Not Being Charged

There is something fundamentally wrong with a system where not being charged with a war crime keeps you locked away indefinitely and a war crime conviction is your ticket home.

-- Morris Davis, retired USAF Colonel, former Chief Prosecutor for the terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay, 29 April 2013

I Do Not Yet Know

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

-- Carl Friedrich Gauss, (1777 - 1855), German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, quoted in The Mind and the Eye (1954) by A. Arber

Mass Of Expectations

One isn't born one's self.  One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas -- and you have to work through it all.

-- Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1932-), British writer, 2001 Nobel laureate in Literature, New York Times, 24 April 1994

An Ounce To A Pound

An ounce of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy.

-- Vice President John Adams (1735-1826), subsequently second President of the United States, correspondence with Abigail Adams (1794)

Viewpoints

The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints.  Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints.  If you simply have a consensus, it generally stultifies.  It fails to see the problems of that consensus and it depends on the existence of critics to break up that iceberg and permit knowledge to develop.  This is in fact one of the underpinnings of democratic theory.  It is one of the reasons why we believe in notions of free speech and it's one of the great forces in terms of intellectual development.

-- Walter Gilbert (1932-), American physicist, 1980 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Meditel (1990)

Talent To Endure

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

-- Maya Angelou (1928-), African-American poet and author, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1969)

All Mankind Is Us

Let us do something while we have the chance!  It is not every day that we are needed.  Not indeed that we personally are needed.  Others would meet the case equally well, if not better.  To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears!  But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not.  Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!  Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!

-- Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish playwright, novelist, and poet, 1969 Literature Nobel laureate, Waiting for Godot Act II (1952)

Jahar Jahar

Ain't no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people

-- First of about a dozen tweets posted on Twitter by @J_tsar, Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, between the time of the bombing and his 19 April arrest, posted 7:04 PM - 15 Apr 13

Radicalized?

Did we talk about the Newtown shooter as having become "radicalized"?  That incident became about mental health and guns.  This one, we're going straight to ideological issues.

-- Virginia Heffernan, Yahoo! News, 19 April 2013

Silent Partnern

To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.

-- Quotation found 16 April 2013 in ricin-tainted mailings to President Obama and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), attributed to Texas chiropractor John Raymond Baker

Cavity Search

They can give me a cavity search right now and I'd be perfectly happy.

-- Daniel Wood, a video producer from New York City who was waiting for a train at Boston's South Station, and who clearly doesn't read Bruce Schneier, 16 April 2013

Awful

It wasn't a good scene.  It was awful.

-- Aaron Michael, a bystander at the scene of a pair of explosions near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, 15 April 2013

Responsibility

Character in many ways is everything in leadership.  It is made up of many things, but I would say character is really integrity.  When you delegate something to a subordinate, for example, it is absolutely your responsibility, and he must understand this.  You as a leader must take complete responsibility for what the subordinate does.  I once said, as a sort of wisecrack, that leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.

-- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890 - 1969), American soldier and politician, 34th President of the United States, as quoted in Nineteen Stars : a Study in Military Character and Leadership 1971) by Edgar F. Puryear Jr.

Actions And Consequences

His mother had often said, "When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action." She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

-- Lois McMaster Bujold (1949-), American author of science fiction and fantasy, Memory (1996)

Statesmen

With the rise of the state, statesmen became possible -- men whose vision embraced truly grand adventures and enterprises in exploitation, oppression, plunder, and mass mayhem.

-- Robert Higgs (1944-), American economic historian and economist, The State -- Crown Jewel of Human Social Organization, 4 April 2013

http://tinyurl.com/cy492z9

Substance, Quality, Or Relation?

But suppose we take the noun "truth": here is a case where the disagreements between different theorists have largely turned on whether they interpreted this as a name of a substance, of a quality, or of a relation.

-- John Langshaw Austin (1911 - 1960), English philosopher of language and speech theorist, Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford, 1979), p 73

Grave Situation

We formally inform the White House and Pentagon that the ever-escalating U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and its reckless nuclear threat will be smashed by the strong will of all the united service personnel and people and cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means. The U.S. had better ponder over the prevailing grave situation.

-- Spokesman from the General Bureau of the North Korean People's Army to state media, 3 April 2013

My Real Voice

It is human nature to look away from illness.  We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality.  That's why writing on the Internet has become a life-saver for me.  My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression.

-- Roger Joseph Ebert (18 June 1942 - 4 April 2013), American film critic and screenwriter, first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Ted Talk (March 2011)

The Strong

The true purpose of the strong is to promote greater strength in the weak, and not to keep the weak in that state where they are at the mercy of the strong.

-- Christian D. Larson (1874-1962), American New Thought leader, teacher, and author, Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912) Chapter 14, p. 210

The Maker's Intentions

The primary purpose of all art forms, whether it's music, literature, or the visual arts, is to say something to the outside world; in other words, to make a personal thought, a striking idea, an inner emotion perceptible to other people's senses in such a way that there is no uncertainty about the maker's intentions.

-- M. C. Escher (1898-1972), Dutch artist, On Being a Graphic Artist

Should The Value Change

The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant.  This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.

-- Early FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers, attributed

Primary Purpose

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.

-- Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986), essayist and drama critic

NPCF

Weight                  : >683,000 pounds

Number of processors    : >49,000 AMD CPUs, +3000 NVidia GPUs

Number of CPU cores     : >380,000

Memory (RAM)            : 1,500,000GB (1.5 petabytes)

Data storage            : >25,000,000GB (25 petabytes)

External network speed  : 100,000Mbps

-- National Petascale Computing Facility facts about the Blue Waters supercomputer at the University of Illinois, open house handout, March 2013

The One

Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania
Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth, and one way.

-- Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843), German lyric poet, "The Root of All Evil" as translated by Michael Hamburger

Make 'Em, Amuse 'Em

You make 'em, I amuse 'em.

-- Theodor (Dr.) Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), American writer, poet, and cartoonist, statement about children, as quoted in Enter, Conversing (1962) by Clifton Fadiman, p. 108

Saint Patrick

I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop.  I am certain in my heart that "all that I am," I have received from God.  So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God.

-- Saint Patrick (c. 385 - 17 March 462, 492, or 493), Christian bishop and missionary, and patron saint of Ireland, Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c.450?)

Conclusions

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

-- Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), English poet, novelist, and writer on gardening, In Your Garden Again (1953), p. 71 of 2004 edition

W00t! AnaLeigh

Welcome into the world, AnaLeigh Lillian Schum, born today, 14 March 2013, at 1:03pm to my eldest daughter Tia and her husband Joe at 7 pounds 12 ounces and 19 1/2 inches.  AnaLeigh has two older brothers, and is my 6th grandchild.

W00t!

Pope Francis

Brothers and sisters, good evening.

-- Newly ordained Pope Francis (17 December 1936-), formerly Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio, speaking for the first time as the 266th Pope, St. Peter's Square, The Vatican, 13 March 2013

Trvth Upgrade

Ahhhhh ... 16GB, 3.8GHz, quad-core goodness, running from SSD.  Smooth like butter.

Mutually Satisfying Weirdness

You want my opinion?  We're all a little weird.  And life is a little weird.  And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness -- and call it love -- true love.

-- Robert Fulghum (1937-), American author, True Love (1998)

Business Of The Future

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

-- Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), British born American mathematician and philosopher, Science and the Modern World (1925) Ch. 13: Requisites for Social Progress

Debate

I believed if the public -- in particular the American public -- had access to the information [in hundreds of thousands of military incident reports], this could spark a debate about foreign policy in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan.

-- Pfc. Bradley Manning (17 December 1987-), confessing in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, 28 February 2013

Bicyclists Are Actually Polluting When They Ride

Also, you claim that it is environmentally friendly to ride a bike.  But if I am not mistaken, a cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration.  That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider.  Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.

-- Washington State Representative Ed Orcutt (R-20), in an email to a constituent defending a proposed tax on bicycles, 25 February 2013

Psalm Of Life

Life is real! Life is earnest!
    And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
    Was not spoken of the soul.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1881), American poet, A Psalm of Life (1839), St 2

Candle

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Milay

Thank you

Rest in peace, Herbert Stanley Appleman (24 April 1917 - 21 February 2013)

My Dad was a WW II veteran, a meteorologist, and the father of 4 boys, and he will be missed.

The World Is Moved

The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

-- John Richard Green (1837-1883), Life and Letters of John Richard Green, Leslie Stephen, Ed (1901)

Cuts Both Ways

We did not see (as a result of brain scans of partisan loyalists) any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning.  What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.  None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones. ...  The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data.

-- Drew Westen, Director of Clinical Psychology at Emory University, regarding a study using fMRI, NBC News, 24 January 2006

Something Of The Youth

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so am I no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth.  He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

We All Like Our Own

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

-- Jane Austen (16 December 1775 - 18 July 1817), English novelist, Persuasion (posthumous, 1818)

A Very Long Time

And the thing is, once you're dead, you're dead for a very long time.

-- John Gilpin, on the Champaign County Bikes listserv, 10 February 2013

Bark Of St. Peter

In today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of St. Peter and proclaim the gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.

-- Pope Benedict XVI, announcing his resignation, 11 February 2013

For Richer, For Poorer

Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.

-- Charles Abrams (1902-1970), creator of the New York Housing Authority, cited in Michael Harrington's "The Other America" (1962)

Whirling Snow And Blinding Mist

Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him.  We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive.  If we stand still we shall be frozen to death.  If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces.  We do not certainly know whether there is any right one.  What must we do?  "Be strong and of a good courage." Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. ...  If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.

-- Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-1894), English lawyer and judge, in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 353, 2d edition (London, 1874)

Benghazi

The United States military, as I've said, is not and, frankly, should not be a 911 service capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world. The U.S. military has neither the resources nor the responsibility to have a fire house next to every U.S. facility in the world.

-- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in his opening statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, 7 February 2013

Optimist

Basically I'm an optimist.  Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one.  I can't see this any way but intellectually.  I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this.  This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pesimist, I suppose.

-- Sir William Golding (1911-1993), English poet, novelist, and Nobel laureate, interview with James Keating, Purdue University, 10 May 1962, printed in Lord of the Flies: The Casebook Edition (1964)

White Paper

[T]he United States would be able to use lethal force against a US citizen, who is located outside the United States and is an operational leader continually planning attacks against US persons and interests, in at least the following circumstances: (1) where an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; (2) where a capture operation would be infeasible -- and where those conducting the operation continue to monitor whether capture becomes feasible; and (3) where such an operation would be conducted consistent with applicable law of war principles.  In these circumstances, the "realities" of the conflict and the weight of the government's interest in protecting its citizens from an imminent attack are such that the Constitution would not require the government to provide further process to such a US citizen before using lethal force. ...

Finally, the Department notes that under the circumstances described in this paper, there exists no appropriate judicial forum to evaluate these constitutional considerations.

-- Department of Justice White Paper, Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or An Associated Force, excerpt, NBC News, 4 February 2013

Hold Still

People tell me I sing the words "love" and "hunger" like no one else. Well, everything I know is wrapped up in those two words.  You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.

-- Billie Holiday (1915-1959), jazz singer and songwriter, Lady Sings The Blues (1956), p 201

Popular Delusion

It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth.  Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.

-- Patrick Jake (P.J.) O'Rourke (1947-), American political satirist, Parliament of Whores (1991), p 36