Potpourri

I like this subject line, which appears occasionally as a topic in Jeopardy. It's a catch-all name that incorporates a variety of wild stuff. In that spirit, then, I offer some of the stuff that has come to me from friends, coworkers, readers, and other wild folk (these tend to overlap):

Niccolo Machiavelli on Change Management:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it.

An interesting article by Mike Wright, the Marshall Space Flight Center Historian, on the world's most expensive lawn ornaments: http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/saturn_apollo/display.html

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John McCain is assuming the role of the late Senator William Proxmire in railing against frivolous government spending on science: http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/411.page

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The Ares Projects have their own FlickR page: http://www.flickr.com/groups/ares/

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Social Media and Public Relations: http://www.pr-squared.com/jedi.html

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The Cult of Done Manifesto. You might have to have lived this one to fully appreciate it, but it is quite real.

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An online, non-profit archive dedicated to saving...well, darn near everything: http://www.archive.org/index.php

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And, darn it, Doc sent me one more link, but I didn't forward it from work. Heck with it, I'll post it tomorrow. The internet continues to surprise me: there are good things to be found, but there is also a lot of crud. Calls to mind [Theodore] Sturgeon's Law:

90% of science fiction is crud. But then, 90% of everything is crud.