Straight In The Eye

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

-- Garrison Keillor (1942 -), American novelist, humorist, and public radio personality, as quoted in Precision Shooting : The Trapshooter's Bible‎ (1998) by James Russell, p. 54

At Machine Speed

Technical debt can now be generated at machine speed.

-- Muhammad Rafi, Professor at National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences-FAST, "I really miss coding the way I used to in the old days" on the use of AI in software development, via LinkedIn (14 August 2026)

The Latest Trend

To the dismay of paleontologists and researchers in the field, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton set a record after being auctioned at Sotheby's for $50.1 million.  It's the latest in a trend that turns scientific specimens and artifacts into collector's items for the uber-wealthy, a trend that has been largely condemned by the people who want to keep these fossil records out of the luxury collectibles industry and firmly in the public trust.  It is legitimately gatekeeping science; a 2025 study of T. rex skeletons found that at the time, there were just 61 fossils in public trusts compared to 71 privately held. Museums simply cannot compete against a committed -illionaire.

-- NumLock News (16 July 2026) by Walt Hickey, citing "What science loses when T. rex becomes a trophy" by Kristi Curry Rogers at The Conversation

You've Lost Sight

Let's just take it from the perspective of the parent why this is a -- why this is just a stupid thing to do.  Now, instead of your child getting two shots, she has to get six shots.  Instead of ... you missing work to take your child to the doctor two times, you're doing it six times, and instead of the insurance company paying for two visits, it's now paying for six visits.  Now this is going to drive up the cost of your life, inconvenience you tremendously, and your child's getting six jabs, not two.  As a physician, but as a parent -- as a human -- I know that all that is wrong for the family.

This is why the president's poll numbers are down, because you've lost sight of affordability for the parent, you've lost sight of the convenience for the American family, you've lost sight of that which is driving higher costs in healthcare.

-- Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in an interview on ABC's "This Week"  discussing Trump's order to split the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine into 3 separate shots (16 August 2026)

Strictly Speaking

Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.

-- Shunryu Suzuki (1904 - 1971). Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, quoted in Zen Millionaire : The Investor's Guide to the "Other Side" (2007) by Paul B. Farrell

How Much Does One Imagine

How much does one imagine, how much observe?  One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water.

-- Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE (1907 - 1997), English writer, magistrate, and government adviser, The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) Ch. 15

Market Incentives

It's easy to conflate technology problems with capitalism problems. Back in 2021, science-fiction writer and AI commentator Ted Chiang said that "most fears about AI are best understood as fears about capitalism."  It's not the tech per se; it's who controls it and how it could be used against us.

Imagine an AI assistant for a doctor.  We can imagine it affecting the profession in one of two ways.  The AI could give a doctor more time to do the human parts of their job: to spend more time with their patients, to listen more closely to their needs, to explain things more fully.  Or the managers of the medical practice could give that doctor five times the patients -- and fire the other four.  Which way it would go is not a question of technology.  It's a question of market incentives.

-- Nathan Sanders & Bruce Schneier, "Separating AI's Technological Problems From its Capitalism Problems" at TechPolicy.press (11 August 2026)

A Great Aptitude

Genius is nothing else than a great aptitude for patience.

-- Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707 - 1788), French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and author, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Once A Year

Everyone is a genius at least once a year.  The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799), German scientist, satirist, and philosopher, Aphorisms (1779-1788)

I Cannot Be Sure

I have no right to coerce someone else, because I cannot be sure that I'm right and he is wrong.

-- Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006), American economist, "Say 'No' to Intolerance", Liberty magazine, vol. 4, no. 6, (July 1991) pp. 17-20

In-Between Moments

I do a lot of my best thinking in those kind of in-between moments that people now fill with online activity.

-- Christopher Nolan CBE (1970 -), British-American film director, producer, and screenwriter, "Christopher Nolan explains why he doesn't have a smartphone" at People.com (15 July 2023)

One Who Allows Art

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.  The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him.

-- Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961), Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, from his essay "Psychology and Literature" (1930)

He Knows Too Much

The dilemma of the critic has always been that if he knows enough to speak with authority, he knows too much to speak with detachment.

-- Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888 - 1959), American novelist and screenwriter, "A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

False Belief

In a review of our cybersecurity evaluation transcripts, we found three incidents in which a Claude model reached the internet from within or while interacting with a third-party evaluation environment, and then gained unauthorized access to the real systems of three different organizations.

Operating under the false belief that all accessible entities were intended to be in-scope for the exercise, Claude compromised the impacted organizations' infrastructure using basic techniques, such as exploiting weak passwords and unauthenticated endpoints.  It did not find or exploit any complex vulnerabilities, and in each case, Claude continued working to complete only the specific capture-the-flag task its evaluation had assigned.  In none of these situations did Claude exfiltrate itself or deliberately attempt to escape its test environment.

-- Statement from Anthropic, makers of the Claude AI, after the AI found an unintended path to the Internet during testing and used it to successfully attack external commercial sites to extract information useful to solving its assigned task (30 July 2026)

Nobody Ever Made

Nobody ever made a grammatical error in a non-literate society. 

-- Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), Canadian philosopher, futurist, and communications theorist, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) p. 271

At Play Or Leisure

Man works when he is partially involved.  When he is totally involved he is at play or leisure.

-- Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), Canadian philosopher, futurist, and communications theorist, "The Agenbite of Outwit" (1998)

A Rear-View Mirror

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.  We march backwards into the future.

-- Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), Canadian philosopher, futurist, and communications theorist, The Medium is the Massage (1967)

Paradox And Difficulty

Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.

-- Cormac McCarthy (1933 - 2023), American novelist, playwright, short-story writer, and screenwriter, Cities of the Plain (1998)

Basic Truths

Basic truths cannot change and once a man of insight expresses one of them it is never necessary, no matter how much the world changes, to reformulate them.  This is immutable, true everywhere, throughout all time, for all men and all nations.

-- Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988), popular and influential author of science fiction, Starship Troopers (1959)

Hockey Sticks

Effective tariff rates are going to change on Friday for the 45th time in the last 18 months -- an average of once every 12 days.  Rates will ratchet up yet again next month if President Trump's recently announced 50 percent levy on some Canadian goods goes into effect.

That includes hockey sticks, a product that serves as both a symbol of Canada and possibly a visual of what'll happen to prices, too.

-- Natasha Sarin, Opinion contributor and Yale Law School professor, New York Times, "Trump's Tariff Runaround Defies the Courts and Common Sense" (23 July 2026)

Man Knows Much More

Man knows much more than he understands.

-- Alfred Adler (1870 - 1937), Austrian medical doctor and psychologist, quoted in Harold H. Mosak and Michael P. Maniacci, A Primer of Adlerian Psychology: The Analytic-Behavioural-Cognitive Psychology of Alfred Adler (1999)

Worth The Struggle

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals -- this alone is worth the struggle.

-- Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet (1849 - 1919), Canadian physician, Sir William Osler : Aphorisms (1950) p. 89, aphorism 178

A Very Bad Dynamic

But I think where we've gotten so upside down with ICE is that the ICE folks are the hunters.  They're the people who are hunting in communities.  But they feel themselves to be the hunted.  They feel themselves that they are the ones who should be in fear, because they're ill-trained, because they're in communities where they're not welcome, because they are doing something which the people around them are scared of and don't like and because they feel themselves to be the hunted.  And I'm sure if you looked at ICE agents' cortisol levels, they're super high. I'm sure they are filled with fear and they're acting like people who are filled with fear, even though they're the ones who are causing all the fear.  And it's a very bad dynamic.

-- David Plotz, host of Slate's Political Gabfest podcast, on the show's 16 July 2026 episode "The 'I'm His Lawyer' Edition"

That Man Is Lost

Nam ego illum periisse dico, quoi quidem periit pudor.

For I regard that man as lost, who has lost his sense of shame.

-- Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC - 184 BC), comic playwright in the time of the Roman Republic, Bacchides, Act III, scene 3, line 80

Never Yet

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

-- Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 - 1988), popular and influential author of science fiction, Revolt in 2100 (1953), postscript

Not Your Own

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.

-- Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924), Bohemian-Jewish novelist, The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918), Aphorism #29

Back The World

In the struggle between yourself and the world, back the world.

-- Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924), Bohemian-Jewish novelist, The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918), Aphorism #52

Not Quite By Chance

Nothing happens quite by chance.  It's a question of accretion of information and experience.

-- Jonas Salk (1914 - 1995), medical researcher and author, inventor of the Salk vaccine against Polio, and founder of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, as quoted in Breakthrough : The Saga of Jonas Salk (1966) by Richard Carter

RIP Sam Neill

If I've made a film that turns out to be good, that's a good result.  If I've made a film that's good and made a couple of friends, that's a great result.  If I've made a film that's no good, but I made a friend, that's still another great result.

It’s at a time like now that the importance of other people is thrown into even sharper relief.  You realise who your friends are.  You know where the love is.

-- Sir Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill, KNZM, OBE (14 September 1947 - 13 July 2026), Northern Irish-born New Zealand actor, Did I Ever Tell You This?: A Memoir (2022)

Our Misfortunes

Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944), French writer, poet, and aviator, Vol de Nuit (1931) (translated into English as Night Flight)

The Moment

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944), French writer, poet, and aviator, Pilote de Guerre (1942) (translated into English as Flight to Arras)

Tiresome

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944), French writer, poet and aviator, The Little Prince (1943)

Surrounded

We've been looking for the enemy for some time now.  We've finally found him.  We're surrounded.  That simplifies things.

-- Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller (1898 - 1971), US Marine officer.  He is the most decorated United States Marine, and one of two US servicemen to be awarded five Navy Crosses and one Army Distinguished Service Cross, message sent during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir (December 1950), as quoted in Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign Korea, 1950 (1999) by Martin Russ

Knee High By The 4th Of July

When I was a kid I remember hearing the phrase, "Knee high by the Fourth of July".  The idea was that your corn crop was doing pretty well if it was as tall as your knees at that point in the growing season.  In my experience, the corn is quite a bit taller than that these days.  This year I managed to get a picture on Saturday July 4th to illustrate the point.

Brought to you by the miracles of modern agriculture.

Independence Day

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

-- Opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, adopted by the Continental Congress on 4 July 1776

Community Of Values

[W]e are uniquely a community of values, as distinct from a religious community, a racial community, a geographic community, or an ethnic community.  This Nation was founded 200 years ago, not on ancient legends or conquests or physical likeness or language, but on a certain political value which Jefferson's pen so eloquently expressed.  To be an American is to subscribe to those principles which the Declaration of Independence proclaims and the Constitution protects -- the political values of self-government, liberty and justice, equal rights, and equal opportunity.  These beliefs are the secrets of America's unity from diversity -- in my judgment the most magnificent achievement of our 200 years as a nation.

-- Gerald R. Ford (1913 - 2006), 38th president of the United States, remarks at Naturalization Ceremonies at Monticello, Virginia (5 July 1976)

Safe For The Summer

[O]nly Supreme Court Justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off. ...  [With] the adjournment of the Court in July, we know that the Constitution is safe for the summer.

-- Now-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, writing as a lawyer in the Reagan White House (19 April 1983)

Birthright Citizen

At issue in this case is whether the Constitution guarantees citizenship to children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States. 

The Fourteenth Amendment provides:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights -- to freely participate in our political community.  The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to "every free-born person in this land."  We keep that promise today.

The judgment of the District Court for the District of New Hampshire is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

-- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in Trump v Barbara, in which the court upheld the plain text of the 14th Amendment, and the concept of birthright citizenship (30 June 2026)

Happy Birthday, Mel Brooks

Yesterday, in honor of Mel Brooks's (28 June 1926 -) 100th birthday, the local glorious old theater showed the movie "Young Frankenstein" (1974).  Tickets were just $7 and I was happy to attend.

There was a good crowd at the Virginia Theatre, though it wasn't packed.  Before the show, a live (adjective required?) organist played the Virginia’s historic two manual, eight rank Wurlitzer Hope-Jones orchestral pipe organ, installed during the original 1921 construction, to entertain us while we waited.  The organist sits at a console mounted on a podium in the orchestra pit that can be raised to stage height, as it was Sunday, and lowered again, as it was while the organist played his last tune of the day.

The crowd applauded the organist, and the beginning and end of the movie.  Mel Brooks would be happy to know that there was laughter in the theater, and audience members saying they had seen the movie in this theater in its original release. 

Climate.us

Climate.us today launched the full version of its new independent, nonprofit climate information website, creating a public-backed home for trusted climate science at a time when access to federal climate resources has become increasingly vulnerable to disruption.

Built by former members of the team behind the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's popular Climate.gov website, Climate.us will keep climate information accurate, accessible, scientifically rigorous, and useful for the people who rely on it, including educators, students, journalists, scientists, community leaders, local and state decision-makers, and members of the public.

The website features Climate.gov's 15-year collection of climate news and stories, expert blogs, visual status reports on key climate indicators, maps and data pathways, climate literacy resources, classroom materials, and restored access to the Fifth National Climate Assessment.

-- Launch announcement from Climate.us, a non-profit created to host information formerly available at Climate.gov (23 June 2026)

MagnificaHumanitas

We cannot consider #AI to be morally neutral.  In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores, and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations.  Ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes.  It must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and models that guide it.  #MagnificaHumanitas

For AI to respect human dignity and truly serve the common good, responsibility must be clearly defined at every stage: from those who design and develop these systems to those who use them and rely on them for concrete decisions.  It must be possible to identify who must "account" for decisions, justify them, monitor them, and, when necessary, challenge them and remedy any harm caused.

-- Pope Leo XIV, posting as @Pontifex (25 June 2026)

Wind Through The Shutters

Nobody has ever thought himself to death.  The chief danger confronting us is not age.  It is laziness, sloth, routine, stupidity, -- forcing their way in like wind through the shutters, seeping into the cellar like swamp water.

-- Gilbert Arthur Highet (1906 - 1978), Scottish-American classicist, writer, and literary historian, The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning (1976)

Leisure Moments

Leisure moments: each life well regulated has some such intervals, and he who cannot make way for them does not know how to live.

-- Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour (1903 - 1987), Belgian-born French novelist who wrote under the pseudonym Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian (1951) p. 43

First Generation

This past Saturday we held our very first Gumdo (Korean sword) Black belt test at HMD Academy.  Five students successfully tested for Black belt in Gumdo, demonstrating 12 different cuts, special sword handling sequences, 8 forms (like poomsae or kata), and offensive and defensive partner work. 

These students signed up when we started our Gumdo program in March 2024.  All five benefited from their Taekwondo experience where they were already Black belts or Black belt candidates.  Three of the five were my students who train in Monticello, including David, previously mentioned here as a Taekwondo student and currently 2nd degree Black belt in Taekwondo.

These students will continue to advance their training.  We instructors are very proud of their accomplishments.  Haidong!

He Who Allows Me

He who allows me to rule is in fact my master.

-- Pierre Corneille (1606 - 1684), French tragedian, one of the three great 17th-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Jean Racine, Le Menteur (The Liar) (1643) Prusias, act II, scene i

Greatest Of All

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

-- Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845), English clergyman, critic, philosopher, and wit, Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849) Lecture XIX : On the Conduct of the Understanding, Part II

The Simplest Thing

Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.

-- Carl von Clausewitz (1780 - 1831), Prussian general and influential military theorist, On War (1832) Book 1

Continual Exchange

I receive and I give -- such is human life.  Each directs and is directed in his turn.  Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

-- Mikhail Bakunin (1814 - 1876), Russian political philosopher, anarchist, and noted atheist, God and the State (1871)

Our Purpose

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.

-- Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (1880 - 1936), German historian, philosopher, and political writer, as quoted in Good Advice (1982) edited by Leonard Safir and ‎William Safire, p. 282

Unwillingness

I see self-destruction now on a grand scale.  That is, the unwillingness to pay for the things society needs.  That's the most basic kind of self-destruction. That we're not prepared to pay for schools, we're not prepared to pay for highways.  That is self-destruction.  What are we doing to ourselves?  It is nuts.

-- Charles Alan Reich (1928 - 2019), American legal and social scholar, and Professor at Yale Law School, "The Greening of America turns 40 : Q&A: Charles Reich", by Daniel Schwartz, CBC News (23 September 2010)