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

The Chosen Vehicle

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

-- Herman Melville (1819 - 1891), American novelist, short story writer, and poet, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) Bk. IV, ch. 5

Carefully Nourished

With carefully nourished resentment, a man can go through his life blaming someone or something else for his failures.  This enables him to be a failure and to feel morally superior to the world at the same time.

-- Theodore Dalrymple, pen name of Anthony Daniels (11 October 1949 -), English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist, "Private Clubs and the Sour Pleasures of Resentment", The Epoch Times (19 August 2021)

And So Do All

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

-- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) "The Shadow of the Past"

Up Is Down

WASHINGTON -- Total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35% from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years, according to data collected by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and announced by United States Attorney Matthew M. Graves.  A breakdown of the data is available here

In addition to the overall violent crime reduction, homicides are down 32%; robberies are down 39%; armed carjackings are down 53%; assaults with a dangerous weapon are down 27% when compared with 2023 levels, with the District reporting the fewest assaults with dangerous weapons and burglaries in over 30 years.

-- Department of Justice press release from U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Columbia, "Violent Crime in D.C. Hits 30 Year Low" (3 January 2025) h/t JSA

Some Awareness

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

-- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983), American writer on social and political philosophy, The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955) Section 151

RIP Jim Lovell

We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth.  The fact that just from the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb.  Everything that you've ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself -- all behind your thumb.  And how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.

-- James Arthur Lovell Jr. (25 March 1928 - 7 August 2025), American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot and mechanical engineer, In the Shadow of the Moon (2007 film)

The Height Of A Mountain

Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top.  Then you will see how low it was.

-- Dag Hammarskjöld (1905 - 1961), Swedish diplomat, second United Nations Secretary-General, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Markings (1964)

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)

RIP Tom Lehrer

Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media.  What we have now -- to quote myself at my most pretentious -- is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.  For example, the freedom (hooray!) to say almost anything you want on television about society's problems has been co-opted (alas!) by the freedom to talk instead about flatulence, orgasms, genitalia, masturbation, etc., etc., and to replace real comment with pop-culture references and so-called "adult" language.  Irreverence is easy -- what's hard is wit.

-- Thomas Andrew Lehrer (9 April 1928 - 26 July 2025), American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician, On the current state of satire, in Rhino Records online chat (17 June 1997)

The Things To Do

The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done.  Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done -- that no one else has told you to do or how to do it.  This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.

-- R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983), American philosopher, systems theorist, architect, and inventor, Letter to "Micheal" (16 February 1970), Micheal was a 10 year old boy who had inquired in a letter as to whether Fuller was a "doer" or a "thinker"

Affirmed

Article II of the Constitution establishes the scope of presidential powers.  The President has the power to issue executive orders if they "stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself," on matters that fall within that scope established by Article II.  But one power that the President was not granted, by Article II or by any other source, is the power to modify or change any clause of the United States Constitution.  Perhaps the Executive Branch, recognizing that it could not change the Constitution, phrased its Executive Order in terms of a strained and novel interpretation of the Constitution. 

The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order's proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional.  We fully agree.  The Defendants' proposed interpretation of the Citizenship Clause relies on a network of inferences that are unmoored from the accepted legal principles of 1868.  This runs the risk of "‘extrapolat[ing]' from the Constitution's text and history ‘the values behind [that right], and then ... enforc[ing] its guarantees only to the extent they serve those underlying values.'"  We reject this approach because it is contrary to the express language of the Citizenship Clause, the reasoning of Wong Kim Ark, Executive Branch practice for the past 125 years, the legislative history to the extent that should be considered, and because it is contrary to justice.

-- Majority opinion of a 3-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth District, affirming a lower court injunction against President Trump's executive order denying citizenship to children born to undocumented immigrants (23 July 2025)

RIP Ozzy Osbourne

People look to me and say
Is the end near, when is the final day?
What’s the future of mankind?
How do I know, I got left behind

Everyone goes through changes
Looking to find the truth
Don’t look at me for answers
Don’t ask me
I don’t know

-- John Michael (Ozzy) Osbourne (3 December 1948 - 22 July 2025), English musician known as the lead singer of Black Sabbath and for his solo career, "Goodbye To Romance" (20 September 1980) From: Blizzard of Ozz (Expanded Edition)

Impossible To Please

It is impossible to please all the world and one's father.

-- Jean de La Fontaine (1621 - 1695), French fabulist and the most widely read French poet of the 17th century, Fables (1668–1679) Book III (1668), Fable 1

Human Material

Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material.  It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.

-- Czesław Miłosz (1911 - 2004), Polish poet and essayist, 1980 Nobel laureate in Literature, The Captive Mind (1953) translated by Jane Zielonko (1990) 

To Be Responsible

To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.  It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery.  It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades.  It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.

-- Antoine de Saint Exupéry (1900 - 1944), French writer, poet and aviator, Terre des Hommes (1939) Ch. II : The Men

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)

Odious

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government.

-- Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), British politician and statesman, in a telegram (21 November 1942) by Churchill from Cairo, Egypt to Home Secretary Herbert Morrison; cited in In the Highest Degree Odious (1992), Simpson, Clarendon Press, p. 391

DMSP Termination

Topic: Suspension of All Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Data

Product(s) or Data Impacted:  All Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) data and products: FINE, SMOOTH and HOUSEKEEPING data from Operational Linescan System (OLS), Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS), and all Near-Earth Space Weather instruments

Date/Time of Initial Impact: no later than June 30, 2025 

Date/Time of Expected End: NA Termination

Details/Specifics of Change: 

Due to recent service changes, the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC) will discontinue ingest, processing and distribution of all DMSP data no later than June 30, 2025.  ESPC interfaces will not receive DMSP data and all data products will be suspended.  Users should expect all FINE, SMOOTH and HOUSEKEEPING data from Operational Linescan System (OLS), Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS), and all Near-Earth Space Weather instruments to be terminated.  This service change and termination will be permanent. 

-- Notice published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA (25 June 2025), announcing that after 40 years, on 5 days' notice, the U.S. Department of Defense will no longer provide satellite weather data, leaving hurricane forecasters without crucial information about storms as peak hurricane season arrives in the Atlantic.  The termination has been delayed by 1 month after an outcry from scientists and forecasters, NPR "Defense Department will stop providing crucial satellite weather data" (1 July 2025)