Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The Moon stabilizes Earth's obliquity. Well, almost. The tilt actually varies between 22 and 24.5 degrees - and the variation is enough to induce such environmental inconveniences as the occasional ice age. Without the Moon, it might be much worse.
Emotion is set in our genome and that we all have with a certain programmed nature that is modified by our experience so individually we have variations on the pattern. But in essence, your emotion of joy and mine are going to be extremely similar.
Evolution, thus, is merely contingent on certain processes articulated by Darwin: variation and selection. No longer is a fixed object transformed, as in transformational evolution, but an entirely new start is, so to speak, made in every generation.
The future of design is a future where anything material in the environment - whether it's wearables, cars, buildings - can be designed with this variation of properties and relationship with the environment that can take part in the natural ecology.
Natural selection based on the differential multiplication of variant types cannot exist before there is material capable of replicating itself and its own variations, that is, before the origination of specifically genetic material or gene-material.
I think certain types of processes don’t allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform—or perhaps distort—yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality.
Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances.
By packaging a full album into a bundle of music with ringtones, videos and other combinations and variations, we found products that consumers demonstrably valued and were willing to purchase at premium prices. And guess what? We've sold tons of them.
Within the context of Western music, jazz has always contained certain radical or revolutionary aspects. These are: improvisation, collective composition and individuality or the personal sound (based on amazing variations in sonority, timbre and pitch).
Predictions are preposterous. What usually happens is that people tell you that what they'd like to see happen instead of what they really think will happen. There are so many variations and possibilities that there's no way to ever really know for certain.
You may even have Jews in your midst who did not learn their way of life from us, and did not inherit it from a Jewish forebear. We may have authentic gentiles in our midst: these single protests are of no account; they are extreme and irrelevant variations.
In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum theory substitutes 'quantum jump' for 'continuous transfer of energy'). In all other respects little change was necessary in Darwin's theory...
Then I began to play. Variations on a G major chord, the most wonderful chord known to mankind, infinitely happy. I could live inside a G major chord, with Grace, if she was willing. Everything uncomplicated and good about me could be summed up by that chord.
Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.
Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place.
Evolution is ultimately why cancer is so deadly. Take two biopsies from different sides of a tumor, and they can be genetically very different, making it that much harder to fight. Variation is the toolbox of evolution, and this variation gives cancer strength.
In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one's way to godliness. The Hindu sadhu, the pilgrims of Compostela walking past their sins, the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora, the haj.
After a great deal of discussion in Soviet literature about the correct definition of a combination, it was decided that from the point of view of a methodical approach it was best to settle on this definition - A combination is a forced variation with a sacrifice.
The proliferation of styles, genres, and media need not be the death knell of anything. Instead, it's a sign that our acceptance for variation and experimentation has become wider, our interests have become more diverse, and our appetites have become more omnivorous.
My standup is years and years of me working things out on the road. I'm really proud of it! A lot of it is about, well... I don't know why I feel this way, but I feel like every special or show I do is some variation on how I feel like I'm not a girl, not yet a woman.
There are patterns which emerge in one's life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation on a theme. So musicians say the greatest sonatas are composed; whether or not it is true, I do not know, but of a surety I have seen it emerge in the tapestry of my life.
A rise of wages from this cause will, indeed, be invariably accompanied by a rise in the price of commodities; but in such cases, it will be found that labour and all commodities have not varied in regard to each other, and that the variation has been confined to money.
The only work that can be compared to Chopin's Etudes, innovatively, where every note is essential and one becomes completely exposed, is the Brahms-Paganini variations. These are etudes - not as interesting musically as, say, the Brahms-Handel - but they are incredible.
The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far, to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance.
I'm really boring. I think about cooking all the time. I have a little book, so when I go out or see something, I jot it down and try to include it in a recipe or do a variation of it. I even have a notepad by my bed, which is usually saying we're running out of mango chutney.
The first thing to say about Eve is that she was a big improvement on the Adam design, or that Adam was an extremely misguided variation on the Eve design. (Consider testicles. Two concentrated nuclei of absolute vulnerability. Where? Dangling between the legs. I rest my case.)
Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present of the natural world: it has no memory of its previous actions, no plans for the future, or underlying purpose.
I want to focus on each scene. I'm a real perfectionist, and I don't want to feel like I didn't consider every possible variation of a scene. I come from a theater background, so I'm used to a lot of repetition, and I'm used to really attacking something over and over and over again.
Nature is so delightful and abundant in its variations that among trees of the same kind there would not be found one which nearly resembles another, and not only the plants as a whole, but among their branches, leaves, and fruit, will not be found one which is precisely like another.
The involvement of clinicians, researchers, and, most importantly, the thousands of people who have donated DNA samples will help us to correlate genetic variation with individual variation in health and disease and help to deliver on the long-term promise of the Human Genome Project.
'Minute to Win It' is a variation on a game show from the 1950s called 'Beat the Clock,' in which contestants won washing machines and fox stoles by doing such pointless stunts as catching a tennis ball in a paper cup or knocking a hat off one's wife's head with a whipped-cream spritzer.
I was writing a script about the Joker menacing a regular person who had strayed into his path, and I needed to give him a gang of henchmen to work with him. The idea occurred to me, let's put in a female henchperson, because that seemed like a fun variation on the regular big thug guys.
I would be a rich man if I had a quarter for every time one of my Republican colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee utters some variation of the sentence, 'President Obama doesn't have a strategy to defeat ISIS.' It's their calling card on the committee - and on the campaign trail.
A few dozen changes to the genome of a modern elephant - to give it subcutaneous fat, woolly hair and sebaceous glands - might suffice to create a variation that is functionally similar to the mammoth. Returning this keystone species to the tundras could stave off some effects of warming.
Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.
Many families would like to avoid burdening future generations with inherited diseases such as haemophilia or severe developmental disorders. But most would think it wrong to edit the genes that influence the 'normal' range of human variation, from eye colour to intelligence or athletic ability.
Financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design . . . The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.
If you watch the award shows, you'll see variations of the hammer pants. It's always cool to see that and then every now and then, you'll see an artist who's pushing the envelope and it may not be all the way there but you can see where it's coming from. I'm always appreciative of seeing my influence.
As a matter of fact, I've been to Italy many times before I met my husband, which he can't even imagine that I could possibly know anything about Italian food. But, you know, Italian food's really basic, and there's so many different variations on it that what my husband did is he broke it down for me.
It has therefore been justly observed that however honestly the coin of a country may conform to its standard, money made of gold and silver is still liable to fluctuations in value, not only to accidental, and temporary, but to permanent and natural variations, in the same manner as other commodities.
In any case, if I grow hybrid maize or hybrid pearl mallet or any hybrid, I have to sow fresh seed every year. I cannot keep the seed of the same plant. If I keep the seed of the same plant, yield will be much less and there will be a wide variation in the field, like maturity period, quality and so on.
In 2003, I wrote a New York Times best-seller called 'Shut Up & Sing,' in which I criticized celebrities like the Dixie Chicks & Barbra Streisand who were trashing then-President George W. Bush. I have used a variation of that title for more than 15 years to respond to performers who sound off on politics.
It is impossible to improve any process until it is standardized. If the process is shifting from here to there, then any improvement will just be one more variation that is occasionally used and mostly ignored. One must standardize, and thus stabilize the process, before continuous improvement can be made.
When nobody read, dyslexia wasn't a problem. When most people had to hunt, a minor genetic variation in your ability to focus attention was hardly a problem, and may even have been an advantage. When most people have to make it through high school, the same variation can become a genuinely life-altering disease.
A student well versed in even one technique will naturally see corresponding points in other techniques. A upper level punch, a lower punch, a front punch and a reverse punch are all essentially the same. Looking over thirty-odd kata, he should be able to see that they are essentially variations on just a handful.
If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.
An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.
I don't feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it's one's particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.
Ever since I was a kid I just thought that women had the better outfits, women had the better hair, women got to wear makeup. I just got jealous of what women got to do onstage. You dress up a man and ultimately it's just a different variation on the same kind of suit. There's a whole wide world of what women wear onstage.
In my teaching, I try to expose my students to the widest range of aesthetic possibilities, so I'll offer them stories from Anton Chekhov to Denis Johnson, from Flannery O'Connor to A.M. Homes, and perhaps investigating all that strange variation of beauty has rubbed off on me. Or perhaps that's why I enjoy teaching literature.