Blaise Pascal - The First Blogger ?

Pensee # 198/693: "When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its silence and man left to himself with no light,  as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death, and incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man who should be carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island and should awake without knowing where he is and without means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other persons around me made like myself. I ask them if they are any better informed than I am and they say they are not.  Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they have become addicted and attached. For my part, I have never been able to form such attachments and, considering how very likely it is that there exists something besides what I can see, I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself.  I see a number of religions in conflict, and therefore all false except one. Each of them wishes to be believed on their own authority and makes threats to non-believers. I do not believe them on that account. Anyone can say that...this is where unaided knowledge brings us..."

Lise Meitner - Bona Fide Genius

In 1944 Otto Hahn would receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the interpretation of nuclear* fission*. Meitner was not mentioned. Some say this was the greatest oversight ever made by the Nobel prize committee. 

A life fraught with such toil,  loss, neglect, betrayal - in the midst of war  - despite remarkably tenacious bursts of creativity and insight, yet never receiving her share of the credit for discoveries that helped to "split the atom" - it's enough to get me interested in SCIENCE again.

Jon Von Neumann - Bona Fide Genius

I've met only very few really really intelligent people in my time - and that would include the two or three blessed souls who have posted on this blog spot. But this guy (Von Neumann) was the real deal - grandfather of computers and founder of game theory - this guy had the synapses firing - as is somewhat evident from the old world European hair and the tired-looking eyes.

Unforgettable Prose Classic.

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

Friday, March 9th - Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville - The perennial question remains: was Bartleby, the great American "I would prefer not to" refuse-nik, in actuality the uncompromising artist on a personal quest that no one else could understand/appreciate or the pathetic slacker who never fulfilled his expected duties at work or his civic responsibilities in the world outside... His spirit lives on in today's America...eh? 

Nathaniel Hawthorne on Herman Melville - "Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists - and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before - in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us." - Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Agnes Grey - by Anne Bronte - The youngest Bronte sister is a very under-rated and under-valued, but thankfully not totally overlooked writer.