIWasYourAge: We had to open all doors by ourselves. None of them knew we were coming.
~Neil deGrasse Tyson

I have an answering machine in my car. It says, I’m home now. But leave a message and I’ll call when I’m out.
~Steven Wright

Just done it again. I looked for the time at the top of a magazine page.
~Andy Lee

I’ve got a phone,
answer machine, TV set,
computer, hand grenade
– everything you need
to run a business in
Los Angeles.
~Ice T

I want to get a vending machine, with fun sized candy bars, and the glass in front is a magnifying glass. You’ll be mad, but it will be too late.
~Mitch Hedberg

You can’t expect to hit the jackpot if you don’t put a few nickels in the machine.
~Flip Wilson

Slot machines are like crack for old people.
~Keenen Ivory Wayans

The diet book is one of those fool-and-money separation devices that seems, like roulette or slot machines, never to lose its power.
~Christopher Hitchens

You know how Bed Bath & Beyond sells those white noise machines that help you sleep? And they usually make ocean noises? I want one that’s just David Gergen gently muttering about the economy.
~Jessi Klein

People have long feared that mechanization might cause mass unemployment. This never happened because, as old professions became obsolete, new professions evolved, and there was always something humans could do better than machines. Yet this is not a law of nature, and nothing guarantees it will continue to be like that in the future.
~Yuval Noah Harari

Machines can do things cheaper and better. We’re very used to that in banking, for example. ATM machines are better than tellers if you want a simple transaction. They’re faster, they’re less trouble, they’re more reliable, so they put tellers out of work.
~Geoffrey Hinton

Man seems to be a rickety poor sort of thing, any way you take him; a kind of British Museum of infirmities and inferiorities. He is always undergoing repairs. A machine that was as unreliable as he is would have no market.
~Mark Twain

The machine, yes, the machine, never wastes anybody’s time never watches the foreman, never talks back.
~Carl Sandburg

I’m afraid for all those who’ll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!
~Henrik Ibsen

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still.
~Goldwin Smith

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.
~Karl Marx

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
~Karl Marx

And a revolution of automation finds machines replacing men in the mines and mills of America, without replacing their incomes or their training or their needs to pay the family doctor, grocer and landlord.
~John F Kennedy

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.
~John F Kennedy

~ ~

@Writers Platform

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
~William Strunk, Jr

I write slowly, and I write many, many drafts. I probably have to work as hard as anyone, and maybe harder, to finish a poem. I often write a poem over years, because it takes me a long time to figure out what to say and how best to say it.
~Philip Schultz

The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself
~Don Paterson

The word ‘novel’ carries, for me, a weight as ominous, all-consuming and unforgiving as any Job encountered.
~Philip Schultz

When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image.
~Mohsin Hamid

Calligraphy, a spiritual art that has been forgotten in favor of an emotionless keyboard.
~Stefan Boldisor

Before the typewriter, this was a booming career path, as nearly every major business needed a competent and proficient penman on hand… during the golden age of penmanship (roughly 1860 to 1930).
~Master Penman Jake Weidmann

I like the process of pencil and paper as opposed to a machine. I think the writing is better when it’s done in handwriting.
~Nelson DeMille

The pen is mightier than the sword, and the typewriter is mightier than both.
~Evan Esar

The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.
~Northrop Frye

Glass Table:

~GaryBob @NutNut Fountain in There

Once And Forever

Once upon a hillside, there lived a funny old man in a cottage made of antlers. He wore a tartan tunic and had a beard as long as time. His breakfast was bones and his lunch was flesh. His dinner was life and his supper was fresh. He spoke in funny runes and read in a dreadfully loud shout. He stoked the fire very firmly to keep it from going out. From his cottage he could see through the shadows to the Sea. And at half-past two he drank blueberry tea. And as he sipped the last drops and basked in the bliss, he told funny old stories which began like this…

Once upon a dune, there lived a bizarre young girl in a tent made of silk. She wore a flowing robe and goggles made of frozen tears. Her breakfast was sand and her lunch was dry. Her dinner was bland and her supper was wry. She spoke in bizarre rhymes and read in a frightfully flat monotone. She spent hot afternoons by the gramophone. From her silk tent she could see through the shadows to the Sea. And at the midnight hour, under the blazing moon, she danced in the crystal grove. And as she glowed and basked in the bliss, she told bizarre young stories which began like this…

Once upon a bridge, there lived a strange dark man in a guardhouse made of stone. He wore a seersucker suit and bright straw hat. His breakfast was kippers and his lunch was fine. His dinner was flippers and his supper was wine. He spoke in strange lures and read in a seductively deep tome. Though his eyes often wandered, his heart would rarely roam. From his guardhouse he could see through the shadows to the Sea. On Wednesdays he swam, swiftly from shore to shore. And as he floated and basked in the bliss, he told strange dark stories which began like this…

Once upon a swamp, there lived a quirky bright witch in a hovel made of flowers. She wore a tattered cloak with a dagger at her side. Her breakfast was budding and her lunch was nettles. Her dinner was wilting and her supper was petals. She spoke in bright spells and read in cryptic signs. She brewed nightshade elixirs and herbal brines. From her hovel she could see through the shadows to the Sea. Every noontide she chanted in the clearing by the brook. And as she sang and basked in the bliss, she told quirky bright stories which began like this…

Once upon a thimble, there lived an odd little wisp in a palace made of thread. It held the spark of inspiration in its aurora-eyes. Its breakfast was past and its lunch was ever. Its dinner was last and its supper was never. It spoke in odd lines and read from an infinite loom. In winter it gave the amaranth its effortless bloom. From its palace it could see through the shadows to the Sea. And at every dawn, waiting it shall be. And as the first rays break and it basks in the bliss, it tells odd little stories that begin like this…

Each line a droplet in the vast inventories. Once and forever upon the Sea of Stories.

[Finishing schools] are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, “Into how little space a human being can be crushed?” I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move…
~Olive Schreiner

The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.
~Rick Riordan

Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do…Maybe it’s the same with people,” Hugo continued. “If you lose your purpose…it’s like you’re broken.
~Brian Selznick

The mechanic, when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and asking the assistance of some divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows that something is too large or too small; that there is something wrong with his machine; and he goes to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, until the wheel will turn.
~Robert Green Ingersoll

There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works.
~John Steinbeck

Exercise Prompt: machine

People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.
~Rick Riordan

There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works.
~John Steinbeck

The Exercise:

~BarTalk:

process

machine smoke
high mountain air
rain washed
out to dry in the sun
clean again

Note on Quotes

Words machined down to their finest tolerance,
Arranged and assembled
Ideas garbed in their sturdiest work clothes
Dreams, hope and visions in their prettiest dresses

Today’s Episode

Drama and farce and tragedy
Romance, politics and comedy
Heroes and villains of history
Unvirtuous virtual viewing machine

Epic in scope the sagas of men
Epochs and ages, the series ends
Happy or not, you, they and we
A season’s TV for the galaxy

5-7-5-7-7

liberals before
wanted their ballots to count
conservatives now
doubt the machines in their turn
voters die, machines remain

5-7-5 x 3

bits of grime and grit
sins of the soul to machines
death, junk pile, the grave
~
manufactured love
designed, machined happiness
pleasure in a pill
~
machined creations
fine tune the scales of measure
for music and law

A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.
~Robert Hughes

We all use something – you can’t drill holes with your fingers. Whether it’s a knife, a needle, or a machine, we all need the help of a device.
~Jonathan Ive

When man wanted to make a machine that would walk he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg.
~Guillaume Apollinaire

I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.
~Eric Temple Bell

On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
~Charles Babbage

The tendency of philosophers who know nothing of machinery is to talk of man as a mere mechanism, intending by this to imply that he is without purpose. This shows a lack of understanding of machines as well as of man.
~Arthur Young

The big AI dreams of making machines that could someday evolve to do intelligent things like humans could – I was turned off by that. I didn’t really think that was feasible when I first joined Stanford.
~Andrew Ng

Although we will hate and fight the machines, we will be supplanted anyway, and rightly so, for the intelligent machines to which we will give birth may, better than we, carry on the striving toward the goal of understanding and using the Universe, climbing to heights we ourselves could never aspire to.
~Isaac Asimov

I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can’t have machines that exhibit consciousness.
~Iain Banks

Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games – but not with pleasure.
~Leo Rosten

Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.
~Ray Kurzweil

The real work of us mathematicians, from now until, roughly, fifty years from now, when computers won’t need us anymore, is to make the transition from human-centric math to machine-centric math as smooth and efficient as possible.
~Doron Zeilberger

As machines get to be more and more like men, men will come to be more like machines.
~Joseph Wood Krutch

AI does not keep me up at night. Almost no one is working on conscious machines. Deep learning algorithms, or Google search, or Facebook personalization, or Siri or self driving cars or Watson, those have the same relationship to conscious machines as a toaster does to a chess-playing computer.
~Ramez Naam

Man is a slow, sloppy and brilliant thinker; the machine is fast, accurate and stupid.
~William M Kelly

We think of computers as smart and powerful machines. But your goldfish is smarter.
~Jason Fried

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
~Elbert Hubbard

As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.
~Ernst Fischer

The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.
~James Jeans

~ ~

Quotes harvested from: https://azquotes.com, https://brainyquotes.com
http://www.quotegarden.com, https://wiseoldsayings.com

Video Harvest: https://vimeo.com , https://youtube.com

~. .~

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