|
|
|
|
|
|
Ehud Barak
Former Prime Minister of Israel
I remember my own father, which is now 91 years old, repeating to me once and again this point from Isadore Rabi's story about how he became a scientist. He said the most influential moment was that his mother repeatedly when he used to come back from school at a very early age of eight or nine asking him, "Isadore, have you asked kind of a good question today?" Not "What you have learned?" not "What you have observed?" but "Have you raised a good question today?"
View Interview with Ehud Barak
View Biography of Ehud Barak
View Profile of Ehud Barak
View Photo Gallery of Ehud Barak
|
|
Ehud Barak
Former Prime Minister of Israel
You know, we didn't have a school system at the time that would prepare the students for college. No matriculation. No formal systematic coverage of a certain syllabus or curriculum that will enable you to enter. It was kind of a rural, remote school system, very caring, very open, very encouraging kind of "do it your way," which is very modern today, but without kind of sets of standards that should be achieved and practically began to learn systematically only when I was adult, about 23 or 24 when I made my matriculation when I was already an operational officer in the armed forces.
View Interview with Ehud Barak
View Biography of Ehud Barak
View Profile of Ehud Barak
View Photo Gallery of Ehud Barak
|
|
Ehud Barak
Former Prime Minister of Israel
So unlike what you typically relate to military service, I felt that I'm growing up and developing in a kind of environment of the freedom of the spirit, and the freedom of imagination, the freedom to dare whatever you think. It puts a lot of burden of responsibility not to take too much of a risky approach, but it makes you responsible. We used to say, "You are the commander in the field, you are responsible to it. No one can help you from somewhere in some command post in the rear." And it shapes young people, you know, in a unique way if they're ambitious in a way, if they're predisposed for leadership.
View Interview with Ehud Barak
View Biography of Ehud Barak
View Profile of Ehud Barak
View Photo Gallery of Ehud Barak
|
|
Ehud Barak
Former Prime Minister of Israel
All my life I was stimulated by business activity. It looked to me something -- the closest thing to war. You don't kill the other guy but, you know, there's an active attempt of one to defeat most of the others and a certain partial kind of cooperation, and the fact that you cannot act effectively unless you understand the whole picture and at the same time give attention to details. And sometimes your defeat can come from someone that you don't even see at first. It became clear after two months that (Yitzhak) Rabin wants me to come to join government. The last few years I was deeply involved in his effort to have the agreement with the Palestinians. As the top military authority I have to express my views about what it means, what are the calculated risks that we can afford. And his effort to reach an agreement with the Jordanians, which ended up with a peace agreement with King Hussein. And I had a very close and warm relationship with King Hussein that began years earlier during the Gulf War and even before. And then I was sent by Rabin to meet the Syrian Chief of Staff here at the Blair House where, you know, I was just a civil servant. The Syrian Chief of Staff is number two in the Syrian politics. He is a political figure and the closest friend at the time of President Assad. So I was somehow exposed to these kind of political kind of experiences in this field of security and foreign affairs.
View Interview with Ehud Barak
View Biography of Ehud Barak
View Profile of Ehud Barak
View Photo Gallery of Ehud Barak
|
|
Timothy Berners-Lee
Father of the World Wide Web
I was really lucky to know how a computer worked, 'cause I'd built one. I built it. I had my terminal with its 64-character lines, and I had it connected to my computer, which was in a crate this big with a big car battery at the bottom in case the power failed. I knew how it worked because I knew how I could have built the chip out of gates, and I knew how I could have built the gates out of transistors. I didn't really know how transistors worked, but I knew I could have made the equivalents of a transistor. I learned a certain amount from the physics course about how solid-state systems work, and I knew how I could emulate each of those out of nails. So now, when I look at a laptop, I see all those pixels and see the windows moving. I know that I could build the operating systems, and I have built little operating systems since. I don't know how well anybody nowadays, without going through that historical phase, could ever feel that they really know how a computer works.
View Interview with Timothy Berners-Lee
View Biography of Timothy Berners-Lee
View Profile of Timothy Berners-Lee
View Photo Gallery of Timothy Berners-Lee
|
|
Timothy Berners-Lee
Father of the World Wide Web
Math was my favorite subject, I suppose, at school, but on the other hand, I was interested in this electronics. So I thought I'd do physics as being a compromise between the two. It wasn't. It was something completely different, I realized. The philosophy of physics is different, and I think physics is pretty special. I'm glad that I did do it, but it did not prepare me. It did not turn me into a mathematician, and it did not really allow me to do electronics. It allowed me to do a lot of thinking, all sorts of interesting ways, and I realized the relationship between the microscopic and the macroscopic. The microscopic rules of behavior of atoms, and the macroscopic behavior of them and so on, is really very interesting. That difference is now crucial between the microscopic way in which two computers interact over the network and the way the whole web behaves, which we're now calling "web science." The difference between the microscopic and the macroscopic is still a challenging step.
View Interview with Timothy Berners-Lee
View Biography of Timothy Berners-Lee
View Profile of Timothy Berners-Lee
View Photo Gallery of Timothy Berners-Lee
|
|
Timothy Berners-Lee
Father of the World Wide Web
What people describe as the "Aha!" moment, the "eureka" moment, I think this idea of it being a moment, I'm very suspicious of. I don't actually believe that Archimedes sat in the bath, saw the water up, and said "Eureka!" I think he probably tried all kinds of things. He tried ways of filling the crown full of little marbles maybe and counting the marbles. Goodness knows what. No, he tried all kinds of ways of estimating its volume. And then he figured, "Ah goodness! Yeah. Water will do it!" But he'd done a lot of preparation, and he probably had a lot of ideas pretty close to it. And in fact, it didn't happen -- (snaps). If you'd started him off on the problem totally fresh and sat him in the bath, nothing would have happened. It wouldn't have happened without him discussing the problem with people, without him starting to form all of these hypotheses, half-formed things.
View Interview with Timothy Berners-Lee
View Biography of Timothy Berners-Lee
View Profile of Timothy Berners-Lee
View Photo Gallery of Timothy Berners-Lee
|
|
Yogi Berra
Baseball Hall of Fame
Yogi Berra: Well, it's not an easy game. You got to stay at it. You really do. You know, a lot of people just think - we had guys - kids today, they're organized today. We weren't organized. Like you and I, you pitch to me, and I'd throw to you after. And, like I said, that cartball taught me a lot, softball. You got to keep your eye - you can't swing hard in softball, that's another thing. I never swung. If I swung hard, I would swing and miss a lot. And, you play with bottle caps, that ain't gonna make you swing hard, neither. And one strike, you were out. And you had to get four hits before you get a run. And we played it day and night. We loved it. Whatever was in season. I played a lot of soccer. I love soccer. I love to watch soccer games on TV. And back there on the Hill, we played against - soccer, we had Spanish living there, the Italians and Germans and Irish. We played against each other. And, I used to enjoy it. That was good. That's a good conditioning game, that soccer. It is.
View Interview with Yogi Berra
View Biography of Yogi Berra
View Profile of Yogi Berra
View Photo Gallery of Yogi Berra
|
|
Yogi Berra
Baseball Hall of Fame
Yogi Berra: I was a lousy catcher 'til they got Bill Dickey there. Dickey worked me hard. And, I liked it, though, what he did for me. I owe everything to Bill Dickey, I really do. He made me a good catcher. How to block balls. I try to do that to some of the kids today. They've got their own style, some today, you know. And, now everybody tells me, "Boy, you're so short." I say, "Well, I make a good target. I don't have to bend down so far. I'm in the strike zone all the time." But Dickey, he really worked me, boy. Worked me to death, and I loved him for it. And, then it came easy. It came easy for me. Like a lot of people, I try to tell them, I know they take that crow hop now, you know, when they throw to second base, but I don't. But see, I go into a ball. I can let you swing a bat, and I go across home plate, you won't hit me.
View Interview with Yogi Berra
View Biography of Yogi Berra
View Profile of Yogi Berra
View Photo Gallery of Yogi Berra
|
|
Yogi Berra
Baseball Hall of Fame
Yogi Berra: Work hard at it. It's not easy. Anytime you got a chance to hit, hit! And, that's what we did. And, practice what you're doing. You know, fielding, whatever position you play. I never caught until I turned pro. I played second base, I pitched a little bit, and I played outfield. And, they thought I had a good arm, but I didn't know where I was going. That's when they got hold of Dickey. Like I said, I was a terrible catcher, but I had somebody to teach me.
View Interview with Yogi Berra
View Biography of Yogi Berra
View Profile of Yogi Berra
View Photo Gallery of Yogi Berra
|
|
Yogi Berra
Baseball Hall of Fame
They're making the parks small. They want to see home runs today. It seems like it, they want to do that and I get a kick out of them. You know, they run around the park. You know, they jog around the park. And, I used to tell them when I was coaching, I said, "Do you jog when you run to first base?" We used to do 20 laps, 100 yards, and walk back. A hundred yards. After every spring training game, we always did. Pitchers used to run from foul-line to foul-line, and they used to do it during the season while he wasn't pitching. The starters would do it. 'Cause they're all four bases. Running was a lot to us. They made you run.
View Interview with Yogi Berra
View Biography of Yogi Berra
View Profile of Yogi Berra
View Photo Gallery of Yogi Berra
|
| |
|
