For Principle

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

-- John Quincy Adams, 1767 - 1848

Never Trust A Computer

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.

-- Steve Wozniak

Seek Simplicity

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

-- Alfred North Whitehead

Danger From All Men

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

-- John Adams, Journal, 1772

Black Cat

It is difficult to catch a black cat in a dark room -- especially if the cat isn't there.

-- Chinese Proverb

Angriest People

The angriest people in this country are not those who opposed the war but those of us who supported it. I mean, we were completely deceived.

-- Pundit Andrew Sullivan; cited in Alex Koppelman, "Sullivan's Travels: Openly Gay Pundit Andrew Sullivan Maps His Transformation from Bush Disciple to Harsh Critic of the Administration" (Salon, October 16)

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/10/16/sullivan/print.html

Relentless Drift

There is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow, or the relentless drift of events will make the decision for us.

-- Herbert Prochnow

People Say They Love Truth

People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.

-- Robert J. Ringer

Complicated

Only in an election year this complicated can Republicans be happy that Mark Foley knocked the Iraq war off the front page.

-- Mark Campbell, a Republican strategist representing several Congressional candidates. New York Times, 10/19/06

Few Things

Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable.

-- Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)

300,000,000

US Population now 300,000,000 (and change).

A birth every 7 seconds.
A death every 13 seconds.
Two new immigrants every minute.

A net change of +1 every 11 seconds.

Palm T|X

Palm T|X

... as of 9am this morning, with WiFi, and which theoretically can talk Bluetooth with my new cell phone to get Internet connectivity everywhere.

So, over the weekend I wanted to listen to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball game, but WDWS was carrying UI women's volleyball. I caught the game on ESPN radio out of Chicago, but reception was pretty poor.

But I found myself musing that with the phone delivering IP via Bluetooth to the Palm I could stream RealAudio over the web to the Palm, then deliver it to the car stereo with the FM broadcast module that plugs into the headphone jack on the Palm. That would be RealAudio over IP over Bluetooth over the cellular CDMA network delivered to the stereo via FM. I'll hafta try that.

SAFE Ports

The Safe Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006 authorizes $3.4 billion over five years for safety measures, including installing radiation detectors at the 22 largest US ports by the end of next year, and increasing the number of random searches of the 11 million containers coming through US ports every year.
[Washington Post]

I'm glad to see Congress and the Administration doing something in this area. But I noticed that the $ amount quoted shines a bright light on the dollar cost of the Iraq war which, at about $1 billion per week, eats up as much as this 5-year allocation every 25 days or so.

Key To Understanding Kids

Jargon and slang speak volumes about the people who use them. Like a form of data compression, they can pack a tremendous amount of information -- the values, ideas, anxieties, and humor of a subculture -- into a single word or phrase. We can learn a lot about a subculture by decompressing its language.

-- Gareth Branwyn, American journalist and writer, "Jargon Watch", 1997

The Leading Edge

There's a fine line between being on the leading edge and being in the lunatic fringe.

-- Frank Armstrong [Preparing for Tomorrow's Challenges]

Duels

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

-- Mark Twain

Baseball, The Only Orderly Thing

Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off.

-- Bill Veeck

My Method

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

-- George Bernard Shaw, Answers to Nine Questions. Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1856-1950

Accustomed

When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to?

-- George Bernard Shaw, A Treatise on Parents and Children. Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1856-1950

Political Necessities

Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.

-- George Bernard Shaw, St. Joan (1923). Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1856-1950

Political Capacity

We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives. Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters?

-- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903). Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1856-1950

A Yawn

A yawn is an honest opinion.

-- George Bernard Shaw. Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1856-1950