A Quote by John Flansburgh

We're affable guys in They Might Be Giants. We're not gonna do the periscope-down thing, but it's a little bit mind-bending. The biggest struggle is trying to figure out a way to back up far enough in your answer that it can be read without the context of the question. Every declarative statement you see that comes out of an interview with somebody is actually in response to a question. So it's sort of like this very real interpersonal dance where one of the people involved is invisible.
Every declarative statement that comes out of an interview with somebody is actually in response to a question. It's like this very real interpersonal dance where one of the people involved is invisible.
If you had a system that could read all the pages and understand the context, instead of just throwing back 26 million pages to answer your query, it could actually answer the question. You could ask a real question and get an answer as if you were talking to a person who read all those millions and billions of pages, understood them, and synthesized all that information.
This crazy little party girl who loves to enjoy life actually has a purpose. So, that's really the core of why I've survived so many years and I can go and I can fall down and I can get back up. Why? Because I know why I'm here. That's the question that a lot of people need to answer when they do fall is, 'Why am I here?' If you can answer that question, you'll be able to dust yourself off and shine like a phoenix out of ashes.
I actually prefer Twitter as a medium, and I also got into Periscope for a second, but I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it. I can't figure out if the only important thing about it is the live broadcast, or if it's an interesting kind of way to log what you do.
Without your data, Google couldn't pursue the dream of trying to figure out what you're really thinking when you're asking a question, of trying to discern, from the imprecision of your language, the exact answer you're looking for.
Now, the question of the hour is, "Who's got the Pandorica?" Answer: I do. Next question: Who's coming to take it from me? Come on! Look at me! No plan, no back-up, no weapons worth a damn! Oh, and something else, I don't have anything to lose! So, if you're sitting up there in your silly little spaceship with all your silly little guns, and you've got any plans on taking the Pandorica tonight, just remember who's standing in your way! Remember every black day I ever stopped you, and then, and then, do the smart thing: Let somebody else try first.
A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms . . . If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach.
In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.
Writing about real stuff that really concerned me brought out my craft. If you're writing a story about, 'Is Lois Lane gonna figure out that Superman is Clark Kent?' - it's really hard to get involved in that on anything other than a craft level. And I'm not gonna put down craftsmanship; it is a noble enough thing to have made a table that you can pound on and it doesn't fall down. But occasionally, we might have an assignment that engages some other parts of ourselves, and those tend to be the good stories.
You have to figure out a way to endure that little bit of time with the media. Any question they ask you; beautiful thing is, you get the last word. You can spin it any way you want to…If you can go third person on yourself, you can sit down and have a 10-15 minute conversation.
To be a scientist you have to be willing to live with uncertainty for a long time. Research scientists begin with a question and they take a decade or two to find an answer. Then the answer they get may not even answer the question they thought it would. You have to have a supple enough mind to be open to the possibility that the answer sometimes precedes the question itself.
Many occasions I've sat down with Israelis to say, where do you see your country in 10 years time, and work me back, so we can figure out the synergies and the connections between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. No Israeli has ever been able to answer that question.
If you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're gonna get an answer to some deep philosophical question...you may be wrong! It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But my interest in science is to simply find out about the world.
We're like Magic 8-Balls. After you ask your question and shake the 8-Ball, you read the answer in the little window. If you ever broke open a Magic 8-Ball with a hammer, you discovered that it contained a many-sided plastic object, with an answer on every facet, floating in a cylinder of murky blue fluid. The many-sided core held the answer to your question. My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we've ever been is who we are.
... the important thing is to, first of all, question everything you read or hear or see or are told. Question it, and try to see the world for what it actually is, as opposed to what someone or some company or some organization or some government is trying to represent it as, or present it as, however they've mislabeled it or dressed it up or told you.
The biggest fear that everybody has is dying. Not to get too meta on you, but I think every fear that people are trying to work out is really like I'm going to die and no one is going to care, and it doesn't matter because God might not exist. That's what people are trying to figure out. I wish we all had one fear so we could think about it together and figure out a solution, but we're all doing different things.
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