Quote of the Day

I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,' he resumed presently. 'They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.

- Saki

Quote of the Day

Dawes observed that the complex statistical algorithm adds little or no value. One can do just as well by selecting a set of scores that have some validity for predicting the outcome and adjusting the values to make them comparable (by using standard scores or ranks). A formula that combines these predictors with equal weights is likely to be just as accurate in predicting new cases as the multiple-regression formula that was optimal in the original sample. More recent research went further: formulas that assign equal weights to all the predictors are often superior, because they are not affected by accidents of sampling.

- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Judge Suspends Montreal Pit Bull Ban Indefinitely

Sophie Gaillard, a lawyer for the SPCA, said the ruling is “a great victory, but the fight is far from over.” It will probably be a few months before a hearing can be held on the SPCA’s full legal appeal to have sections of the bylaw retracted, she said.

“We know, thanks to scientific research, that behaviour is unrelated to physical appearance,” Gaillard said. “What leads dogs to develop aggressive behaviour is not at all their breed, but it’s the way they’re treated, whether they’re sterilized or not, how they’re trained.”

Before the ruling came down, Coderre defended the bylaw, saying Montreal took a balanced approach to the issue in order to protect the public.

“We need to protect the people, not only when you walk with the dog, when you live with the dog,” Coderre told reporters Wednesday. “You can send me all the emails you want, I’m here to protect the population.”

City councillor Sterling Downey, a spokesperson for the opposition Projet Montréal, said the ruling proves the bylaw was rushed and poorly conceived.

“It was full of holes everywhere,” he said. “A bylaw (should) be drafted and written based on facts, science and expert opinion,” he said. “If you want to do something responsibly, then take the time to do it. This is the mayor saying, ‘Do it now, I want it immediately.’

- More Here

Quote of the Day

Some can be more intelligent than others in a structured environment—in fact school has a selection bias as it favors those quicker in such an environment, and like anything competitive, at the expense of performance outside it. Although I was not yet familiar with gyms, my idea of knowledge was as follows. People who build their strength using these modern expensive gym machines can lift extremely large weights, show great numbers and develop impressive-looking muscles, but fail to lift a stone; they get completely hammered in a street fight by someone trained in more disorderly settings. Their strength is extremely domain-specific and their domain doesn't exist outside of ludic—extremely organized—constructs. In fact their strength, as with over-specialized athletes, is the result of a deformity. I thought it was the same with people who were selected for trying to get high grades in a small number of subjects rather than follow their curiosity: try taking them slightly away from what they studied and watch their decomposition, loss of confidence, and denial. (Just like corporate executives are selected for their ability to put up with the boredom of meetings, many of these people were selected for their ability to concentrate on boring material.) I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Quote of the Day

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Quote of the Day

True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others.

- Edward O. Wilson

Quote of the Day

It is our greatest good fortune to have our failings corrected and our faults adjusted.

- J.W. von Goethe

Quote of the Day

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

- Carl Jung

Wisdom Of The Week

The long-term goal of Hilaroo is to own a piece of land where a permanent facility will be built. This facility will host the daytime camps, allow them to run longer than four days and provide the option of longer summer sleep away camps in addition to day camps.

It will also be a place kids could come after school, have additional learning facilities, a place to come back and work once they’ve graduated, and of course, a home for rescued dogs to live until they’re adopted, or make Hilaroo their forever home.

The goal is to be working with 100 dogs and 100 kids on an ongoing basis. Kids will graduate and dogs will be rescued into forever homes, allowing us to pull more dogs that are going to be euthanized out of kill shelters and into the program to live on the land, until they too can be adopted into forever homes. The hope is that the youth who graduate will come back and work at the facility and mentor kids who are up and coming so that there’s a constant cycle of giving back.

Precipitated by youth who have attended previous programs and displayed curiosity about how to become dog trainers and photographers when seeing them at work, youth will receive trade training from people already on the property and others who will be brought in as guest speakers. For example, if there was a new building being erected on the premises, the architect would introduce himself to the youth attending the program, explain to the group what he does and how he got into being an architect. The same would be done by the builder, the plumber, the electrician…Additionally entertainment professionals, musicians, hairstylists and people with various other professions will visit to open the youths eyes to all of the things they could become and helps them see the bigger picture.

Hilaroo believes education is the foundation for a fuller life. Since many of the underserved youth either live in homes that may have 10 or more people living in a one-bedroom house and don’t have a quiet place to study, or homes where the parents aren’t around to help with schoolwork, there will be tutoring available and after school programs.

“Education is important because you need to finish high school to get any type of job, but it’s also important because you’re applying yourself to something and you’re showing up for yourself,” Hilary says.

- Vision for the Future, Hilary Swank

Quote of the Day

Speaking of palms, your right hand shares just a sixth of its microbial species with your left hand.

- Ed Yong, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life