Variants Quotes & Sayings

The kind of programming that C provides will probably remain similar absolutely or slowly decline in usage, but relatively, JavaScript or its variants, or XML, will continue to become more central. — Dennis Ritchie

An accurate view of evolution, in all its multifaceted and anarchic glory ... We are all evolved creatures who share a common way or perceiving and responding to the world. And yet each of us is unique, the product on an irreproducible set of causal events. Given that we cannot judge people on the basis of their biology or their fitness with respect to some arbitrary criterion of optimality, we have to conclude that all human variants are equally valid. (This conclusion can be derived purely on ethical grounds as well.) None of us is advantaged because of evolution over any other, whether strong or weak, able-bodied or disabled, woman or man, black, white, or any other color. Simply existing as part of the human species, each person automatically has an inherent worth and dignity. — Greg Graffin

I have a blend of klotho gene variants that have been linked with a lower risk for coronary artery disease and stroke and an advantage in longevity. — Craig Venter

I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery. — P.D. James

There are few problems in the world that economic prosperity
cannot help solve. Yet the engines of that prosperity are under fierce
attack. The forces that seek power over others have gained the upper
hand against those that seek freedom. By harming wealth creation,
they cause even more strain on society. Historically, this is nothing
new. State domination over its subjects has roots that connect statism,
totalitarianism, communism, and socialism to more modern-day variants
of liberalism and progressivism. It is a constant fight and we must
win. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Price mostly meanders around recent price until a big shift in opinion occurs, causing price to jump up or down. This is crudely modeled by quants using something called a jump-diffusion process model. Again, what does this have to do with an asset's true intrinsic value? Not much. Fortunately, the value-focused investor doesn't have to worry about these statistical methods and jargon. Stochastic calculus, information theory, GARCH variants, statistics, or time-series analysis is interesting if you're into it, but for the value investor, it is mostly noise and not worth pursuing. The value investor needs to accept that often price can be wrong for long periods and occasionally offers interesting discounts to value. — Nick Gogerty

The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects the same way. — Howard Gardner

Since all organisms vary, and all reproduce themselves in greater numbers than can survive, there must always be competition between variants; in other words, the principle of natural selection, too, is universally applicable. — Charles Darwin

In 1893, Miss M. Roalfe Cox brought together, in a volume of the Folk-Lore Society, no less than 345 variants of 'Cinderella' and kindred stories showing how widespread this particular formula was throughout Europe and how substantially identical the various incidents as reproduced in each particular country. — Joseph Jacobs

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Some parts of the genome with a high frequency of Neanderthal variants shape hair and skin color and likely made the first Eurasians lighter-skinned than their African ancestors. — Christine Kenneally

As for the multiple editions, in the case of a truly great writer - Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Proust, someone with a canon - there is often a "variorum" edition of the work that presents its variants. I think publishing most other writing that way would be impossible, economically, for publishers, and very ill-advised for authors. — Judith Thurman

Some genetic variants can be informative about one's risk for Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. — Anne Wojcicki

The basic formulation, or bare-bones mechanics, of natural selection is a disarmingly simple argument, based on three undeniable facts (overproduction of offspring, variation, and heritability) and one syllogistic inference (natural selection, or the claim that organisms enjoying differential reproductive success will, on average, be those variants that are fortuitously better adapted to changing local environments, and that these variants will then pass their favored traits to offspring by inheritance). — Stephen Jay Gould

There were those who asserted that sons always became, to some degree or other, disguised variants of their fathers, that the experience of breaking out was never more than an illusion; you returned; the gravity of blood was not only stronger than your willpower, it was your willpower. — Jo Nesbo

DSM-5 is not 'the bible of psychiatry' but a practical manual for everyday work. Psychiatric diagnosis is primarily a way of communicating. That function is essential but pragmatic - categories of illness can be useful without necessarily being 'true.' The DSM system is a rough-and-ready classification that brings some degree of order to chaos. It describes categories of disorder that are poorly understood and that will be replaced with time. Moreover, current diagnoses are syndromes that mask the presence of true diseases. They are symptomatic variants of broader processes or arbitrary cut-off points on a continuum. — Joel Paris

There are really only two standards of appellate review: plenary and deferential. Conventionally there are four basic standards (with many variants), which in ascending order of deference to the trial court or administrative agency are de novo, clearly erroneous, substantial evidence, and abuse of discretion. But the last three are, in practice, the same, because finer distinctions are beyond judges' cognitive capacity. The multiplication of unusual distinctions is a familiar judicial pathology. — Richard A. Posner

When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process. The ancient doctrine of original sin, variants of which occur independently in the mythologies of diverse cultures, could be a reflection of man's awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong. — Arthur Koestler

As autom, Ehrsul had neither rights nor tasks, but so far as it was understood an owner, a settler of some previous generation, had died intestate, and she'd never become anyone else's property. There were variants of salvage laws by which someone might theoretically have tried to claim her, but by now it would have seemed abominable. — China Mieville

The term "rational" and its variants (rationality, rationalism) are used in a lot of contexts in economic debate, both positively and negatively, but nearly always sloppily or dishonestly. A specimen I've seen on more occasions than I can count is the line (usually presented with a sense of witty originality) "if you are opposed to economic rationalism, you must be in favor of economic irrationalism" ... I've come to the conclusion that the word "rational" has no meaning that cannot better be conveyed by some alternative term and that the best advice is probably to avoid it altogether. — John Quiggin

If Hemn space is the landscape, and one cosmos is a single geometric point in it, then a given consciousness is a spot of light moving, like a searchlight beam, over that landscape - brightly illuminating a set of points - of cosmi - that are close together, with a penumbra that rapidly feathers away to darkness at the edges. In the bright center of the beam, crosstalk occurs among many variants of the brain. Fewer contributions come in from the half-lit periphery, and none from the shadows beyond. — Neal Stephenson

So this is the "smug idiot thinks he's funny" face, Kami observed. Not to be confused with other "smug idiot" variants. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect. — Eric Hoffer

In the end, the tenses of the verbs settled into a common groove, the persons of the narrators, first and third (the latter with so many variants and identities), became one, and events thronged toward a day that began uncertainly and remained undecided, with a light gray film covering the sky. — Filip Florian

I like writing about women, weak and strong, pathetic and heroic. I like writing about men, ditto. And all the variants of men and women, beasts and demons. — Tanith Lee

Once evolution gets a good basic design, it tends to throw away the variants and concentrate on the near-infinite diversity within that design. — Dan Simmons

And sing along for a few bars before changing it again. By the time we reached the darkened facade of La Maison, I was starting to wonder whether there were any Snow White variants that included killing the Wicked Queen for being too annoying to be allowed to live. — Seanan McGuire

The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state. — Ayn Rand

The best prophylactic for god viruses, especially fundamentalist variants, is science education. The more science is taught or discussed, the fewer tools a god virus has to infect populations. — Darrel W. Ray

The earliest known copies of Jewish Scriptures in Hebrew dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries CE, and among them the differences were mostly small and insignificant. Taking them as witnesses to the earlier texts from which they were copied, it seemed logical to conclude that these many homogeneous texts must have derived from a common original via a highly accurate scribal tradition. But evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to contradict this conclusion. Among the hundreds of biblical manuscripts discovered there, many of which are more than a thousand years older than anything scholars had ever seen before, we find not uniformity but diversity, including many significant differences. The logical assumption now is that Jewish Scriptures became more uniform and free of variants over time, as scribes gradually established a more or less standard edition. — Timothy Beal

I think a brain can be made "more thinking" or made "more emotional." At what point does this become abnormal? Autism in its milder variants, I think, is part of normal human variation. — Temple Grandin

The optimist, the evolutionist, the myth-of-progress school all say that these are just the growing pains of something bigger and better. The Platonist, the Hindu, and, following Plato, the Gnostic, the Manichaean, and countless others within variants of the Christian and Jewish traditions all say that these are the signs that we are made for something quite different, a world not made of space, time, and matter, a world of pure spiritual existence where we shall happily have got rid of the shackles of mortality once and for all. And the way you get rid of mortality within this worldview is to get rid of the thing that can decay and die, namely our material selves. The — N. T. Wright

Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [ ... ] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments. — Stephen Jay Gould

I think most people played both variants and regular games. It was a period when variants were very popular and there were a lot more variants being played at that time. Every week practically, it seemed someone would publish a new variant in a zine. — Fred Davis

Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have "really happened,"or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths. — Northrop Frye

Every lifelong couple has their own variants of the butterfly dream! — Newton Lee

Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the Housefly (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to one or more pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds. — Francisco J. Ayala

The most general way of stating the central assertion of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is that a population of replicators subject to variation (for instance by imperfect copying) will be taken over by those variants that are better than their rivals at causing themselves to be replicated. This — David Deutsch

There are various grades of spiritual sight. One grade enables a man to see the ordinarily invisible ether with the myriads of beings that invest that realm. Other and higher variants give him the faculty to see the desire world and even the world of thought while remaining in the physical body. — Max Heindel

I feel overawed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such a quantity. By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species, in which each individual, while subservient to the mass, retains some distinguishing features. A crowd of people, birds, insects, or leaves is a mysterious assemblage of variants of certain prototype. A riddle of nature's abhorrence of exact repetition or inability to produce it. Just as the human hand cannot repeat its own gesture, I invoke this disturbing law, switching my own immobile herds into that rhythm. — Magdalena Abakanowicz

An important attribute of metabolites is their close relationship to both the biological states of interest (i.e. disease status) and relevant genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic variants causally related to the disease state. As such, metabo-profiles can be viewed as an intermediate measure that links pre-disposing genes and environmental exposures to a resulting disease state. Causal metabolites also typically have a stronger relationship (i.e. larger effect size) to the underlying genetics and the disease phenotype. Thus, the integration of metabolomic data into systems biology approaches may provide a missing link between genes and disease states. — Joseph Loscalzo

Language and material culture have greatly increased the mobility of the world's population, and some researchers believe that this will lead to an unhealthy and irreversible diminishing of variation in our genome. As more and more humans breed across the boundaries of genetic variation, we become a blander, more homogenous bunch than our diverse parent groups. This could be a problem because variation is important to the evolutionary health of a species, for the more we are the same, the easier it is for one single thing to make us extinct. Indeed, some genetic variants of the human species are disappearing altogether as small indigenous groups die out. — Christine Kenneally

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white. — Paul Schrader

Any type of political ideology is going to have a lot of different variants of it. — John Mackey

The evolutionary algorithm
of variation and selection, repeated
searches for solutions in a world where the problems keep changing, trying all sorts of variants and doing more of what works. — Tim Harford

You ever hear guys with small cocks talk about sex? Can't talk about it enough. They even got poems. They'll say, 'It's not the motion of the ocean, it's the boat of the lotion.' I've even heard variants ... , it's not the tree or the size, it's the axe that you wax.' It's a whole sub-genre of poetry now that's taught in many of our finer institutions. — Norm MacDonald

Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. — Ayn Rand

[Abusers] blame the world - circumstances, other people - for their defeats, misfortune, misconduct, and failures. The abuser firmly believes that his life is swayed by currents and persons over which he has no influence whatsoever (he has an external locus of control).

But there are even subtler variants of this psychological defense mechanism. Not infrequently an abuser will say: "I made a mistake because I am stupid", implying that his deficiencies and inadequacy are things he cannot help having and cannot change. This is also an alloplastic defense because it abrogates responsibility.

Many abusers exclaim: "I misbehaved because I completely lost my temper." On the surface, this appears to be an autoplastic defense with the abuser assuming responsibility for his misconduct. But it could be interpreted as an alloplastic defense, depending on whether the abuser believes that he can control his temper. — Sam Vaknin

[The tests agreed] that I was at higher risk than the average person for Type 2 diabetes, which is what my lab works on. In fact, some of the things they were testing for were variants that we had discovered. — Francis Collins

In fact, most people are being squeezed in their little cubicle, and their creativity is forced out elsewhere, because the company can't use it. The company is organized to get rid of variants. — Scott Adams

What if - poring through Graham's bank in some future era - the selected "genius specimens" were found to possess the very genes that, in alternative situations, might be identified as disease enabling (or vice versa: What if "disease-causing" gene variants were also genius enabling?)? — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Vampires are fond of their games. But the games that They play are different than the variants that I'm familiar with. The rules were made to be bent, broken, shattered - and somebody always gets hurt.
Always. — Nenia Campbell

It shouldn't surprise us that members of the same culture that gave us capitalism as the dominant economic model - based as it is on the insane notion that selfish individuals all attempting to maximally exploit each other will somehow create stable and healthy human communities (never mind that it never has and functionally cannot) - would give us variants of the selfish gene theory as the dominant biological model - based as it is on the equally insane notion that selfish individuals all attempting to maximally exploit each other will somehow create stable and healthy natural communities (never mind that it never has and functionally cannot). Both are justifications for what the dominant culture does: steal from everyone else. Absent — Derrick Jensen