Notable Quotables

He prayed - it wasn't my religion;
She ate - it wasn't what I ate;
He spoke - it wasn't my language;
She dressed - it wasn't what I wore;
He took my hand - it wasn't the colour of mine.
But when she laughed - it was how I laughed,
and when he cried - it was how I cried.

Amy Mahlox

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life in such a way so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

Indian Proverb

Preventing conflicts is the work of politics;
Establishing peace is the work of education.

Maria Montessori

We do not inherit the land from our parents;
We borrow it from our children.

anonymous

Our most basic common link
is that we all inhabit this small planet.
We all breathe the same air.
We all cherish our children's future.
And we are all mortal.

John F. Kennedy

 

We abuse land becuase we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

Aldo Leopold

 

There are no religions which are false.
All are true in their own fashion.
All answer, though in different ways, to the given conditions of human existence.

Emile Durkheim

 

The best defence of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war.

Hon. Lester B. Pearson

 

Don't walk ahead of me.  I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me.  I may not lead.
Walk beside me.  And just be my friend.

Camus

To be truly rich
is not to have everything,
but to lack nothing.

anonymous

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot ...
Like winds and sunsets, wild things are taken for granted until progress began to do away with them.
Now we face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.

Aldo Leopold

Despite all the economic hardships and the losing battle against aggressive globalization, the people here [in Saskatchewan] remain wonderfully hopeful and perhaps naively optimistic ... that one day our time will come.  Our crops will grow.  Our farms will prosper.  Our abandoned towns will repopulate.  Or horrible highways will be repaved.  Our old way of life will be preserved.

Joey Tremblay

Mural Dyslexia:
... the inability to read the writing on the wall

Michael Ridley

We are at a crossroads ...
... one road leads to hopelessness and despair;
... the other leads to total extinction.
Let us pray we choose wisely.

Woody Allen

As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe.
This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked: What did God do before he created the universe?
Augustine didn't reply: He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.

Stephen Hawking

Since the first satellites had orbited, almost fifty years earlier, trillions and quadrillions of pulses of information had been pouring down from space, to be stored against the day when they might contribute to the advance of knowledge.  Only a minute fraction of all this raw material would ever be processed; but there was no way of telling what observation some scientist might wish to consult ten, or fifty, or a hundred years from now.  So, everything had to be kept on file, stacked in endless air-conditioned galleries, triplicated at three centers against the possibility of accidental loss.  It was part of the real treasure of mankind, more valuable than all the gold locked uselessly away in bank vaults.

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001

GIS GENESIS
(According to Joe)

IN THE BEGINNING (of the digital era in geography),
god (inspired some lesser subordinates here on earth to cause to be) created Automated Cartography.
God (and us earthlings, too) saw that it was good.

ON THE SECOND DAY god saw a need for us mortals to get spatial data into digital form so he created digitizing tables.
God (and optometrists, chiropractors and others whose coffers have swelled as a result of us toiling long hours over these wondrous devices) saw that it was good.


ON THE THIRD DAY god said, "There's gotta be a better way to get spatial data into a computer," so she created Remote Sensing.
Although god's plans had limited resolutions at first, the mists slowly parted and we were able to see the earth in all the colours of the rainbow. God saw that it was good to view the world from a new perspective, even if things still looked a little fuzzy.


ON THE FOURTH DAY god said, "Let the spatial databases be divided into two."
And so it was.
God called the vector parts "arcs" and the raster parts "grids".
Someone (I'm sure it wasn't god) said, "Let the rasters be faster but the vectors be corrector."
God saw that it was good, if not a little confusing.


ON THE FIFTH DAY god saw that Automated Mapping and Remote Sensing were lonely so he said, "Let the Automated Mapping and the Remote Sensing come together into a single mass."
And out of their bellies he took a choropleth and a pixel and fashioned a new sibling, which he didn't know what to call so he left it up to us.
We have been agonizing over names like Geographic Information Systems, Geographical Information Systems, Spatial Information Systems, Cadastral Mapping Systems, and so on, ever since.
Anyway, god saw that it was good.


ON THE SIXTH DAY god said, "Let the schools produce every kind wild beast, every kind of cattle, every kind of reptile, and every kind of geo-spatial mapping professional."
God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill every government agency and private corporation with spatial technologies and conquer them."
God saw that it was good since it kept a lot of geography instructors employed.


ON THE SEVENTH DAY god reflected at the wonder of all of her creation and said, "Oh my God! What have I done?!"
And she passed out into a coma.

Joe Piwowar

Yes raster is faster, but raster is vaster
and vector just seems more correcter.

C. Dana Tomlin

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risklooking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

I need to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own;
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you're telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.
I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day,
and if you can source your life from God's presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes!'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are, how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

Oriah Mountain Dreamer, an Native American elder

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to weep,
a time to laugh,
a time to mourn,
and a time to dance.

Ecclesiastes 3:1,4

One thing I am glad for is my belief in God.
Faith can move mountains!

Stephen David Piwowar

Joe Piwowar's Home Page

Last Update: 2009-10-13