Satellite TV Networks, Cell Phones, and GPS, Oh My!

As you may know, my main interest in [communications] is in the use of satellite relays, which I think may revolutionise the pattern of world communications. To the best of my knowledge, I was the first to suggest this possiblity (see "Extraterrestrial Relays", Wireless World, October '45). ... My general conclusions are that perhaps in 30 years the orbital relay system may take over all the functions of existing surface networks and provide others quite impossible today. For example, the three stations in the 24-hour orbit could provide not only an interference AND censorship-free global TV service for the same power as a single modern transmitter, but could also make possible a position-finding grid whereby anyone on earth could locate himself by means of a couple of dials on an instrument about the size of a watch. (A development of Decca and transistorisation.) It might even make possible world-wide person-to-person radio with automatic dialling. Thus no-one on the planet need ever get lost or become out of touch with the community, unless he wanted to be. I'm still thinking about the social consequences of this!

-- Arthur C. Clarke, anticipating international TV networks, GPS, and ubiquitous phone access, letter to Andrew Haley, August 1956

Cynicism

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're led to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement.

-- Ken Burns, American Historian

Endorsement

I talked to Senator Clinton last night. Let me tell you: we've had better conversations.

-- New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, endorsing Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, New York Times, 22 April 2008

The Truth Was So Implausible

In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible.

-- Former CIA Director George Tenet, regarding Saddam Hussein possessing unconventional weapons; cited in Scott Shane & Mark Mazzetti "Ex-CIA Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq" (New York Times, 27 April 2007)

Sane And Happy

Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.

-- Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008), British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, "3001: The Final Odyssey" (1997)

Taxpayer

The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.

-- Ronald Reagan

No Greater Gift

There is no greater gift to an insecure leader that quite matches a vague enemy who can be used to whip up fear and hatred among the population.

-- Paul Rusesabagina (1954-), humanitarian, subject of the film "Hotel Rwanda"

Final Exam

I kind of feel like the student who's getting ready for the final exam but they didn't attend any classes.

-- David A. Paterson, who takes over as governor of New York on Monday, NY Times, 14 March 2008

Spam Nation

I use Google Mail (gmail) as a simple way to get ubiquitous access to my email with good spam filtering. They leave stuff in the "spam" folder for 30 days. And they display how many messages are in your spam folder, so it's easy to tell (roughly) how many spam messages were received per day over the past 30 days

I'm just guessing here, but I seem to get a lot of spam, and I'm awfully glad gmail is good at catching it. For the first time today, my spam folder hit >10,000 messages. It currently stands at 10,251 (it was 10,249 when I started typing this), for an average of 341.7 spams per day, which works out to 14.2 spams per hour, or one spam every 4 minutes, 12 seconds.

Now it's at 10,254, up about 300 since yesterday, which indicates a *lot* of spams in the last 24 hours.

Spitzer

There has been a decline in ethics and we've got to turn it around.

-- Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned 12 March 2008 after being taped by the FBI arranging a $4300 tryst with a prostitute

Who Breaks The Thread?

Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on?

-- James Richardson, poet, professor (b. 1950)

Voice Of Protest

The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press, and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.

-- Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), American writer, editor, and educator

Try To Persuade

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)

Marijuana

Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

-- William F. Buckley, Jr. (November 24, 1925 - February 27, 2008), American author and conservative commentator

XLink ITC-BT Bluetooth Gateway

Last night I installed the XLink ITC-BT Bluetooth Gateway. It works as advertised, which is very cool. And I got it from TheNerds.net for just $124.99, which is also very cool.

Here's the deal -- I ditched my land line ($65 per month) for an additional cell phone on my Family Share Plan with Verizon Wireless ($9.99 per month). Now, this creates the problem of having a two-storey house plus basement with a single cell phone ringing somewhere inside it when someone calls the house line.

This device is the solution. It connects to your cell phone via bluetooth. It has a phone jack on the back. You connect your house phone(s) to the jack on the back of the device. It delivers a dial tone for calling out via house phones, rings the house phones when a call comes in, and passes through Caller ID, all using the cell phone for connectivity (remember, I dropped my land line).

As a bonus, it can connect to as many as 3 cell phones at once, provides differential ring tones for those cell phones, and allows you to switch among the cell phones as if on a multi-line phone system. It also implements call waiting on your house phones in case of multiple incoming calls to different cell phones.

Seize It

With each game I play, with each season I play, I'm running out of chances ... You're never guaranteed next year. You're never guaranteed the next game. You have to seize the opportunity when it's there in front of you.

-- Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, The New York Times, 29 January 2004 (Favre announced his retirement today, 4 March 2008)

What The Terrorists Want

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

[...]

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any safer.

-- Security Consultant Bruce Schneier, "What the Terrorists Want"

Crush The Bourgeoisie

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Quotations

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound -- if I can remember any of the damn things.

-- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), American writer of poems and short stories

RIP William F. Buckley, Jr.

I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it, and one is the feeling that I haven't just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.

-- William F. Buckley, Jr. (November 24, 1925 - February 27, 2008), American author and conservative commentator

Price We Pay For Money

The price we pay for money is paid in liberty.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894)

Vulgar And Prurient And Dumb

TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble
interests.

-- David Foster Wallace, from his essay "E Pluribus Unum", cited in Ubiquity, "End Laptop Serfdom", Espen Andersen, 5 Feb 2008

Few Men

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

-- George Washington (22 February 1732 - 14 December 1799), first President of the US

Disturbed

Rule #1: Disturbed and/or violent individuals will continue to risk their own lives in ways that risk public lives, sometimes many more than we expect.

Rule #2: People cannot change Rule #1.

All we can do is mitigate the effects as much as we can.

-- Comment at http://www.schneier.com/blog/, by clvrmnky, February 20, 2008 08:29 AM

Ancient Egypt

It's too bad Cuba isn't ancient Egypt where the kings were sometimes buried with their full retinue.

-- NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu on the ceding of power by Cuban leder Fidel Castro to his brother Raul, 19 February 2008

Bill Of Rights

... The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a "compelling interest" in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.

-- Harry Browne (1933-2006) author, two-time presidential candidate, co-founder of Downsize DC

Is It Obvious?

Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited by the Constitution?

Is it obvious, that what can't be done for punishment can't be done to exact information that is crucial to the society? I think it's not at all an easy question, to tell you the truth.

-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, interview on BBC Radio, 12 February 2008

Hard To Believe

It's hard to believe you, sir. I hate to say that because you're one of my heroes, but it's hard to believe you.

-- Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, to Roger Clemens after his testimony before a Congressional panel

No Map

You're asking me to tell you how we're going to get to a place we've never been, with a map I don't have.

-- Col. Steven David, military defense lawyer, when asked for details on the capital case against 6 Guantanamo detainees, NY Times, 12 February 2008

Those Who Deny Freedom

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.

-- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th US President, "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln" edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Letter To Henry L. Pierce and Others" (April 6, 1859), p. 376.

A Foolish Consistency

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet, "Self-Reliance", 1841

To Set A Limit

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.

-- Bertolt Brecht (10 Feb 1898 - 14 Aug 1956), German socialist dramatist, stage director, and poet, in "Science"

Fear Of Freedom

The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well.

-- Germaine Greer (January 29, 1939-) Australian academic, writer, broadcaster, and feminist

Silly

Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again.

-- Mike Myers

History We Make Today

We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

-- Henry Ford (1863-1947), American Industrialist, Founder of Ford Motor Company

How It Gets Done

I thought it was pretty good, but athletes don't think about history when making history. They think about what they're doing, and that's how it gets done.

-- Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast, on the routine that won her a perfect score at the 1976 Olympics, New York Times, 3 February 2008

Crash And Die

You might do it well one time and try another time and crash and die.

-- Looc Jean-Albert, of France, better known as Flying Dude, on jumping from planes without a parachute, New York Times, 10 December 2007

Collisions

Like cars in amusement parks, our direction is often determined through collisions.

-- Yahia Lababidi, writer (b. 1973)

Protect Me

I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me.

-- Banksy, street artist (b. 1974)

Hearts And Minds

The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.

-- John Adams, (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President, February 13, 1818

RIP Bobby Fischer

I play honestly and I play to win. If I lose, I take my medicine.

-- Robert James (Bobby) Fischer, (3 March 1943 - 17 January 2008), American chess player, World Chess Champion 1972-1975

I Disbelieve

I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

-- William James

Prairie State Semen

When you buy a box of Cheerios in New York and one in Champaign, Illinois, you know they are going to be the same. By shortening the genetic pool using clones, you can do a similar thing.

-- Jon Fisher, president and owner of Prairie State Semen in Champaign, Illinois, after the F.D.A. declared cloned animals safe for the food supply, New York Times, 16 January 2008

God's Standards

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.

-- Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, as reported January 15 on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

New Toy

I don't know of an intelligence-gathering operation in the world that, when given a new toy, doesn't use it.

-- Steve Vicker, consultant, former head of criminal intelligence for the Hong Kong police

Shredding

Federal spending on paper shredding has increased more than 600 percent since George W. Bush took office.

-- John Cook, "Bush Secret Shredding Soars" (Radar, 14 December 2007), statistics at usaspending.gov

RIP Hillary

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

-- Sir Edmund Hillary (20 July 1919 - 10 January 2008), New Zealand mountaineer and explorer, in "Wise Guys : Brilliant Thoughts and Big Talk from Real Men" (2005) by Allan Zullo, p. 5

Running With The Pack

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

-- R. A. Butler (1902-1982), British (Indian-born) politician; British foreign secretary 1963-1964

Open Mind

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

-- Terry Pratchett

Impossible To Lie

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

-- Princeton philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt, "On Bullshit" (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 55

2007 Mileage

For the year 2007, driving my 1999 Saturn which now has >165,000 miles, with last year's stats for comparison:

                  2007              2006            Change
Total miles     : 25,847            25,111          +736
Total cost      : $2,231.76         $1,942.72       +$289.04
Total gallons   : 812.14            776.47          +35.67
Avg gallons/day : 2.225             2.127           +0.098
Avg days/fillup : 4.7               4.9             -0.2
Avg miles/day   : 70.81             68.80           +2.01
Avg cost/day    : $6.00             $5.27           +$0.73
Avg cost/gal    : $2.75             $2.50           +$0.25
Avg miles/gal   : 32.24             32.77           -0.53

JJ

At 4:32 PM yesterday my number one daughter Tia gave birth to my second grandchild. Joseph Allen Schum Junior weighed in on arrival at 7 pounds 3 ounces, and 18.5 inches long.

Best Revenge

My mother always said democracy is the best revenge.

-- Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, 19, after he was chosen to succeed his mother, Benazir Bhutto, as leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, New York Times, 31 December 2007

Diary

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

-- J. M. Barrie

Dare

Let's dare to be ourselves, for we do that better than anyone else.

-- Shirley Briggs

It Takes An Instant

It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

-- Voltaire

RIP Benazir Bhutto

I put my life in danger and came here because I feel this country is in danger. People are worried. We will bring the country out of this crisis.

-- Benazir Bhutto (21 June 1953 - 27 December 2007), Pakistani politician, first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, at a rally in Rawalpindi minutes before her assassination

Nobody

Without my body I am a nobody!

-- Hermes Conrad, Futurama, "Bender's Big Score"

Minute Fractions

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions -- the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heart-felt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Most Useful Gift

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

A Place To Go

Having a place to go - is a home. Having someone to love - is a family. Having both - is a blessing.

-- Donna Hedges

Juggling

What's hard about what I'm doing is the sheer number of balls I'm juggling at once ... and they aren't balls. They're knives and chainsaws and burning [stuff] and the trick is not dropping any of that. That's what makes it hard.

-- Martin Eberhard, Tesla co-founder, CEO, and Illinois alumnus, UI Alumni Association's "Resonance", 16 November 2007

Good Weather

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

-- John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

Baseball's Collective Failure

Manny Alexander     Brendan Donnelly    Ryan Jorgensen     
Chad Allen          Chris Donnels       Mike Judd          
Rick Ankiel         Lenny Dykstra       David Justice      
David Bell          Bobby Estalella     Chuck Knoblauch    
Mike Bell           Matt Franco         Tim Laker          
Marvin Benard       Ryan Franklin       Mike Lansing       
Gary Bennett        Eric Gagne          Paul Lo Duca       
Larry Bigbie        Jason Giambi        Nook Logan         
Barry Bonds         Jeremy Giambi       Josias Manzanillo  
Ricky Bones         Jay Gibbons         Gary Matthews Jr.  
Kevin Brown         Troy Glaus          Cody McKay         
Paul Byrd           Juan Gonzalez       Kent Mercker       
Alex Cabrera        Jason Grimsley      Bart Miadich       
Jose Canseco        Jose Guillen        Hal Morris         
Mark Carreon        Jerry Hairston Jr.  Daniel Naulty      
Jason Christiansen  Matt Herges         Denny Neagle       
Howie Clark         Phil Hiatt          Rafael Palmeiro    
Roger Clemens       Glenallen Hill      Jim Parque         
Paxton Crawford     Darren Holmes       Andy Pettitte      
Jack Cust           Todd Hundley        Adam Piatt         

Todd Pratt          Jeff Williams
Stephen Randolph    Matt Williams
Adam Riggs          Todd Williams
Armando Rios        Steve Woodard
Brian Roberts       Kevin Young
John Rocker         Gregg Zaun
F.P. Santangelo
Benito Santiago
Scott Schoeneweis
David Segui
Gary Sheffield
Mike Stanton
Ricky Stone
Miguel Tejada
Ismael Valdez
Mo Vaughn
Randy Velarde
Ron Villone
Fernando Vina
Rondell White

Everybody in baseball -- commissioners, club officials, the players' association, players -- shares responsibility.

-- George J. Mitchell, issuing a report on use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball naming 86 past & current players, 13 December 2007

Workouts

I never stay away from workouts. I work hard. I've tried to take care of my body. I'll never look back and say that I could have done more. I've paid the price in practice, but I know I get the most out of my ability.

-- Carl Yastrzemski (1939-), American baseball player, Red Sox all-time leader in career RBIs, runs, hits, singles, doubles, total bases, and games played (second in home runs behind Red Sox great Ted Williams), last winner of the triple crown in the major leagues

Living A Second Time

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

-- Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), author, neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Fun Is Hope

If you can have just a little fun today, it's a sign that maybe the future will hold even more fun for you. Fun isn't just fun - it's hope.

-- Linda Richman, author, summa cum laude graduate of the school of hard knocks

Important Decisions

The interesting thing is that there are so few important decisions. You don't have to go in the "right" direction. You don't have to enter the "right" business. What you have to do is have made a decision as to what you're going to do and then you just have to figure out how to succeed at it.

-- Ken Oshman, CEO & Chairman of the Board, Echelon Corporation

It Will Not Matter

One hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, how big my house was, or what kind of car I drove. But the world may be a little better, because I was important in the life of a child.

-- Dr. Forest E. Witcraft (1894-1967), scholar, teacher, and Boy Scout administrator, Scouting Magazine, October 1950, p2

Half Time

In the game of life, nothing is less important than the score at half time.

-- anonymous

Worries Diminished

A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.

-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher, mathematician, essayist

I Write On Napkins

I write on napkins. One time, this seventeen-year-old waitress says to me, "Do you write on napkins because it doesn't count?" And bingo. That's exactly why I do it! When you're jotting on a napkin, you're not committing yourself. It's only a napkin, right? You can throw it away. You'd be surprised. It loosens you up. Some of the best stuff I've written has been done on napkins.

-- August Wilson (1945-2005), Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright

Power

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power - he's free again.

-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-), Russian author and Nobel laureate

Wars Begin Where You Will

Wars begin where you will, but do not end where you please.

-- Machiavelli; cited in Patrick Goldstein, "Rocky Road Paves Path to Iraq Drama" Los Angeles Times, 12 December 2006

Judicial Review

Climate change has ushered in a whole new era of judicial review.

-- Patrick Parenteau, environmental law professor, on an appeals court decision striking down Bush administration fuel economy standards as too lax, New York Times, 16 November 2007

Humorless

The humourless as a bunch don't just not know what's funny, they don't know what's serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn't be trusted with anything.

-- Martin Amis (August 25, 1949-) British novelist

Disappointed

When terrorism finally ends, some people are going to be very disappointed. They will no longer have an excuse for expressing the distrust of others that they had all along.

-- Comment by RC, November 21, 2007 07:15 AM

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/more_war_on_the.html

Unreliable Parts

Software developers have become adept at the difficult art of building reasonably reliable systems out of unreliable parts. The snag is that often we do not know exactly how we did it.

-- Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++

Some Good

That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not.

-- James Kern Feibleman, philosopher and psychiatrist (1904-1987)

A Moment Of Intersection

A meal, however simple, is a moment of intersection. It is at once the most basic, the most fundamental, of our life's activities, maintaining the life of our bodies; shared with others it can be an occasion of joy and communion, uniting people deeply.

-- Elise Boulding, professor, author, peace activist

Prerogative

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

-- Neil Gaiman, Sandman

Not A Problem

I don't have a problem. Seventeen hours a day online is fine.

-- Lee Chang-Hoon, 15, at a camp for compulsive Internet users in South Korea, New York Times, 18 November, 2007

Resolving Technosocial Problems

Democratic societies, at least, have a right to expect that experts will help them, experts from all parts of academia and all the professions. I would even go so far as to say that there is at least an implicit social contract between professionals and the democratic societies in which they live, giving rise to this expectation that professionals will shoulder their responsibilities to improve the societies in which they live and work.

-- Paul T. Durbin, emeritus professor, University of Delaware, ACM Ubiquity, 11/13/07

Moral Order

The order of the universe that we live in is the moral order. It has become the moral order by becoming the self-conscious method of the members of a human society. The world that comes to us from the past possesses and controls us. We possess and control the world that we discover and invent. And this is the world of the moral order. It is a splendid adventure if we can rise to it.

-- G. H. Mead, cited in Ubiquity, November 2007

Yeah, Right

The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner.

-- General Pervez Musharraf, regarding his refusal to lift martial law in Pakistan prior to new elections, New York Times, 14 November 2007

Not At The Library

Earth to parents: No. If you have to call the library and ask if your child is here, the answer is no. I know your child probably told you he'd be at the library, but what that really means is he didn't want to tell you where he was going to be, either because he hadn't decided yet, or because he just doesn't want you to know. This is true for children of all ages, but of course it goes double for teenagers.

Almost all kids who come to the library come with their parents. If you aren't here, then your kids almost certainly aren't here either. Yes, we do have kids in the library all the time who are not accompanied by their parents, but it's the same two or three dozen kids all the time. If your child were one of them, you would know.

Let me reiterate that: if your child were one of the ones who comes to the library, you would know. If you have to ask, then he's not here. Please stop calling the library and asking if your child is here. Your child is not here.

-- Rant by librarian Jonadab, 5/23/2007 04:35:00 PM mistersanity.blogspot.com

RIP Norman Mailer

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more, or retreating into less. One is always living a little more, or dying a little bit.

-- Norman Mailer (31 January 1923 - 10 November 2007) American novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director, in "Hip, Hell, and the Navigator", Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959)

There Was A Time

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

-- Anatole Broyard

What The General Says

How do you function as a lawyer when the law is what the general says it is?

-- Babar Sattar, on Pakistani lawyers' protests against President Pervez Musharraf, New York Times, 7 November 2007

Through The Looking Glass

Paradoxically, while the drumbeat for bombing Iran grows increasingly loud, there is a stunning silence in response to the pre-eminent risk for nuclear terrorism. Washington's Faustian pact with General Musharraf is now unraveling, yet we are blithely assured that Pakistan's weapons and nuclear materials will remain safe, whoever rises to power. We have seemingly entered a Through-the-Looking-Glass world where nuclear weapons that do exist are less dangerous than those that can be imagined.

-- Paul Woodward of the War in Context website, 3 November 2007

Endless Money

Endless money forms the sinews of war.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)

No Money In Poetry

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.

-- Robert Graves, poet and novelist (1895-1985)

Never Happened

Democracies don't prepare well for things that have never happened before.

-- Richard A. Clarke, former White House counter-terrorism chief

Perfect Order

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.

-- Carlos Fuentes (1928-)

More Annoying

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

-- Bertrand Russell

The Trouble With Words

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in.

-- Dennis Potter, dramatist (1935-1994)

Aghast

I walked through the World Trade Center 20 minutes before the attack; saw the buildings burning; breathed the poisonous dust; wept for my country. Now Blackwater. Torture. An unprovoked, botched war. I am aghast, revolted. And ashamed.

-- Paul Nadler, Metuchen, N.J., Letter to the Editor, New York Times, October 4, 2007

If All They Want

If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison.

-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower; cited at http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org/

Middle Man

If no one out there understands, start your own revolution and cut out the middle man.

-- Billy Bragg

Played With Expression

I assure you that the typewriting machine, when played with expression, is not more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

-- Oscar Wilde