A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould
Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components.
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Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers.
Our world is not an optimal place, fine tuned by omnipotent forces of selection. It is a quirky mass of imperfections, working well enough (often admirably); a jury-rigged set of adaptations built of curious parts made available by past histories in different contexts. A world optimally adapted to current environments is a world without history, and a world without history might have been created as we find it. History matters; it confounds perfection and proves that current life transformed its own past.
I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.
Owing to the fact that leaders in the women's groups made a point of serving on the jury here whenever they were called, we have always had an unusually high type of women represented on the jury.
Because of a jury-rigged and outdated system meant to track deaths, the government has trouble determining exactly which Americans are deceased.
The world would be a healthier place if oral contraceptives were available in every corner store and cigarettes were limited to prescription use.
I believed there was enough evidence to go to trial. Grand jury said there wasn't. Okay, fine. Do I have a right to disagree with the grand jury? Many Americans believe O.J. Simpson was guilty. A jury said he wasn't. So I have as much right to question a jury as they do. Does it make somebody a racist? No! They just disagreed with the jury. So did I.
My books are not about different components that fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, it's about creating the space around the components, which is almost as important as the components themselves. And that space changes and blends depending upon what the components are.
In most ecological systems you have a composite, biotic components as well as abiotic components acting together to form a whole, whereas in a human built environment most of the components are abiotic or they are inorganic. One of the first things we need to do is to complement the inorganic components with more organic components, and to make them interact to form a whole.
When I originally started looking at different prosthetic components, most of them were just set up for walking.
A good engineer thinks in reverse and asks himself about the stylistic consequences of the components and systems he proposes.
In our system, we leave questions of fact to a jury. But to render a verdict, a jury must know the law. For this, we rely upon jury instructions. Instructions are supposed to translate the law into lay terms that the jury can apply to the facts as they determine them.
I also like to garden. I grow things, vegetables, flowers... I particularly like orchids. I raise orchids.
My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer's mind-set: Everything's kind of a problem how do you approach the problem?
My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer's mind-set: Everything's kind of a problem; how do you approach the problem?
Modern statisticians are familiar with the notion that any finite body of data contains only a limited amount of information on any point under examination; that this limit is set by the nature of the data themselves, and cannot be increased by any amount of ingenuity expended in their statistical examination: that the statistician's task, in fact, is limited to the extraction of the whole of the available information on any particular issue.
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