Up-Armoring

The argument for up-armoring is always based on the least likely of terrorist scenarios. Anyone can get a gun and shoot up stuff. No amount of SWAT equipment can stop that.

-- Mark Randol, a former terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service, "Local Cops Ready for War with Homeland Security-Funded Military Weapons", The Daily Beast, 21 December 2011

http://tinyurl.com/77nfjt4


We're going to have our own tank.

-- Mayor Kendall Lane of Keene, NH, in an aside to Councilman Mitch Greenwald during a December city council meeting, regarding a Bearcat, an eight-ton armored personnel vehicle, to be purchased with a $285K grant from the US Department of Homeland Security

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jefLOFbdDHk&feature=player_embedded

Every Advance

Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent.

-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate in literature

Debate

I once watched several criminals engage in an organized argument, while an audience of supporters cheered them on, but I was so disgusted that I had to turn off the political debate.

-- Jarod Kintz (1982-), American author, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks

Wit

At all events, the next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit.

-- Christian Nestell Bovee, Thoughts, Feelings, and Fancies (1857)

Godspeed

Godspeed, John Glenn.

-- Mission Controller Scott Carpenter, as John Glenn was about to launch into orbit on Friendship 7 to become the first American to orbit the Earth and the third American (5th overall) in space, 20 February 1962

Condiment

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

-- Truman Capote (1924-1984), American writer, Portraits and Observations, The Essays of Truman Capote, "Self Portrait" (1972)

Two Ideas Grow

It is a great thing to teach. I am never more complimented than when some one addresses me as "teacher". ... The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where there was only one before.

-- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), American writer, publisher, artist, anarchist and libertarian philosopher, Fra Elbertus: Elbert Hubbard's Selected Writings Part 6, Teachers and Teaching

Plenty Of Time For Silence

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the "transcendent" and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

-- Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), author and journalist, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)

Smile

Children learn to smile from their parents.

-- Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998), violinist, inventor of the Suzuki method of music education

Its Own Time

The place where children play is a sort of magic circle, outside and separate from the rest of the world; it has its own time, which cannot be measured by our clocks. Within this all is transformed and controlled by imagination, and a perfect world is possible.

-- Richard Dattner, Design for Play, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., (1969), page 15

TouchPad

New toy -- 32GB HP TouchPad

Obtained for less than 50% of its original price, freshly updated and tweaked to make it slick.

WebOS is now open source, and hopefully will survive and continue to mature. If not, it's already possible to run Android on the TouchPad in dual-boot mode, all the way up to the latest Android 4.x.

Proposition H8

All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of "marriage", which symbolizes state legitimization and societal recognition of their committed relationships. Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.

-- Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, writing in a 2-1 ruling that California's 2008 law, popularly known as Proposition 8, violated the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause by stigmatizing a minority group without legitimate reason, 7 February 2012

Power Corrupts

All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

-- John Dalberg-Acton (1834-1902), 1st Baron Acton, English historian, letter to Mandell Creighton, 5 April 1887

Not Of That Party

You say that I have been dished up to you as an antifederalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never worthy enough of notice to merit citing; but since you ask it I will tell it you. I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore I protest to you I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much farther from that than of the Antifederalists.

-- Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 - 4 July 1826), author of the Declaration of Independence, founder of the University of Virginia, third President of the United States (1801-1809), political philosopher, letter to Francis Hopkinson (13 March 1789)

How Much Has Changed?

Almost exactly three years ago to this day, I took the oath of office at this podium during one of the darkest moments in history. One former governor was in jail. Another was under arrest, impeached and removed from office. Both my predecessors had disgraced themselves and brought profound embarrassment to the people of our state.

At the same time, our entire nation was in the throes of a massive economic crisis, caused by disgraceful conduct and greed on Wall Street. Our large and small businesses were reeling. Our automakers were in dire straits. Across Illinois, families were losing their jobs, losing their homes, watching their savings disappear.

We were off course and adrift, lacking leadership, and weighed down by a culture of corruption.

-- Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, State of the State address, 1 February 2012

Complex Garden

We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners. We have not bothered to acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of gardening. By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors.

-- Gerald Durrell (1925-1995), naturalist, zookeeper, and author, Two in the Bush (1966)

A World Of His Own

I suppose every child has a world of his own -- and every man, too, for the matter of that. I wonder if that's the cause for all the misunderstanding there is in Life?

-- Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), British author, mathematician, and clergyman, Sylvie and Bruno, Chapter 4: A Cunning Conspiracy (1889)

Optimism

I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I hope we've learnt something from the most barbaric century in history -- the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation.

-- Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), British author, inventor, and futurist, 90th Birthday Reflections (2007)

Freedom Of Movement

The right to travel enables the free exercise of the other rights we most cherish. We should not have to check our constitutional freedoms at the curb simply because we decide to leave the house. Sadly, freedom of movement has been one of the most disparaged rights throughout human history, and our country is no exception. If we are ever to be truly free, then we must possess an absolute, uninhibited right to travel throughout America and the world free from interference by government.

-- Judge Andrew Napolitano, Reason.com, 19 December 2011

GPS Vs. Fourth Amendment

Holding: Attaching a GPS device to a vehicle and then using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

Judgment: Affirmed, in an opinion by Justice Scalia on January 23, 2012. Justice Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion. Justice Alito also filed a concurring opinion, which was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan. The five concurring members of the Court do not resolve the question of whether the search was reasonable in this case.

-- SCOTUS opinion in United States v. Jones, 23 January 2012

A First

This is the first real test of the political strength of the Web, and regardless of how things go, they are no longer a pushover. The Web taking a stand against one of the most powerful lobbyers and seeming to get somewhere is definitely a first.

-- Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School on the efforts by the technology industry to fight Congressional bills aimed at curbing online piracy, New York Times, 18 January 2012

Never In My Life

I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.

-- Dudley Field Malone (1882-1950), attorney, politician, liberal activist and actor, defending John T. Scopes (with Clarence Darrow) in the famous "Monkey Trial"

Keystone XL

The rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline's impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment. As a result, the secretary of state has recommended that the application be denied. And after reviewing the State Department's report, I agree. ...

This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people.

-- President Barack Obama, formally rejecting Canadian energy company TransCanada's Keystone XL project, a $7 billion oil pipeline linking tar sands in Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, 18 January 2012

How Can It Be

For every man, education will have to be a process which continues all his life. We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 -- and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?

-- Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), British author, inventor, and futurist

Where Do We Go From Here

Today the poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our consciences by being branded as inferior or incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), civil rights activist, Nobel laureate, Where Do We Go From Here?, address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (16 August 1967)

Black Hat

Definition for the day:

Philosopher (n): a blind person in a dark room looking for a black hat which is not there.

Faint Light

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: "My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly." The stranger is a theologian.

-- Denis Diderot (1713-1784), French philosopher, Addition to Philosophical Thoughts, Number VIII (1770)

A Lesson For You There

In the name of tolerance, we're not being tolerated.

-- Bishop Thomas J. Paprock, of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., which is losing state contracts because it refuses to consider same-sex couples as foster parents, New York Times, 29 December 2011

Sages

Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already.

-- Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658), Spanish Jesuit author, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Maxim 176 (1647)

AITS

I am now an Enterprise Application Specialist at AITS, the Administrative Information Technology Services, for the University of Illinois.

http://www.aits.uillinois.edu/

Infinite Capacity

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

-- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), British author, "Variations on a Philosopher" in Themes and Variations (1950)

Manifold Evils

Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.

-- Samuel Smiles (1812-1904), Scottish author and reformer, quoted in Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic (1987) by Timothy Travers

Banana Republic

It would lead us to become a banana republic, in which administrations would become regimes and each regime would feel it perfectly appropriate to disregard decisions of courts staffed by previous regimes. That's not what we are.

-- Michael B. Mukasey, President George W. Bush's attorney general, on Newt Gingrich's statement that the elected branches should be free to ignore judicial decisions, New York Times, 20 December 2011

Millionaire's Lifestyle

To say that I'm enjoying a millionaire's lifestyle - well, I can tell you, I guess a millionaire's income doesn't go very far these days.

-- Ed Pastor (D-AZ), who is among 250 members of Congress with a net worth of $1 million or more, New York Times, 27 December 2012


From the article: While the median net worth of members of Congress jumped 15 percent from 2004 to 2010, the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans remained essentially flat. For all Americans, median net worth dropped 8 percent, based on inflation-adjusted data from Moody's Analytics.

Good article, particularly if you like numbers.

New York Times

Philosophy Of Toys

Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.

-- Robert Lynd (1879-1949), British writer, The Peal of Bells, Chapter XVI "The Christmas Present" (1925)

In Bed With Government

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

-- US Congressman and Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul (attributed)

Not Economic

This is political, not economic. The coal miners came out because they were not paid. The people coming onto the streets of Moscow are very well off. These are people protesting because they were humiliated. They were not asked. They were just told, "Putin is coming back."

-- Viktor A. Shenderovich, a political commentator on Echo of Moscow radio, on why a surprising number of Russians are demonstrating against the government, New York Times, 12 December 2011

Except Religion

Gullibility and credulity are considered undesirable qualities in every department of human life -- except religion.

-- Christopher Hitchens (13 April 1949 - 15 December 2011), author and journalist

RIP Vaclav Havel

Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine.

-- Vaclav Havel (5 October 1936-18 December 2011), three days after being elected President of Czechoslovakia by the country's still-communist parliament, 1 January 1990

Miscalculations

We haven't had a connection with Iran since 1979. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran, so we don't understand each other. If something happens it's virtually assured that we won't get it right, that there will be miscalculations which would be extremely dangerous in that part of the world. [...]

-- Admiral Mike Mullen, recently-retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 20 September 2011

No Call, No Text, No Update

According to NHTSA, more than 3,000 people lost their lives last year in distraction-related accidents. It is time for all of us to stand up for safety by turning off electronic devices when driving. No call, no text, no update, is worth a human life.

-- National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman, announcing an NTSB safety recommendation calling for a nationwide ban on PEDs (Personal Electronic Devices) while driving, 13 December 2011

Craig Virgin

I just want them to know that if a skinny little farm kid from Lebanon, Illinois, with a chronic kidney ailment and no track and no weight room can eventually go on to make the Hall of Fame, then they can, too.

-- Craig Virgin (1955-), on his 3 December 2011 induction to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame

I grew up in Lebanon, and my two oldest brothers were on the cross country team with Craig. His accomplishments include:

* Wins in all 48 of the prep cross country meets he entered as a junior and senior, setting records in 47 of them.

* Wins in 95 of 100 cross country races from his sophomore year in high school to his senior year at Illinois.

* Nine Big Ten titles at Illinois -- 4 in cross country and 5 in track.

* Two cross country world championships.

His 1972 time of 13:50.6 in the Illinois State High School Cross Country Championship still stands after 39 years. He didn't run before 9th grade.

Asymmetric

This is an asymmetric war. In asymmetric wars, you want to pit your greatest strength against the enemy's greatest weakness. Our great strengths are our ideals and our system of justice.

As it turns out, our enemies' greatest weakness is that they are bereft of ideals. If we can maintain our ideals, our sense of justice, in the face of this, we can win. What the enemy, what the terrorists want to do -- because they know they can't beat us militarily -- [is] they can try to change us. They can cause us to become more like them, and for them, that's victory.

-- Retired Admiral John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy, speaking against indefinite military detention of US citizens as proposed in the National Defense Authorization Act, 12 December 2011

Mark The End

We're here to mark the end of this war, to honor the sacrifices of all those who made this day possible, and to turn the page, begin a new chapter in the history between our two countries -- a normal relationship between sovereign nations, an equal partnership based on mutual interests and mutual respect.

-- President Barack Obama, after a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, 12 December 2011

Happy Path

Write meaningful test cases... if your tests only prove the happy path, that's OK... but if they prove that the happy path is the only path... that is better.

-- kantos on slashdot.org, 6 September 2010

Unbelievably

The jury decided that I was convicted and I am accepting of it. I acknowledge it, and, of course, I am unbelievably sorry for it.

-- Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, just before being sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption while in office, 7 December 2011

A Critic Of His Own Community

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver.

-- Edward Abbey (1927-1989), American naturalist and author, A Writer's Credo, from One Life at a Time, Please (1988)

Meet Them Ever Alike

For all your days be prepared,
And meet them ever alike:
When you are the anvil, bear -
When you are the hammer, strike.

-- Edwin Markham (23 April 1852 - 7 March 1940), American poet, Preparedness, from Gates of Paradise and Other Poems (1920)

At Peace

I'm at peace with my God. I'm at peace with my wife, and she is at peace with me.

-- Herman Cain, announcing that he was suspending his Republican presidential campaign amid accusations of sexual impropriety, New York Times, 4 December 2011

Charitable Institutions

With respect to the number of deaths, arms manufacturers are charitable institutions compared to cigarette manufacturers.

-- Silvio Garattini (1928-), doctor, researcher, professor, founder of the European Organization for Research on Treatment of Cancer

Until Someone Loses An Eye

I absolutely loved giving chase to celebrities. How many jobs can you have car chases in? Before Diana died, it was such good fun.

-- Paul McMullan, a former editor at The News of the World, describing tabloid journalism techniques at a London inquiry on media ethics, New York Times, 30 November 2011