Astro Turf Quotes

I didn't like The Astrodome or any of the Astro-Turf fields. Probably my worst ballpark was The Met in Minnesota; I hated that place. I was so glad when they tore that place down, you have no idea. ~ Rollie Fingers

The most classic horror tale of this latter type is the Old Testament story of Job, who becomes human Astro-Turf in a kind of spiritual Superbowl between God and Satan. ~ Stephen King

There've been a lot more people hurt on astro-turf than grass. ~ Ken Kesey

ASTRO-GYMNASTICS
Go on a starlit night,
stand on your head,
leave your feet dangling
outwards into space,
and let the starry
firmament you tread
be, for the moment,
your elected base.
Feel Earth's colossal weight
of ice and granite,
of molten magma,
water, iron, and lead;
and briefly hold
this strangely solid planet
balanced upon
your strangely solid head. ~ Piet Hein

When we try to make a car that drives itself, we believe - whether we're right or not - we believe that there would be strong net positive benefit to the world if cars could drive themselves safer than people could. ~ Astro Teller

Certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideoologues, dogmatists, and bullies
people who think that their rigtness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to suscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them! ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Smartphone makers sought deeper ties with retail buyers by adding ring tones, games, Web browsers, and other applications to their phones. Carriers, however, wanted this business to themselves. If they couldn't sell applications within their "walled gardens," carriers worried they would be reduced to mere utilities or "dumb pipes" carrying data and voice traffic. Nokia learned the hard way just how ferociously carriers could defend their turf. In the late 1990s the Finnish phone maker launched Club Nokia, a Web-based portal that allowed customers to buy and download ~ Jacquie McNish

I've seen fire, and I've seen rain. I've also had to scramble over tundra to get to the Super Bowl and seen baseball turf fields that could fry a fielder's soles. ~ George Vecsey

I enjoy learning about the new technologies. I enjoy getting to know the new fans and dealing with them on their turf. ~ Lea Thompson

When technology reaches that level of invisibility in our lives, that's our ultimate goal. It vanishes into our lives. It says, 'You don't have to do the work; I'll do the work.' ~ Astro Teller

Nor all your piety nor all your preaching, nor all your crusades nor all your threats can stop one girl from going on the turf, can stop one mugging, can keep one promising youth from becoming a drug addict, so long as the force that drives the owners of our civilization is away from those who own nothing at all. ~ Nelson Algren

To tear down silos, leaders must go beyond behaviors and address the contextual issues at the heart of departmental separation and politics. The purpose of this book is to present a simple, powerful tool for addressing those issues and reducing the pain that silos cause. And that pain should not be underestimated. Silos - and the turf wars they enable - devastate organizations. They waste resources, kill productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of goals. But beyond all that, they exact a considerable human toll too. They cause frustration, stress, and disillusionment by forcing employees to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with people who should be their teammates. There is perhaps no greater cause of professional anxiety and exasperation - not to mention turnover - than employees having to fight with people in their own organization. Understandably and inevitably, this bleeds over into their personal lives, affecting family and friends in profound ways. ~ Patrick Lencioni

There is no law of physics that says just because we're connected, there has to be this schism between our physical lives and our digital lives. ~ Astro Teller

Use creativity and storytelling as your main muscle instead of smartness. ~ Astro Teller

It is the essence of innovation to fail most of the time. ~ Astro Teller

Let's make health care a meritocracy. Access to the best care goes to people who did what they could to avoid becoming ill. ~ Astro Teller

Grab a pen and your turf will have no limits. ~ Nadun Lokuliyanage

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it. ~ Seamus Heaney

His workplace has become a rat's nest of empire building, turf defense, careerism, backstabbing, betrayal, and snitchcraft. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Going from an error rate of 25 meters in GPS to 2.5 meters is huge. Going to 25 centimeters is going to matter just as much. ~ Astro Teller

Today, on our own turf, we face pagan ignorance about God every bit as deep as that which the early church faced in the Roman Empire. ~ J.I. Packer

I'm not your bitch, Phobos. You didn't drag me out of the pound to put a collar on me. Don't expect me to heel because you say so. You are on my turf now. Think about it. (ZT) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Our goal is not to produce immediate results. We've been tasked with producing long-term results. That means that there's more risk in any individual thing we take on. But we still aspire to a strong return on investment. ~ Astro Teller

The road has been viewed as a male turf. If you think of the classic "Odyssey," of, you know, classical literature or Jack Kerouac or almost any road story, it's really about a man on the road. There's an assumption that the road is too dangerous for women. ~ Gloria Steinem

Say, care-worn man, Whom Duty chains within the city walls, Amid the toiling crowd, how grateful plays The fresh wind o'er thy sickly brow, when free To tread the springy turf, - to hear the trees Communing with the gales, - to catch the voice Of waters, gushing from their rocky womb, And singing as they wander ... Spring-hours will come again, and feelings rise With dewy freshness o'er thy wither'd heart. ~ Robert Montgomery

When you go to plant a flag on the visiting team's field, it's a form of taunting, .. What message are you sending when you spear it into the turf of your defeated opponent?. ~ Brad Davis

What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive. ~ Arnold Palmer

I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer. ~ Astro Teller

The assumption that humans could be a reliable back up for the system was a fallacy! ~ Astro Teller

No person who has not spent a period of his life in those 'stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole' will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man ~ Ernest Shackleton

Winter is not here yet. There's a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa? ~ Emily Bronte

We were all around for the big bang, but not as what we look like today. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

D) sometimes everyone ends up happier Question 5: True Love: ~ Astro Teller

I think that the great part of creativity is overcoming fear. Fear is a given. When you sit down and have to begin something, don't be afraid to be filled with fear, because it goes with the turf. ~ Jerry Goldsmith

Crivens!'

'Oh no, not them,' said the Queen, throwing up her hands.

It wasn't just the Nac Mac Feegles, but also Wentworth, a strong smell of seaweed, a lot of water and a dead shark. They appeared in mid-air and landed in a heap between Tiffany and the Queen. But a pictsie was always ready for a fight, and they bounced, rolled and came up drawing their swords and shaking sea water out of their hair.

'Oh, 'tis you, izzut?' said Rob Anybody, glaring up at the Queen. 'Face to face wi' ye at last, ye bloustie ol' callyack that ye are! Ye canna' come here, unnerstand? Be off wi' ye! Are ye goin' to go quietly?'

The Queen stamped heavily on him. When she took her foot away, only the top of his head was visible above the turf.

'Well, are ye?' he said, pulling himself out as if nothing had happened. 'I don't wantae havtae lose my temper wi' ye! An' it's no good sendin' your pets against us, 'cos you ken we can take 'em tae the cleaners!' He turned to Tiffany, who hadn't moved. 'You just leave this tae us, Kelda. Us an' the Quin, we go way back! ~ Terry Pratchett

His cottage in Gweedore was made completely out of turf. This puzzled me, as a turf fire burned constantly in the grate, and I could never understand why the entire cottage didn't catch fire. ~ Arthur Mathews

I guess what I'm really saying is something obvious - that there's a unique pride in watching a home team from rival turf, especially when we're not supposed to be any good. ~ Serge Schmemann

When I was a kid, my mother thought spinach was the healthiest food in the world because it contained so much iron. Getting enough iron was a big deal then because we didn't have 'iron-fortified' bread. Turns out that spinach is an okay source of iron, but no better than pizza, pistachio nuts, cooked lentils, or dried peaches. The spinach-iron myth grew out of a simple mathematical miscalculation: A researcher accidentally moved a decimal point one space, so he thought spinach had 10 times more iron than it did. The press reported it, and I had to eat spinach.
Moving the decimal point was an honest mistake--but it's seldom that simple. If it happened today I'd suspect a spinach lobby was behind it. Businesses often twist science to make money. Lawyers do it to win cases. Political activists distort science to fit their agenda, bureaucrats to protect their turf. Reporters keep falling for it.
Scientists sometimes go along with it because they like being famous. ~ John Stossel

We need to be wise consumers of information in an age of artificially created reality, written by professional propagandists, bought and paid for by special interests who many times disguise themselves as grassroots movements but are nothing but AstroTurf. They'll give you turf burns and turf toe, but never the truth. ~ H.L. Wegley

If Jupiter was in the ascendant when you were born, you are of a jovial disposition; and if you're not jovial but miserable and saturnine that's a disaster, because a disaster is a dis-astro, or misplaced planet. Disaster is Latin for ill-starred.
The fault, as Shakespeare put it, is not in our stars; but the language is. ~ Mark Forsyth

One of the problems I have with many writers is their stories are all somewhat similar. They might be very good, but they're always on the same turf. I don't have those limitations. ~ T.C. Boyle

Sending Muskie against Nixon would have been like sending a three-toed sloth out to seize turf from a wolverine. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I believe that the right thing for us to do, as much as we can and without confusing people, is to talk about how we're doing, the things that are going well but also the things that aren't going well. ~ Astro Teller

Sonnet III: Black Coffin opened wide for all to See

Black Coffin opened wide for all to See,
The lifeless form of one I loved so dear.
O, listen! mournful knells that soon shall be
All night long tolling for the folk to hear.
The lanterns overlight the old churchyard
To watch the coffin lowered into the ground;
Soon Frost shall grasp the turf already hard,
Decay ye have to face without a sound.
But years have pass'd herein do I relate
My dear sweet mother's form within my mind.
Still happiness fills all my heart and state,
As I see my small family so kind.
Love cannot be withheld by death or grave,
It stays alive within the heart so brave. ~ Timothy Salter

When we finally head outside to walk toward the big silver Astro van that will take us to the launch pad, it's that moment everyone knows: flashbulbs pop in the pre-dawn darkness, the crowd cheers, we wave and smile. In the van, we can see the rocket in the distance, lit up and shining, an obelisk. In reality, of course, it's a 4.5-megaton bomb loaded with explosive fuel, which is why everyone else is driving away from it. ~ Chris Hadfield

Imagine 4 years.
Four years, two suicides, one death, one rape, two pregnancies (one abortion), three overdoses, countless drunken antics, pantsings, spilled food, theft, fights, broken limbs, turf wars–every day, a turf war–six months until graduation and no one gets a medal when they get out. But everything you do here counts.

High school. ~ Courtney Summers

I step through origins
like a dog turning
its memories of wilderness
on the kitchen mat:
the bog floor shakes,
water cheeps and lisps
as I walk down
rushes and heather.
I love this turf-face,
it's black incisions,
the cooped secrets
of process and ritual:
-Kinship ~ Seamus Heaney

Shit happens and if you don't die you pick yourself off the frickin' pavement before a dog marks you as his turf. ~ Elise Alden

There was a further, rather crazy reason why Neil was my dream batsman. In the 1950s, pop music was innocent and melodic. Top among the vocalists who escorted me through my youth was little Guy Mitchell. That plaintive, joyous, carefree voice gave us Truly Fair and My Heart Cries for You, crystal-clear melodies that lifted and sustained anxious teenagers, exactly as did Neil Harvey's dainty batsmanship. Neil was a study in cream: no commercial logos then (least of all affixed to the white boundary pickets or splattered even more intrusively across the sacred turf), just a clean bat wielded by a young chap with shirt-sleeves rolled high, pads gleaming white, dark hair unencumbered by cap or sunhat (let alone helmet), head slightly tilted as he walked.

"Consequently, whenever I watched Harvey play, a Guy Mitchell song would float through my head. And whenever I listened to those 78rpm records at home, they sparked visions of Neil Harvey at the crease. So I've now confessed to a modern readership. And if that portrays the young me as a dreamer, anchored securely in a world of innocence and joy, so be it. Despite all the tensions and crises that life has thrown up, little has changed. I owe a lot to Neil Harvey. ~ David Frith

Yeah, I'm a classy guy." Ranger scooped up a handful of popcorn. "A little girl's life is at stake. That doesn't leave much room for ego and turf wars. ~ Janet Evanovich