587,328 Hours

587,328 hours of life (67 years) so far.  On Sunday the family gathered for a birthday dinner. I've got business plans and martial arts plans, and maybe I'll make time for other plans as well.

I'm looking forward to another busy year full of adventures. 

A Vast Bazaar

Literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.

-- James Branch Cabell (1879 - 1958), American author of satirical fantasy works, The Certain Hour (1916) "Auctorial Induction"

Suit His Temper

He is happy, whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who can suit his temper to any circumstances.

-- David Hume (1711 - 1776), Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) § 6.9 : Of Qualities Useful to Ourselves, Pt. 1

Other Side Of The Hill

All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called "guessing what was at the other side of the hill."

-- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769 - 1852), British soldier and statesman, he led the victorious Anglo-Allied forces against Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, Remarks to John Wilson Croker and Croker's wife (4 September 1852), quoted in L. J. Jennings (ed.), The Croker Papers: The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830, Vol. III (1884), p. 276

They're Back

Well, they're back.  This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina Beach a year ago, and this won't be the end of it.  But nothing has changed with me.  I'm still innocent,  I'm still not afraid, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.  So let's go. 

But it's really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country.  This is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be.  And the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values.  Keep the faith.

-- Former government person James Comey, in a video posted to his Substack responding to a felony indictment alleging that Comey did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States, based upon a 2025 social media post of an image of seashells (28 April 2026)

In Short

In short, it is possible to demonstrate that (a) many people support positions or political forces that violate their own professed interests, and (b) many people profess interests that violate their actual well-being.

-- Michael Parenti (30 September 1933 - 24 January 2026), American political scientist, historian, and media critic, Contrary Notions (2007) Ch. 5, Section 20: False Consciousness

The Great Dance

When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.

-- Hermann Karl Hesse (1877 - 1962), German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter, 1946 Nobel laureate in Literature, Narcissus and Goldmund (1930) Chapter 10