Director Mike Figgis was going through security at LAX when he was asked the reason for his visit. "I'm here to shoot a pilot," was his response. Obviously he meant "I'm here to shoot the first episode of a TV series that may or may not be picked up for broadcast distribution," but what the immigration official thought he meant was "I'm here to shoot an airplane pilot with a gun." Yikes! The director of Leaving Las Vegas, Timecode and Internal Affairs was then detained for about five hours until immigration officials could get online and figure out that, yep, "pilot" has more than one meaning.

Good thing the immigration officers didn't ask him about his body of work. Figgis' answer might have been "I recently made a huge bomb." [Cinematical]

1010) [W]orks of such magnitude [as the Oxford English Dictionary] are only undertaken by those deluded to the point of fanaticism (like the Mormons and their gigantic genealogical database in Salt Lake City). [...] Like the soldier, the lexicographer must be prepared to give his life for the great cause, without thought of reward.

John Sutherland
"Sticktoitiveness"
London Review of Books (6/8/95)
[review of John Willinsky
Empire of Words: The Reign of the 'OED' (1995)]

1011) Never before has so much been known about the world, and the time has long passed, if it ever existed, when one person could collect it all in a single consciousness. Science is the paradigmatic case of the accumulation of knowledge: it has given us knowledge in the truest, most certain and genuine sense, and has been fabulously successful at it. [...]

Knowing things is what people do, it is one of life's main events. If you're a plant, it's photosynthesise; if you're a fish, it's swim; if you're a human being, it's know things. You can't avoid it: gaining knowledge about the world is inescapable and involuntary - beyond your full control. If you're a conscious and intelligent being, you can't avoid knowing at least something about the world outside your head.

How ironic, then, that throughout human history intellectuals have said that knowledge is impossible, that no one in fact knows anything, that the hope of gaining knowledge is fantasy and illusion. [...] How even more ironic, given the success of the scientific method, that the most strident denials of knowledge have been leveled against the sciences. [...] The world champion at this activity was Paul Feyerabend. [...]

Science, he says, is just another human activity - no more special or privileged than anything else. [...] Science itself is no more "objective" than voodoo or witchcraft, but a "story", a "fairy tale".[...]

This view might have made good sense back in the days when what passed for science wasn't science or knowledge at all - when chemistry was alchemy, medicine magic, and cosmology superstition. It is no longer supported by available evidence, however.

But Feyerabend's outlook isn't meant to be supported by evidence - certainly not any evidence that emerges from the sciences. Nor is it supported by philosophy, a discipline in which you're obliged to give adequate reasons for your beliefs. Feyerabend's attitude towards science goes far beyond any doubts, misgivings or fears that are adequately warranted by reason. It is, in fact, an attitude, impervious to reason and judgment. It's a commitment, a faith, a secular religion. Scientists may wonder how his brand of irrationalism ever managed to escape from the ranks of the medieval demonology with which it ought to be classified.

Ed Regis
"His dreams were unusual, even for dreams"
London Review of Books (6/8/95)
[review of Paul Feyerabend
Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend (1995)]

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 600 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.