Aphorisms

The Aphorisms of Steve Nimmons

(feel free to use, but please credit)

Science and Engineering:

• To excel in science, engineering or technology, focus on achieving brilliance in one field. To excel in politics or economics, rely on blind luck. The degree to which these professions can be understood or influenced is negligible. If that is your calling, better to spend your time writing biographies of obscure historical figures. It will be more rewarding than attempting to specialise in the indefinable.

Thinking

• Tactical thinking should be done on an empty stomach. Strategic thinking should follow three courses and a bottle of claret.

Mathematics and Logic:

• Irrational numbers can be understood, irrational people cannot. If the latter were more like the former, they would be significantly more agreeable.
• Disproving that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit will only cost you 10 minutes and the cover price of tomorrow’s Guardian.
• Conflict resolution has much in common with a Rubik’s cube. Neither will be solved by focusing on one side.
• It has always been a disappointment that Hollywood hasn’t come up with a sequel to Fermat’s Last Theorem.
• The art of negative argument is tying ones opponent up in nots.

Ageing:

• After 40 a ticking clock ceases to be comforting. It becomes instead a relentless critic of achievement, character weakness, and indolence.

Friendship

• The definition of friends includes those who forget your birthday, laugh at your ideas and won’t attend your funeral.
• A healthy balance is pleasing your friends and angering your enemies with equal measure.

Society and Modern Britain

• There is about as much free speech in Britain for moral conservatives as there is in North Korea for capitalists.
• The liberal intelligentsia supports assisted dying, except in the case of those convicted of murder.
• In the land of the blind, you can wear white after Labor Day.
• Teach a man to phish, introduce him to Julian Assange, get yourself rendered to Cuba.
• Spend three months salary on the engagement ring, and no less on the lawyer for the prenupt.

Work

• The job advert may not specify requirements for logic, rhetoric or wit, but they will be damn handy in the interview.
• When it’s all been said and done, relax and whistle.

Philosophy and Religion

• Presbyterianism = (Low Anglicanism – liturgy) + guitars.
• Free Presbyterianism is Presbyterianism with a dress code.
• Theology is philosophy in more elaborate costume.
• Separate church and economics, rather than church and state.
• Maslow’s hierarchy promotes a convincing argument, that ‘timing isn’t everything’.
• Experience thickens the walls of the box you are trying to think your way out of.
• Modern education is the ritualistic drowning of Schrodinger’s cat.
• Happy men have no master and many mistresses.
• Black Swan Theory holds, unless you are looking at a white swan in an oil slick.
• One swallow doesn’t make a summer, or a satisfying meal.
• Depression is common, melancholia aristocratic.
• A theologian is someone who misinterprets G-d professionally.
• If G-d is a verb, conjugate the Trinity.
• The Bible is an early form of Crowdsourcing. Wikipedia is Bible 2.0.
• Hermeneutics is editorialising in Aramaic, ancient Hebrew and Greek.
• The Second Vatican Council was opened in 1962. On average since Christ’s birth there has been one every millennia.
• The hardest thing to find isn’t love, it’s a Pulsa diNura card from Hallmark.
• Lechery never sleeps.

Politics

• Tony Blair’s two best features, vanity and dishonesty.
• Trimble’s negotiation skills were so weak I concluded he was starting from a position of Irish unification and working backwards.
• The closest I have ever been to socialism is public transport.
• Three compelling arguments against republics are France, Ireland and the United States.
• The only thing I found semantically accurate about the ‘Ulster Unionist Party’ under Trimble was its location.
• One is rarely accused of being a pro-Zionist neo-con dove.
• John Bercow is the squeaker of the House of Commons.
• If the Father of the House never married the Mother of the House, are all MP’s b’stards?
• If you are to the left of Communism and enjoy gardening, join the Green Party.

Literature and Writing

• The quality of mercy is not strained, and may therefore contain nuts.
• Haiku is a primitive form of sudoku for writers.
• Blogging is like golf. You need a good short and long game.
• Visiting the library of a great statesman is inspiring. Lament a future where there is nothing to see but an e-Reader in a glass case.
• The day I turned Sarah Palin into Sharia Plan I quit playing word games.

Miscellanea:

• In some way every man is my superior, except you.