“Only entropy comes easy.” - Anton Chekhov (c.1900); also stated by Lewis Mumford (1970)
“You should call it entropy, because nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.” - John Neumann (c.1939), suggestion to Claude Shannon on what to call his new formula for information
“Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.” - Vaclav Havel (1986), Czech playwright
Source: EOHT
Posted: 2026 Jan 10
I can only exercise until the crisis is past. When I fell off a roof and injured my back, I did back exercises for several months, until I seemed to have regained my strength. When I smashed my elbow, I did exercises for about six months, to regain movement. When I had a heart attack, I cut out fatty/sweet foods for… well… a while, until my arteries felt as though they had cleared themselves of cholesterol. Doing exercises seems so much like a waste of time, when I could be doing something more productive. I felt the same way about playing scales, back when I took music lessons, when I could be making melody instead.
Jim T
Jim T – Well, that’s about what I’ve been doing with physio for 20 years – working my way out of back attacks. And now shoulders and knees . . . We could start an Unhappy Exercisers Support Group, maybe, but who would do the maintenance work for that?