Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Deafening Anonymity

In big cities, beneath the roar of traffic, beneath "the rapid pace of change," so many faces pass by unnoticed because they have no "right" to be there, no right to be part of the city.  They are the foreigners, the children who go without schooling, those deprived of medical insurance, the homeless, the forgotten elderly.  These people stand at the edges of our great avenues, in our streets, in deafening anonymity.

-- Pope Francis, in a Mass before 20,000 at Madison Square Garden, reminding New Yorkers to watch for a glimpse of the presence of God among the poorest of the poor, 25 September 2015

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Fact Resistant

While scientists have no clear understanding of the mechanisms that prevent the fact-resistant humans from absorbing data, they theorize that the strain may have developed the ability to intercept and discard information en route from the auditory nerve to the brain.

-- Andy Borowitz, "Scientists: Earth Endangered By New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans," The New Yorker, 12 May 2015

Monday, September 28, 2015

Cycle Of Life

CYCLE OF LIFE

When man is hungry -- he fights
When he fights -- he will grow strong
When he grows strong -- then he conquers
When he has conquered -- he achieves wealth
When he achieves wealth -- he acts philosophically
When he acts philosophically -- his spirit becomes gentle

When his spirit becomes gentle -- he accepts poverty
When he accepts poverty -- he is open to defeat
When he is open to defeat -- he is weak
When he is weak -- he is beaten
When *beaten* -- he is hungry

When a man is hungry ....

-- Bob Griffiths, Cycle Of Life (1993)

Friday, September 25, 2015

Talking To Themselves

All advice is autobiographical.  It's one of my theories that when people give you advice, they're really just talking to themselves in the past.

-- Austin Kleon, "Steal Like An Artist" (2012)

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Always A Reason

There is always a reason to chicken out.

-- University of Richmond Economics Professor Dean Croushore, after the Federal Reserve postponed any increase in interest rates, New York Times, 18 September 2015

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

RIP Yogi Berra

It ain't over 'til it's over.

-- Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra (12 May 1925 - 22 September 2015), American baseball player, manager, and member of Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame, The Yogi Book (1998)

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

That No Other

And now let me tell you something that no other candidate for president will tell you.  And that is no matter who is elected to be president, that person will not be able to address the enormous problems facing the working families of our country.  They will not be able to succeed because the power of corporate America, the power of Wall Street, the power of campaign donors, is so great that no president alone can stand up to them.  That is the truth.  People may be uncomfortable about hearing it, but that is the reality.

-- Bernie Sanders, Clear Lake, Iowa, 14 August 2015

Monday, September 21, 2015

Called To Lead

Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive, conservative message can rise to the top of the field.  With this in mind, I will suspend my campaign immediately.

To refocus the debate on these types of issues will require leadership, I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same, so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive conservative alternative to the current front-runner.  This is fundamentally important to the future of the party and, more importantly, to the future of our country.

-- Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, announcing an end to his presidential run, 21 September 2015

Friday, September 18, 2015

A Movie Of The Past

We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.

-- Ken Kesey (1935-2001), American writer, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Ch. 11: The Unspoken Thing

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Cool Clock

Cool clock, Ahmed.  Want to bring it to the White House?  We should inspire more kids like you to like science.  It's what makes America great.

-- President Obama, on Twitter, to Ahmed Mohamed, a Texas 14-year-old who was detained after taking a homemade clock to school, New York Times, 17 September 2015

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Conscious Of Its Limitations

Before we can build a stable civilization worthy of humanity as a whole, it is necessary that each historical civilization should become conscious of its limitations and it's unworthiness to become the ideal civilization of the world.

-- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888 - 1975), Advaita Vedantist philosopher, first Vice President and second President of India, Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Eye Opener

This has to be an eye-opener on how messed up the situation in Europe is now.

-- Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, after 6,500 migrants, many from Syria, had reached his country, New York Times, 6 September 2015

Monday, September 14, 2015

Social Creation

The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect -- to help people work together -- and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner.

-- Tim Berners-Lee (1955-), inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Weaving the Web (1999)

Friday, September 11, 2015

Flesh And Blood

Corporations can only commit crimes through flesh-and-blood people.  It's only fair that the people who are responsible for committing those crimes be held accountable.

-- Sally Q. Yates, deputy United States attorney general, on new policies that prioritize the prosecution of executives -- not just their companies, New York Times, 10 September 2015

Thursday, September 10, 2015

A Certain Amount

It's like a certain amount of being a parent is realizing what an ass you were before you became a parent.

-- Ira Glass, This American Life, "Pink Slip", 14 August 2015

Wednesday, September 09, 2015

This Was A Mistake

That was a mistake.  I'm sorry about that.  I take responsibility.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her first direct apology for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, New York Times, 9 September 2015

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Sock It To Me

Sock it to me!

-- Judy Carne (27 April 1939 - 3 September 2015), English actress, on Rowan & Martin's Laugh In

Friday, September 04, 2015

Martyrdom

Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, -- never the correctness of his thought.  Things are true or false in themselves.  Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom.  An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.

-- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), lawyer, Civil War veteran political leader and orator, The Great Infidels (1881)

Thursday, September 03, 2015

Where Are The Eyes?

Where are the eyes in an autonomous vehicle?

-- John Lee, a University of Wisconsin professor  and expert in driver safety on the Google  self-driving car and concerns that it can't  interact with other drivers by making eye contact, New York Times, 2 September 2015

Wednesday, September 02, 2015

2019 Mindset List

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released its "mind-set list" to help faculty and administrators understand what a new class of freshmen have experienced and not experienced. Here is the list for the entering college class of 2019, most of whom were born in 1997. Among those who have never been alive in this group of students' lifetimes are Princess Diana, Notorious B.I.G., Jacques Cousteau and Mother Teresa.

Since these students have been on the planet:

  • Hybrid automobiles have always been mass-produced.
  • Google has always been there, in its founding words, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible."
  • Kyoto has always symbolized inactivity about global climate change.
  • The Lion King has always been on Broadway.
  • Vote by mail has always been the official way to vote in Oregon.
  • ... and there has always been a Beloit College mind-set list.

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

Origins To Cyber1

As you all are surely aware, NovaNET finally took the big sleep last night. It was a sad sight, and I'm sorry to see it go.

In February of 1981, I wrote my first note with the title "trvth" in =pad.  I was appleman / chanute at the time. Over the years, with breaks both short and long, I've posted more than 4700 notes with that title, in =pad. The most recent 2300 have been reposted, with accompanying images, at trvth.org

Two years ago, an area high school (Atwood-Hammond) was demolished after the school merged with Arthur-Lovington. The crowd that came to watch that demolition had a nostalgia that I felt again last night, when the room (=pad) was filled with veterans of 30 or more years of PLATO/NovaNET.

Final NovaNET backout

* sigh *