Becoming a father is easy enough, but being one can be very rough.
-Wilhelm Busch

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
- Abraham Lincoln

We’re devoting this week to Father’s Day quotes. Here are two to make you chuckle:

Never raise your hand to your kids.  It leaves your groin unprotected.
-Red Buttons

A father is a banker provided by nature.
-French Proverb

Personally, it took me half my life to figure out why my dad was the distant old geezer that he was, and that he really did love us. Working 60 hours a week was just his way of showing love by “taking care of business”. Some people learn faster.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
- Author Unknown

That quote above is often attributed to Mark Twain, but apparently there’s nothing to back up that assertion.

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
-Charles Wadsworth

Dads say a lot of  things. Some of them true, some absurd, some inspiring, some of  them just plain mean. My dad focused on the motivational quote:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you, cry, and I’ll give you somethin’ to cry ABOUT.
-My Dad

Some fathers take a gentler approach:

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard.  Mother would come out and say, “You’re tearing up the grass.”  “We’re not raising grass,” Dad would reply.  “We’re raising boys.”
-Harmon Killebrew

For something that makes human life itself possible, it seems like mostly all you ever hear about the sun is that it isn’t shining enough, or maybe it’s shining TOO MUCH. Here are some basic facts to ponder about how the sun relates to your puny existence….

The sun contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the solar system, with Jupiter accounting for much of the remainder.

Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.

An area of the Sun’s surface the size of a postage stamp shines with with the brightness of about 120,000 hundred-watt light bulbs.

Approximately one million Earths can fit inside the Sun.

Light from the Sun reaches Earth in around 8 minutes.

The Sun showers the earth with 126 trillion horsepower of energy daily.

The core of the Sun is mostly helium.

The movie Fight Club has tons of memorable lines, but few that qualify as “quotes”. See Monday’s post for the distinction we’re making.

On a large enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero.
- The narrator “Jack”, in Fight Club

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
- Tyler Durden,  in Fight Club

Recycling and speed limits are bullshit. They’re like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.
- Tyler Durden,  in Fight Club

For the distinction we’re making between movie “quotes” vs movie “lines” see here.

The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.
- Edward Renaldi, in The Princess Diaries

Behind every great man is a woman. Rolling her eyes.
-Bruce Nolan, in Bruce Almighty

Life’s a garden, dig it.
- Joe Dirt, in Joe Dirt

It’s amazing how much wisdom animated critters seem to possess. See an explanation of this week’s theme here.

First rule of leadership: everything is your fault.
- Hopper, in A Bug’s Life

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called “the present”.
Oogway, in Kung Fu Panda

This week we’ll be featuring memorable movie quotes. These are harder to find than you think. Although there are thousands of lists on the web that call themselves collections of movie quotes, they’re more often people’s collections of favorite lines, which are often meaningless outside  the context of the movie. So here are a few to get started:

Do, or do not. There is no “try”.
- Yoda, in Star Wars:The Empire Strikes Back

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
- Ferris Bueller, in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

When a defining moment comes along, you can do one of two things. Define the moment, or let the moment define you.
- Roy McAvoy, in Tin Cup

Ever heard of a non-Newtonian fluid? Yes, you have. You just didn’t realize it. Wikipedia says “A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid whose flow properties differ in any way from those of Newtonian fluids. Most commonly the viscosity of non-Newtonian fluids is not independent of shear rate or shear rate history. However, there are some non-Newtonian fluids with shear-independent viscosity, that nonetheless exhibit normal stress-differences or other non-Newtonian behaviour”.

Um, sure. Some examples?

Oobleck is not just a made-up substance from the Dr Seuss story Bartholomew and the Oobleck. It is an odd material that variously behaves as a liquid or a solid depending on how it’s handled.

Flubber is not only a fictitious bouncy substance in the movie The Absent-Minded Professor, it is a real substance classified as a non-Newtonian fluid. It flows under low pressure but breaks under high pressure.

A more complete list of non-Newtonian fluids would include ketchup, custard, toothpaste, paint, blood, and shampoo.