Mind Modifies Body

Mind modifies body involuntarily.

-- William Godwin (1756 - 1836), English journalist and political philosopher, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) Vol. 2, bk. 8, ch. 7

FEMA Katrina Declaration

TO: Members of Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, claiming an estimated 1,833 lives, leaving millions homeless, and causing approximately $161 billion in damage.  Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster, but a man-made one: the inexperience of senior leaders and the profound failure by the federal government to deliver timely, unified, and effective aid to those in need left survivors to fend for themselves for days, and highlighted how Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities are disproportionally affected by disasters.  These failures prompted Congress to pass the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (PKEMRA), which introduced safeguards to ensure such shortcomings of disaster preparation and response would not be repeated.  However, two decades later, FEMA is enacting processes and leadership structures that echo the conditions PKEMRA was designed to prevent.

1) We oppose the reduction in capability of FEMA to perform its missions. 

2) We oppose the ongoing failure to appoint a qualified FEMA administrator, as required by law. 

3) We oppose the elimination of life- and cost-saving risk reduction programs.  

4) We oppose interference with preparedness programs that build capacity for our SLTT partners. 

5) We oppose the censorship of climate science, environmental protection, and efforts to ensure all communities have access to information, resources, and support.

6) We oppose the reduction of FEMA’s disaster workforce.

The signatories of this letter are FEMA employees from across the United States who are dedicated to helping people before, during, and after disasters, and who are members of the communities we seek to support.  In addition to named signatories, we include anonymous signatories who share our concerns but choose not to identify themselves due to the culture of fear and suppression cultivated by this administration.

-- "The FEMA Katrina Declaration" (25 August 2025), four days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

All Others

"In God we trust.  All others must use data."

-- Mary Walton, The Deming Management Method (1986) Chapter 20 "Doing It with Data" p. 96

They Know We Know

They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.

-- Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir by Elena Gorokhova (2010), Chapter 13: A Tour of Leningrad, pp 172 and 173

Horrific

It's the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.

But a Jewish U.S. Representative calling for the continued starvation of innocent people and children is disgraceful. 

His awful statement will actually cause more antisemitism.

-- Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), in an X post condemning Representative Randy Fine (R-FL), who earlier tweeted "Release the hostages.  Until then, starve away." (28 July 2025)

Our Tax Dollars At Work

Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it.  Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food -- enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week -- are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations.  Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash.  (The sources I spoke with for this story requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.)

Sometime near the end of the Biden administration, USAID spent about $800,000 on the high-energy biscuits, one current and one former employee at the agency told me.  The biscuits, which cram in the nutritional needs of a child under 5, are a stopgap measure, often used in scenarios where people have lost their homes in a natural disaster or fled a war faster than aid groups could set up a kitchen to receive them.  They were stored in a Dubai warehouse and intended to go to the children this year.

-- Hana Kiros, "The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food", The Atlantic (14 July 2025)

USAID

Background
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid worldwide. The aim of this study is to comprehensively evaluate the effect of all USAID funding on adult and child mortality over the past two decades and forecast the future effect of its defunding.

Findings
Higher levels of USAID funding -- primarily directed toward low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly African countries -- were associated with a 15% reduction in age-standardised all-cause mortality and a 32% reduction in under-five mortality. This finding indicates that 91 839 663 all-age deaths, including 30 391 980 in children younger than 5 years, were prevented by USAID funding over the 21-year study period. USAID funding was associated with a 65% reduction in mortality from HIV/AIDS (representing 25·5 million deaths), 51% from malaria (8·0 million deaths), and 50% from neglected tropical diseases (8·9 million deaths). Significant decreases were also observed in mortality from tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal conditions. Forecasting models predicted that the current steep funding cuts could result in more than 14 051 750 additional all-age deaths, including 4 537 157 in children younger than age 5 years, by 2030.

Interpretation
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030.

-- Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti, PhD et al, The Lancet "Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis" (30 June 2025)

Eligible And Qualified

All right.  So what do I tell 663,000 people in 2 years or 3 years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?

I think people in the White House, the amateurs advising the President, are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise. ...

It is inescapable that this bill, in its current form, will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet room when I was there with Finance, where he said: We can go after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs. ...

I am telling the President that you have been misinformed.  Your supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.

-- Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), speaking on the Senate floor during debate on the "Big Beautiful Bill", quoted from the Congressional Record, p. S3646 (28 June 2025)

Destroy The Institutions

The way the Trump administration treats many Americans is as a defeated enemy, not as fellow Americans.  Like, when you conquer a society by force, when you defeat another nation at war, you conquer them, you often will destroy the institutions that undergird it, to ensure pacification, to remain in power.  And then maybe you rebuild them in a form you like.  

I think what has been so confusing for so many people, because I think we tend to think everyone acts in good faith, is that the Trump folks are treating, like the EPA and Harvard, not as fellow Americans and American institutions that are trying to act for the good of America, but as a defeated enemy.  

-- David Plotz, host of Slate's Political Gabfest podcast, on the show's 29 May 2025 episode "Why Destroy Harvard?" @25:50

No Limits

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.  If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.  Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951), Austrian-born philosopher who spent much of his life in England, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) 6.4311

What Is Right

Our presence here today is remarkable and improbable.  With all the punditry, all of the lobbying, all of the game-playing that passes for governing in Washington, it's been easy at times to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing; to wonder if there are limits to what we, as a people, can still achieve.  It's easy to succumb to the sense of cynicism about what's possible in this country.

But today, we are affirming that essential truth -- a truth every generation is called to rediscover for itself -- that we are not a nation that scales back its aspirations.  We are not a nation that falls prey to doubt or mistrust.  We don't fall prey to fear.  We are not a nation that does what's easy.  That's not who we are.  That's not how we got here.

We are a nation that faces its challenges and accepts its responsibilities.  We are a nation that does what is hard.  What is necessary.  What is right.  Here, in this country, we shape our own destiny.  That is what we do.  That is who we are.  That is what makes us the United States of America. 

-- Remarks by President Barack Obama on the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 23 March 2010

Covid Anniversary

It was on March 11, 2020, when I first described COVID-19 as a "pandemic".  While many media highlight that date as the pandemic's anniversary, the much more significant moment was six weeks earlier, on January 30, 2020, when I declared a public health emergency of international concern -- the highest level of alarm under international health law.  At the time, there were fewer than 100 reported cases outside China, and no reported deaths.

COVID showed the world where our individual and collective weaknesses lay, as organizations and countries alike.  But it also sparked great collaboration, investment and innovation.

We have the knowledge, tools, and experience to prevent the next pandemic.  What we need now is determination, cooperation, and the will to act before disaster strikes again.

History will judge us, not on whether we saw the next pandemic coming, but on how well we were prepared.  We know we cannot sustain a repeat of the losses inflicted by a crisis like COVID.  So I am confident my answer will turn to an unequivocal "yes" when we are asked in the future if we are primed for preventing or containing the next pandemic.  We have no other alternative -- our collective global security demands it.

-- Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization, "After COVID-19, is the world ready for the next pandemic?", on the 5th anniversary of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic (11 March 2025)

Difficult To Resume

Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost.  A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.

-- Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement, Les Misérables, Volume Four: Saint Denis and Idyl of the Rue Plumet, Book II - Eponine, Chapter I: The Field of the Lark

Even More Important

While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction.

-- James Branch Cabell (1879 - 1958), American author of satirical fantasy works, Beyond Life (1919) Ch. VI : Which Values the Candle, § 2, p. 173

No Sovereignty

For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.

-- Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955), German novelist and short story writer, 1929 Nobel laureate in Literature, The Magic Mountain (1924) Ch. 6

Eustress

The term eustress means "beneficial stress" -- either psychological, physical (e.g., exercise), or biochemical/radiological (hormesis).

The word was introduced by endocrinologist Hans Selye (1907-1982) in 1976; he combined the Greek prefix eu- meaning "good", and the English word stress, to give the literal meaning "good stress".  The Oxford English Dictionary traces early use of the word (in psychological usage) to 1968.

Eustress is the positive cognitive response to stress that is healthy, or gives one a feeling of fulfillment or other positive feelings.  Hans Selye created the term as a subgroup of stress to differentiate the wide variety of stressors and manifestations of stress.

-- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No Longer A Boy

It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy.  From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem -- and in my esteem age is not estimable.

-- George Gordon (Noel) Byron, (1788 - 1824), generally known as Lord Byron, English poet, from The Works of Lord Byron, ed. Rowland E. Prothero (1901), vol. V: Letters and Journals, ch. XXIII: "Detached Thoughts" (15 October 1821 - 18 May 1822), paragraph 72 (p. 445)

And Only Then

[F]or many women, their pregnancy was unintended, unexpected, and often unknown until well after the embryonic heartbeat began.  Yet that's too late under the LIFE Act's strictures: these women are now forbidden from undoing that life-altering change of circumstances -- before they even knew the change had occurred.

For these women, the liberty of privacy means that they alone should choose whether they serve as human incubators for the five months leading up to viability.  It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid's Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could -- or should -- force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.  Considering the compelling record evidence about the physical, mental, and emotional impact of unwanted pregnancies on the women who are forced by law to carry them to term (as well as on their other living children), the Court finds that, until the pregnancy is viable, a woman's right to make decisions about her body and her health remains private and protected, i.e., remains her business and her business alone.  When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then -- and only then -- should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what is growing within it.

-- Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney, deciding SisterSong Women Of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, et al v State of Georgia in favor of the plaintiff, ruling that Section 4 of the LIFE Act is unconstitutional and unenforceable

Not A Single One

Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.

-- Daniel Clement Dennett III (1942 - 2024), American atheist philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist, Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (2005), p. 2

It Has Been My Intention

My Fellow Americans,

Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a Nation.

Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. We've made historic investments in rebuilding our Nation, in lowering prescription drug costs for seniors, and in expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans.  America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today.

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President.  And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.

For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected.  I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work.  And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.

-- Portions of a letter posted to social media by President Joe Biden announcing that he would no longer seek reelection, 21 July 2024