I Alone

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom.  I am free, no matter what rules surround me.  If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.  I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

-- Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988), The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

Undismayed

A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as "state" and "society" and "government" have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals.  He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame ... as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else.  But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world ... aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.

-- Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988), The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing is the moral response to immoral activity by those in power. What's important here are government programs and methods, not data  about individuals.  I understand I am asking for people to engage in illegal and dangerous behavior.  Do it carefully and do it safely, but -- and I am talking directly to you, person working on one of these secret and probably illegal programs -- do it.

If you see something, say something.  There are many people in the U.S. that will appreciate and admire you.

For the rest of us, we can help by protesting this war on whistleblowers. We need to force our politicians not to punish them -- to investigate the abuses and not the messengers -- and to ensure that those unjustly persecuted can obtain redress.

Our government is putting its own self-interest ahead of the interests of the country.  That needs to change.

-- Bruce Schneier, Government Secrets and the Need for Whistleblowers, The Atlantic (6 June 2013)

Trading Privacy For Convenience

If the government demanded that we all carry tracking devices 24/7, we would rebel.  Yet we all carry cell phones.  If the government demanded that we deposit copies of all of our messages to each other with the police, we'd declare their actions unconstitutional.  Yet we all use Gmail and Facebook messaging and SMS.  If the government demanded that we give them access to all the photographs we take, and that we identify all of the people in them and tag them with locations, we'd refuse.  Yet we do exactly that on Flickr and other sites.

Ray Ozzie is right when he said that we got what we asked for when we told the government we were scared and that they should do whatever they  wanted to make us feel safer.  But we also got what we asked for when we traded our privacy for convenience, trusting these corporations to look out for our best interests.

We're living in a world of feudal security.  And if you watch "Game of Thrones," you know that feudalism benefits the powerful -- at the expense of the peasants.

-- Bruce Schneier, Trading Privacy for Convenience (13 June 2013)

Inconvenient Minorities

The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion.  The law is no protection.  Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.

-- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950), English novelist and journalist, Freedom of the Park, Tribune, 7 December 1945

Dissent

Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness.  The same cannot be said of the Court's opinion today.  The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled.  Instead, it relies on increases in voter registration and turnout as if that were the whole story.  See supra, at 18-19.  Without even identifying a standard of review, the Court dismissively brushes off arguments based on "data from the record," and declines to enter the "debat[e about] what [the] record shows".  One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation's signal piece of civil-rights legislation.

-- US Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her dissent of the SCOTUS decision invalidating a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, 25 June 2013

Half

Five-mile training run gets out of control, turns into my first half marathon ever. Kept it under two hours, barely.

Ran 13.16 mi on 07/08/2013
Distance: 13.16 mi, Duration: 1:58:59, Pace: 9:03 min/mi

The Other Shoe

In sum, that Court which finds it so horrific that Congress irrationally and hatefully robbed same-sex couples of the "personhood and dignity" which state legislatures conferred upon them, will of a certitude be similarly appalled by state legislatures' irrational and hateful failure to acknowledge that "personhood and dignity" in the first place.  As far as this Court is concerned, no one should be fooled; it is just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe.

-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissent to the Court's decision on the Defense Of Marriage Act, 26 June 2013

Change

Our country has changed.  While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions. ...

Congress -- if it is to divide the states -- must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions.  It cannot simply rely on the past.

-- US Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the majority, invalidating a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, 25 July 2013

DOMA Done

DOMA's principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal.  The principal purpose is to impose inequality, not for other reasons like governmental efficiency. Responsibilities, as well as rights, enhance the dignity and integrity of the person.  And DOMA contrives to deprive some couples married under the laws of their State, but not other couples, of both rights and responsibilities. ...

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.  By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.  This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.

-- Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court, vacating a central aspect of the Defense Of Marriage Act, 26 June 2013

Plot Vs Story

A plot is about things that happen.  A story is about people who behave. To admire a story, you must be willing to listen to the people and observe them.

-- Roger Ebert (18 June 1942 - 4 April 2013), American Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, review of "House of Sand and Fog", 26 December 2003

Hero?

I believe that history will hail Snowden as a hero -- his whistleblowing exposed a surveillance state and a secrecy machine run amok.  I'm less optimistic of how the present day will treat him, and hope that the debate right now is less about the man and more about the government he exposed.

-- Bruce Schneier, schneier.com, 11 June 2013

Irreversibly Interdependent

We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally  acceptable for others to rely on them for security -- and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use.

Similarly, we must abandon the traditional approach of defining security in terms of boundaries -- city walls, border patrols, racial and religious groupings.  The global community has become irreversibly interdependent, with the constant movement of people, ideas, goods and resources.  In such a world, we must combat terrorism with an infectious security culture that crosses borders -- an inclusive approach to security based on solidarity and the value of human life.  In such a world, weapons of mass destruction have no place.

-- Mohamed El Baradei (17 June 1942-), Egyptian diplomat, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, New York Times Op-Ed Saving Ourselves From Self-Destruction" (12 February 2004)

Zip Code Day

Today is Zip Code Day in Bement, IL -- zip code 61813, 6/18/13.

Need To Share

In past years someone like Snowden may not have had access to briefings detailing these collection programs, but now with the push from a "need to know" to a "need to share" philosophy, it's far more likely for an IT contractor like him to gain access to such documents.

-- Former NSA Deputy Directory Cedric Leighton, on Edward Joseph Snowden, a computer technician who said he leaked secrets about surveillance programs, New York Times, 10 June 2013

Not An Act Of Invention

Myriad did not create anything.  To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.

-- Justice Clarence Thomas, in the unanimous Supreme Court decision barring the patenting of human genes, 13 June 2013

Fits Very Well

There are only so many missile systems and Apache attack helicopters you can sell.  This push toward border security fits very well with the need to create an ongoing stream of revenue.

-- Dennis L. Hoffman, of Arizona State University, on a shift by military contractors toward projects along the U.S.-Mexico border, New York Times, 7 June 2013

Royal Inspection

The proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would not have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.

-- Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissent from the Supreme Court's ruling that the police may take DNA samples from people arrested in connection with serious crimes, New York Times, 4 June 2013

Only One Smile

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love.  Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning "Good morning" at total strangers.

-- Maya Angelou (1928-), African-American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Chapter 5 (1976)

For over the last decade, our nation has spent well over a trillion dollars on war, exploding our deficits and constraining our ability to nation build here at home.  Our service-members and their families have sacrificed far more on our behalf.  Nearly 7,000 Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice.  Many more have left a part of themselves on the battlefield, or brought the shadows of battle back home.  From our use of drones to the detention of terrorist suspects, the decisions we are making will define the type of nation -- and world -- that we leave to our children.

So America is at a crossroads.  We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison's warning that "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Neither I, nor any President, can promise the total defeat of terror.  We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society.  What we can do -- what we must do -- is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend.

-- Barack Obama, in a speech at National Defense University, 23 May 2013

BSA Resolution

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

The following membership standard for youth members of the Boy Scouts of America is hereby adopted and approved, effective Jan. 1, 2014:

Youth membership in the Boy Scouts of America is open to all youth who  meet the specificmembership requirements to join the Cub Scout, Boy Scout, Varsity Scout, Sea Scout, and Venturing programs.  Membership in any program of the Boy Scouts of America requires the youth member to (a) subscribe to and abide by the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law, (b) subscribe to and abide by the precepts of the Declaration of Religious Principle (duty toGod), and (c) demonstrate behavior that exemplifies the highest level of good conduct and respect for others and is consistent at all times with the values expressed in the Scout Oath and Scout Law.  No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.

-- Resolution of the Boy Scouts of America, adopted 23 May 2013

SGS4

Samsung Galaxy S4 trvth

What Is All This?

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers.  Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world.  That experience alone astonishes some people.  What is all this -- what is the world?  And what are we?  From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers.  This is what is really meant by any such phrase as "mankind's need for metaphysics."

-- Bryan Magee (1930-), British politician, broadcaster, and author, Confessions of a Philosopher: A Journey Through Western Philosophy (1997), p. 232

Jogger Vs. Runner

The difference between a jogger and a runner is an entry blank.

-- George Sheehan (1918-1993), American author, physician, and runner





[My first 5K time was 25:43]

This Is Not A Contract

It's up to you whether or not you want to do work with no contract.  I think artists do need to do work with no contract, because what we're motivated by is not money.  We're motivated by a need to express ourselves and to get our ideas out.  That's the motivation.  It turns out that when people like it they frequently will support you if you give them a means, but this is not a contract.

-- Nina Paley (3 May 1968-), American cartoonist, animator, and free culture activist, Youtube video "Copying Is Not Theft: Against Copyright Tyranny", 25 March 2011

Best Means

It is only when the People become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty.  Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found.  The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.  Let us, by all wise and constitutional measures, promote intelligence among the People, as the best means of preserving our liberties.

-- James Monroe (1758 - 1831), fifth President of the United States, author of the Monroe Doctrine, first Inaugural Address, 4 March 1817

Dead Giveaway

Bro, I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms.  Something is wrong here.  Dead giveaway.

-- Charles Ramsey of Cleveland, in an interview after rescuing 3 kidnapped women including Amanda Berry, 6 May 2013

Statistics Show

Birthdays are good for you.  Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.

-- Father Larry Lorenzoni, Salesian priest and author

Raising My Hand

I didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport.  But since I am, I'm happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, "I'm different." If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand.

-- Jason Collins, a 12-year N.B.A. veteran, announcing that he is gay, Sport Illustrated On-line, 29 April 2013

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