It is no solace of misfortune / It is another misfortune besides / To ask the one who endures them / To be persuaded they are not such.

Это не утешение в горе,
это еще одно несчастье,
когда страждущего убеждают,
что горевать нечего.

С лестницы доносилось: «Нет уж, позвольте, Лавр Федотович... Бифштекс без крови, Лавр Федотович, – это хуже чем выпить и не закусить...» – «Наука полагает, что... эта... с лучком, значить...» – «Народ любит хорошее мясо... например, бифштексы...»

On March 6, Schuschnigg decided to hold a plebescite on Austrian independence on March 13, Hitler was furious; he summoned his generals to prepare for an invasion on March 12. Schuschnigg was again cowed and called off his plebescite. He asked the British government what to do. Ribbentrop, the German ambassador in London, invited Halifax, the foreign secretary, to tea, and explained that Hitler was only following a policy similar to that of Britain in regard to Ireland. Halifax adviced Schushcnigg that he could expect no help.

There was no official objection in Britain or France to Hitler's takeover of Austria. On March 12, Cordell Hull, the American Secretary of State, published a calm statement, approving an Anschluss. Two days later, however, Roosevelt intervened, and a denunciation of the German action was issued from Washington. Litvinov, the Soviet foreign minister, urged the common action against fascists by the League of Nations, but there was no response.

В зоомагазине на Пушкинской белая мышь, влезши задними лапками на серую, передними вцепившись в решетку, шипела забившейся в угол соседней клетки толстой и перепуганной морской свинке: "Отольется тебе, стерва... В парк Горького тебя купят... Колесо крутить будешь..."

Кстати, в новейшем собрании сочинений Хлебникова исправлено «черноглазыя»

- Проходите, пожалуйста! Чувствуйте себя, как дома! - радушно сказала она. И добавила:
- А почему у вас такой длинный нос?

Finally, when they are correctly presented, the classical views of Boltzmann perfectly account for macroscopic irreversibility on the basis of deterministic, reversible, microscopic laws.
...
It is widely believed that this implies a fundamental philosophical or conceptual revolution. In particular, it is thought that the classical world-view brilliantly expressed by Laplace in his "Philosophical Essay on Probabilities" has to be rejected. Determinism is no longer defensible. I think this is based on a serious confusion between determinism and predictability.
...
What are chaotic systems? The simplest way to define them is through sensitivity to initial conditions. This means that, for any initial condition of the system, there is some other initial condition, arbitrarily close to the first one so that, if we wait long enough, the two systems will be markedly different.
...
Chaotic dynamical systems are of course unpredictable in practice, at least for long enough times12, since there will always be some error in our measurement of the initial conditions. But this does not have any impact on our discussion of determinism, since we are assuming from the beginning that the system obeys some deterministic law.
...
Even Laplace emphasized this point: after formulating universal determinism, he stresses that we shall always remain "infinitely distant" from the intelligence that he just introduced. After all, why is this determinism stated in a book on probabilities? The reason is obvious: for Laplace, probabilities lead to rational inferences in situations of incomplete knowledge.

"What makes this play so fascinating and thrilling is evidently the hope ... of extracting from the new physical dogma a model of free-will. which the old one would refuse to yield. I consider this hope an illusion."

Niels Bohr was fond of quoting the old Danish proverb to the effect that "prediction is always difficult ... especially of the future."

В 92 году Павел Лунгин снял картину «Луна-парк», о «качке-антисемите», отправившемся на поиски папаши, который оказался известным композитором-песенником, да еще и лицом еврейской национальности по фамилии Хейфец.

Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.

Сверни с проезжей части в полу-
слепой проулок и, войдя
в костел, пустой об эту пору,
сядь на скамью и, погодя,
в ушную раковину Бога,
закрытую для шума дня,
шепни всего четыре слога:
- Прости меня.

и какой только дурень додумался разместить на клавиатуре рядышком буквы "б" и "ю"?!! это ж сколько уже бедных Юль безвинно пострадало?... и скольким ещё предстоит?... неудобно вышло... прям даже не знаю, как теперь извиняться за своё "бля, получила ваше письмо"...

it's a curious thing that ... every creed promises a paradise which is absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

For most of the time that anatomically modern humans have existed—a highly contested figure, but let’s call it a million years—it has made good adaptive sense to be fearful, cautious, timid.

We have been hardwired to emphasize the negative, and, for most of human history, there has been a lot of the negative to emphasize.

He points out that the Founding Fathers, who queried, crossed out, and haggled over every line of the Declaration, let the “pursuit of Happiness” stand unedited and unamended. But he also points out that the eighteenth-century understanding of “pursuit” was rather darker than it might seem now. Dr. Johnson’s dictionary defined it as “the act of following with hostile intention,” and McMahon adds that “if one thinks of pursuing happiness as one pursues a fugitive... the ‘pursuit of happiness’ takes on a somewhat different cast.”

According to positive psychologists, once we’re out of poverty the most important determinant of happiness is our “set point,” a natural level of happiness that is (and this is one of the movement’s most controversial claims) largely inherited. We adapt to our circumstances; we don’t, or can’t, adapt our genes. The evidence for this set point, and the phrase itself, came from a study of identical twins by the behavioral geneticist David Lykken, which concluded that “trying to be happier is like trying to be taller.”

The Legislature on Friday approved a ban on nearly all abortions in South Dakota, setting up a direct legal assault on Roe v. Wade.
...
The measure would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.
...
Many opponents and supporters of abortion rights believe the U.S. Supreme Court is more likely to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion now that Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito are on the bench.
...
Under the measure, doctors could get up to five years in prison for performing an illegal abortion.

- Почему субботник у коммунистов имел столь важное значение?
- Потому, что сами коммунисты в силу религиозных убеждений работать в субботу не могли...

- Девушка, дайте Лондон...
- А как тебя звать?
- Вася...
- А работаешь кем?
- Токарем...
- Так вот хуй тебе! Пизди с Урюпинском...

This was apparently the only instance in which Erwin had a love affair with a wife of a close friend and professional colleague.

let there be no mistake about the origin of Summers's problem with that particular faculty: It started as a hard left-center conflict. Summers committed the cardinal sin against the academic hard left: He expressed politically incorrect views regarding gender, race, religion, sexual preference, and the military.

That’s what’s scary: not Summers’ affronts to progressive goodthink, but his accelerated bottom-lining of liberal education’s goals. The problem here isn’t that a university president has to raise money, although that poses challenges enough; it’s that this former Treasury Secretary, World Bank vice-president, and champion of global capital is close to making market priorities the measure of everything.

I hoped that this general strike of the intellect would tear from the eyes of millions half-blinded the veil behind which the Nazis concealed the dangerous abyss toward which they were leading Germany. I left Plank with the dreadful knowledge that there was no way to stop the coming downfall of German science, and no remedy against the disgraceful readiness of so many to sell out the teaching and research. Plank himself felt that what was to come, must come. After a long silence, he went to his grand piano and played a Bach chorale, then he offered me his hand, and i left.

"Чижик, Чижик, где ты был?"
У Катюши кофе пил,
С булкой, с маслом, с молоком
И с копченым языком.

Мишка, мишка, как не стыдно!
Вылезай из-под комода...
Ты меня не любишь, видно?
Это что еще за мода...

When Göttingen appointed several distinguished Jewish mathematicians and physicists (Courant, Born, Franck) it was derisively called 'the Jewish university'. It should be remembered, however, that academic antisemitism was not a peculiarly German institution. During the 1930s prestigious American universities such as Harvard strove to limit appointments of Jewish professors and admission of Jewish students.

On February 8th, he gave a popular public lecture at the Prussian Academy, 'Why are Atoms so Small?' Small in relation to what, he asked? In relation to highly organized living structures? that have complex functions? such as cogitating about atoms. Thus the question can be rephrased as 'Why are there so many atoms in living organisms?' The answer is then that the laws of physics are statistical laws, and they become precise only for systems, containing a very large number of particles.

Revisionism is the sine qua non of historical analysis.

When those who claim appropriately a historical legacy of victimization and persecution attempt to delimit inquiry of the events that gave rise to such a tragic legacy, the threat to democracy in exercising a hegemonic control over the past is more damaging than the pain and fear that revisionist history may inflict upon an aggrieved group

Такое, понимаешь, alter ego
наружу лезет от поллитра водки.

Nevertheless I think that it is not these achievements that will put their stamp on our century: if you ask me for my innermost conviction whether it will one day be called the century of iron, steam or electricity, I will answer without qualms that it will be named the century of the mechanical view of nature, of Darwin.

• Science of Chaos or Chaos in Science? - статья совершенно замечательная. И серьезная, и смешная. Очень познавательная. Не очень простая. И Больцман, и Дарвин там, и Поппер - все подряд, короче. Oh no wonder! It's him & Alan Sokal have written Fashionable Nonsense

  A final point which is common to Boltzmann and to Darwin (and his successors) is that they have provided ``brilliant confirmations of the mechanical view of Nature"93. Many people simply cannot swallow mechanical and reductionist explanations. They need some vital spirit, some teleological principle or some other animist view. Their philosophies ``thrive upon the errors and confusions of the intellect". And this is probably why the theories of Boltzmann and of Darwin have been constantly attacked and misrepresented. Putting philosophical considerations aside, I believe that what we understand well, we understand in mechanical and reductionist terms. There is no such thing as a holist explanation in science. And thanks to people like Boltzmann and Darwin the ``mechanical view of Nature" is alive and well, and is here to stay.

  
  
• In the beginning...
  
• Males act as a sacrificial defect filter
  
• The Arrow of Time
  
• A Profoundly Repeated Pattern
  
• Sustainability and the "struggle for existence"
  

Beethoven, of course, has stood as a cultural icon for more than a century, but that didn't happen overnight. His most challenging works -- the late piano sonatas and string quartets -- did not become established on concert programs until well into the 20th century, and, significantly, after the invention of the phonograph, which made repeated listening possible for music lovers.

-- Хороший город Черноморск! - сказал Паниковский, облизываясь. -- Кефир хорошо помогает от сердца.

…Неприступной средневековой крепостью возвышается посреди полуразрушенной Москвы мрачный Кремль. В Кремле, в огромном кабинете с портретом Сталина на стене, в большом кожаном кресле сидит маленький испуганный человек по фамилии Путин. На его лице одновременно и страх, и ненависть. Страх – потому что Путин боится, что кто-нибудь узнает какую-нибудь из его Страшных Тайн. Например, что осенью 1999 года два жилых дома в Москве были взорваны по его, Путина, приказу, чтобы ему легче было выиграть президентские выборы. Или что все деньги, получаемые Россией от продажи газа за рубеж, поступают на засекреченный банковский счет, который пригодится Путину после ухода в отставку, чтобы уехать за границу, жить на вилле и кататься на яхте. Это – страх. Ненависть же обращена, пожалуй, ко всем живым людям. К мирным чеченцам, которых каждый день убивают бригады путинских карателей во время зачисток. К оппозиционно настроеным москвичам, ежедневно выходящим на митинги с требованием отставки Путина и избиваемым за это полицией. К честным и умным бизнесменам, самые честные и умные из которых сегодня либо скрываются от Путина за границей, либо сидят в лагерях восстановленного Путиным ГУЛАГа.

... the complete discrediting of behavioral genetics following the Nazis and World War II ("eugenics"). Thus the blank slate (that is, the infinite malleability of the brain) became the dominant model, and environment the explanation of all human behavior.
This bitter debate still rages on today ... and genetic explanations for human behavior are now widely accepted. Accepted, that is, by scientists in such fields as evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics, but definitely not accepted by academic psychologists and child development experts. They continue to dispense advice about how we should parent our children (Benjamin Spock lives on!) and have continued to willfully underestimate the genetic role in human behavior.

Крошка-сын к отцу пришел
И сказала кроха:
Моджахеды - хорошо,
А скинхеды - плохо.

To quote Billy Bragg, “if you’ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it.
...
I wonder if any on the list ever shot a hunting partner.

At the university where I taught last year, we did not have disabled students. Ours were physically challenged. Nor did we have foreign students; ours were international students. I once referred a student as a sophomore, but was chastised by a colleague who told me the student was a second year student ... because sophomoric had become a pejorative term. An even graver mistake was when I referred to an Asian student as an oriental student. I’ll never do that again.

My son, who plays baseball, has asked me to tell my friends he is an altitude-challenged-stop, and he reminded me that being a second baseman or, God forbid, a third baseman is not a demotion in rank from being a first baseman. And then my daughter told me I should be saying first baseperson, etc.

So you can see, all of this evolution of language is difficult for a politically correct senior citizen like I to fathom ... let alone stay abreast (ouch, may I say that?) of.

С той поры люблю я, Брента,
Одинокие скитанья,
Частого дождя кропанье
Да на согнутых плечах
Плащ из мокрого брезента.
С той поры люблю я, Брента.
Прозу в жизни и в стихах.

Лишенный сладостных мечтаний, в бессильной злобе и тоске
Пошел я в Волковские бани распарить кости на полке.
И что ж? О радость! О приятство! Я свой заветный идеал -
Свободу, равенство и братство - в Торговых банях отыскал.

Сначала шел я в ногу с веком,
О всякой штуке не мечтал
И мог быть дельным человеком,
Но зазевался и — отстал.
Пренебрегая капиталом,
Искал сокровищ для души,
Всю жизнь стремился к идеалам
И увидал — одни шиши!

У памятника Крылову в Летнем Саду
Лукавый дедушка с гранитной высоты
Глядит, как резвятся вокруг него ребята,
И думает себе: "О, милые зверята,
Какие, выросши, вы будете скоты".

Винить ли мужика за то, что он мужик?
От колыбели он быть таковым привык.

• Библия и Коран - это оскорбление веры атеистов в то, что Бога нет.
  
• Дорогие москвичи! Выкиньте из дома глобус Москвы. Если я вам говорю, что живу на северо-востоке, то это не Медведково, а Магадан!
  
• Вчера потерпел катастрофу воздушный змей Монгольских ВВС. В Монголии
  больше нет ВВС. После этого инцидента застрелился министр обороны.
  Теперь в Монголии нет и патронов.
  
• - Владимир Владимирович, как прошел ваш визит в Испанию?
  - Отлично! Одного не пойму: чего они все так зашумели, когда я сказал,
  что не считаю КАМАЗ террористической организацией?
  

А хотелось мне в подарок
Расписную щикатулку,
Крышка в розах и лилеях,
А поставишь на живот,
Повернешь проворный ключик –
Заунывно запоет.
И на озере зеркальном,
Отражающем июнь,
Как во гробике хрустальном
С балериной балерун
Повернутся, повернутся,
Завертятся, как волчок –
Упадут, где плюш зеленый
Меж колечек и серег.

Выезжали из дома всегда поутру.
С первым светом, по гулким проспектам.
Было тихо, как надо, свежо, как в бору,
Быть увиденным мной не поспетым.
Я получше видал: что отец у руля,
В летней кофточке мама и сбоку поля
И домишки, одетые тако -
Где наличник резной, где расцветка в лазурь,
Что усталое зренье, как ноги, разуй, -
И на заднем сиденьи собака.
...
А с утра обуяла тоска. И с утра
Надувалися щеки обиды.
Понапрасну во рту повторялось ура
На лады и различные виды.
И как валкий матрас выставляют на двор,
Бесконечный тянул я в себе разговор,
Ненавидел и брел в анфиладу
Заунывной природы, где столько вещей,
Одинаких деревьев, и мхов, и хвощей,
Ничего из которых не надо.

Есть в саду ресторанчик отличный.
Там обедает Лелька одне.
Не придет к ней парнек симпатичный,
Потому что такорого не.

А напротив простая пивная,
Где закуску едва подают.
Поразбавленное разливное
Там с утра жигулевское пьют.

Ресторана в листве виноградной
Притаился балкон вырезной,
И сидит она в юбке нарядной,
В оплывающий глядючи зной.

Поле грусти сладчайшей.
Позлащенные степи
поглощают мой возглас, мой лепет.
Правда ли твой? Отвечай же!
Нет - я молчу. - Нет.
Принадлежность зеленого цвета
в тысячекратных дробленьях травы ...
Кто же мы, кто всегда неправы,
кто не то, и не то, и не это?

Только признак, я краска и форма, и я не предмет
в поле грусти сладчайшей.
Ослепительно белые гуси -
в поле зрения, в центре сияющей чаши,
но и при безупречно отточенном вкусе
есть малейшая точка ничтожности, крап ...
Едет чистый крестьянин.
Ты ли, дух мой, бредешь, отягченный костями?
Ты ли, тело, мой брат, неразумен и слаб?

В.Б. Кривулин

Age is of course a fever chill
That every physicist must fear.
He's better dead than living still
When once he's past his thirtieth year.

давно ли вам снились чашки чайные?

а член?

В ЖЖ народ, под снежным покрывалом,
Вбивает текст безудержно навалом.

Фильм совершенно замечательный, да.
Насчет "никакой мистики вообще" :) Конкретно по поводу этого фильма у меня была длинная дискуссия с одним приятелем на тему восприятия произведения искусства человеком, знакомым с символизмом, закодированным в произведении, по сравнению с восприятием человека, который таковой символизм полностью упускает.

Навскидку -- ты знаешь, почему перед эпизодом с появлением девушки в кадре проходит петух? Почему перед тем как отправиться в тюрьму главный герой вырезает именно Праджнапарамита-сутру? Чью статую он тащит в конце? (Ответы: в Буддийской иконографии три "кардинальных греха" - гнев, тупость и вожделение изображаются как змея, свинья и петух... чтение Праджнапарамита-сутры (о пустотности всего сущего) считается мощнейшим очищающим средством... в конце он тащит статую Майтрейи -- Будды будущего, фигуры, аналогичной мессии.)

Там еще куча такого. Но ты прав -- этот фильм удивительным образом и без знания принизывающей его символики вполне воспринимается.

What is gold worth, say,
Worth for work or play,
Worth to keep or pay,
Hide or throw away,
Hope about or fear?
What is gold worth, pray?
Worth a tear?

Golden on the mould
Lie the dead leaves rolled
Of the wet woods old,
Yellow leaves and cold,
Woods without a dove;
Gold is worth but gold;
Love's worth love.

— A. C. Swinburne (1837–1909)

"How come insults are free in your country but any research on the Holocaust is a crime?" he added.
...
He has called for an academic conference to discuss what happened in the Holocaust. The suggestion has been condemned by most world leaders.

The need of exercise is a superstition, invented by people who ate to much and have nothing to think about. Athletics don't make anybody either long-lived or useful.

Кручусь перед туалетом: М и Ж. Один для жидов, другой для масонов. А мне, русскому коренному, куда пойти прикажете?

У Седаковой в прозе, дворничиха: "Мертвые, они умрут, а живые по ним убивайся!"

Несмотря на свою очевидность ... эти истины не есть истины великие. Они могут утратить свою истинность, в то время как человеческая натура в самом главном останется неизменной.

Это вызвано несколькими причинами. Прежде всего, расширение системы образования, увеличение свободного времени и рост материального благосостояния создали небывалый спрос на массовую культуру.

Не помню кто, не то Аверинцев, не то Аристотель сказал: "Umnia animalia post coitum opressus est", то есть: "Каждая тварь после соития бывает печальной", -- а вот я постоянно печален, и до соития, и после.

When Pershing arrived with the American forces in France, he delegated one man in ten to the military police, whose duty was to follow the attackers and shoot any soldiers who lagged behind.

"The word Jew in any form other than a noun is derogatory," Arnold Konheim wrote in his petition to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.

The giant grouper long known as the jewfish is no more," Marika Lynch reports in the May 24 issue of The Miami Herald. From now on, the fish, "a slow-moving bottom dweller" which "commonly grows to several hundred pounds," will be called the goliath grouper. Joseph Nelson, "a University of Alberta professor who heads a seven-member Committee on Names of Fishes for two prestigious fish societies," announced the name-change. (Who knew there was such a committee?) "We received petitions which lead us to strongly believe that the name — while not offensive to all Jews — is offensive to a great number,'' Mr. Nelson tells Ms. Lynch.
...
One area rabbi was "tickled" that the new name for the fish is that of the giant Philistine who battled the biblical David. "I wonder if the Philistines will come back and protest that one," said Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish...: Last year, we reported on a Georgia scientist's successful effort to change the name of the Florida "jewfish" to "goliath grouper" (see Featherman, June 1, 2001). Now the Sarasota Herald-Tribune describes a Washington, D.C., man's petition to change the name of the narrow channel on Key Largo known as Jewfish Creek.

"The word Jew in any form other than a noun is derogatory," Arnold Konheim wrote in his petition to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.

The president of the Keys Jewish Community Center in nearby Tavernier, however, said the name of the creek "is not a subject of conversation among Jewish people around here," and local Monroe County commissioners voted unanimously last week against renaming the creek.

This is a picture of a Goliath Grouper, a type of grouper, which until about five years ago was called a Jewfish. The Politically Correct crowd complained and the government complied and renamed the fish, maybe because of the stories told about Jewfish.

'I would be less hopeful about the outcome of my trial if I didn't know that every intellectual in the world is on my side,' Irving exclaims triumphantly.'

Furthermore, while the hit team in the film is composed entirely of men, former Mossad agent Gad Shimron says that teams in the field always include some women in order to avoid arousing suspicion. "It's standard practice to include female agents in such operations," he told Reuters. “Anyone who has been on a stakeout knows that having a lady on hand helps you avoid being spotted.”
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Munich also falsely depicts a number of events that occurred throughout the revenge squad’s mission. Perhaps most significantly, it does not show the hit team’s July 1973 assassination of a Moroccan man unconnected with the massacre and the series of events that followed this incident.

Забавно, что вряд ли найдется много женщин, которые не согласятся с утверждением, что мужчины (в среднем) выше ростом. При этом утверждение, что мужчины (в среднем) умнее, вызывает обычно активные возражения.

То есть, интуитивно считается, что рост определяется генетически, в то время как интеллект - нет. Если эта точка зрения верна, и гены не определяют интеллект, из этого следует, что интеллект не слишком важен с эволюционной точки зрения.

Смешно
"Humor, it would appear, is a phylogenetically new trait, which suggests the direction of sexual dimorphism (it appears earlier and more forcefully in men). However, it is thought that it is located in the right hemisphere [5]. If this is true, then it runs counter to our concept". (EVOLUTIONARY LOGIC OF THE FUNCTIONAL ASYMMETRY OF THE BRAIN. V. A. Geodakyan
Translated from Doklady Akademii Nauk, Vol. 324, No. 6, pp. 1327-1331, June, 1992.
Original article submitted March 2, 1992).

ALBANY, N.Y. New York's Independence Party today voted to disband its county organizations in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx controlled by a party faction accused of taking an anti-Semitic stance.
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The Independence Party has about 325-thousand members statewide.
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Fulani has been accused of saying Jews "function as mass murderers of people of color" and "had to sell their souls" to acquire Israel.

This idea is not new, and is certainly not mine. Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger was one of the first to articulate the hypothesis, as part of his famous "What is Life" lectures in Dublin in 1943. More recently, Jeffrey Wicken, Harold Morowitz, Eric Schneider and others have taken this concept considerably further, buoyed by results from a range of studies, particularly within ecology. Schneider and Dorian Sagan provide an excellent summary of this hypothesis in their recent book, "Into the Cool".
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Moreover, evolution is not driven by the machinations of selfish genes propagating themselves through countless millennia. Rather, ecology and evolution together operate as a highly successful, extremely persistent means of reducing the gradient generated by our nearest star.

Мурманские историки уже в голос кричат – не было ничего подобного, зачем вы это делаете???

The L.A. Weekly's John Powers bashed "Crash" for having "enough coincidences and cheap ironies to make O. Henry commit hara-kiri."

Within three days, there was a panel on the subject on Larry King Live , in which Larry asked the following question: "All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"

And why do so many of them host television programs, Larry?

Hofstadter saw this one coming. "Intellect is pitted against feeling," he wrote, "on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or the diabolical."

Spring Live is designed to explain how to integrate Spring into your projects to make your development life easier. It is aimed at users that are familiar with Java development, but have never used Spring. As you read this title, you will learn how Spring reduces the amount of code you have to write and why it's getting so much attention (and respect) from the Java community.