Tell My Story

I just want to make sure I could tell my story the way I want to tell it. I just want to own my truth.

-- Michael Sam, who is expected to be a top draft pick in the NFL, announcing that he is gay, New York Times, 10 February 2014

RIP Shirley Temple

Good luck needs no explanation.

-- Shirley Temple Black (23 April 1928 - 10 February 2014), American film and television actress, singer, dancer, and Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia

Becoming A Sensor

By having these devices in our pockets and using them more and more, you're somehow becoming a sensor for the world intelligence community.

-- Philippe Langlois, founder of the Paris-based company Priority One Security, on agencies' ability to harvest personal data from users of smartphones, New York Times, 28 January 2014

Hard Core

Nothing says "hard-core" like being cast out by Al Qaeda.

-- William McCants of the Brookings Institution, after Al Qaeda's leadership cut ties with a militant group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, New York Times, 4 February 2014

Spring Framework

Goal of the Spring framework is to take statically-typed, verifiable code and turn it into unsafe strings validated poorly at runtime.

-- John A. De Goes, @jdegoes via Twitter, 19 December 2013

Arctic

The climate of Barrow is Arctic.  Temperatures range from cold as shit to fucking freezing.

-- Steve Niles, 30 Days of Night

What Good Is The Warmth

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

-- John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American writer, 1962 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962)

If There Must Be Trouble

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

-- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), English-American political activist, author, political theorist, and revolutionary, The American Crisis (1776 - 1783), The Crisis No. I

Senile

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

-- Henry Brooke Adams (1838-1918), US historian, journalist, great-grandson of John Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter 11 (1907)

Snow Zombie Apocalypse

It was like something you would see if they told you the plague broke out and you had to run for your life.

-- Saquana Bonaparte, who inched along in her car for almost 12 hours after ice coated roads in the Atlanta area, NY Times, 30 January 2014

America Does Not Stand Still

[W]hat I believe unites the people of this nation, regardless of race or region or party, young or old, rich or poor, is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all -- the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead.

Let's face it: that belief has suffered some serious blows.  ...

The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by -- let alone get ahead. And too many still aren't working at all. ...

But America does not stand still -- and neither will I.  So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do.

Opportunity is who we are.  And the defining project of our generation is to restore that promise.

-- President Barack Obama, State of the Union address, 28 January 2014

Almost Nothing

I think it's embarrassing for a head of state like that to go on for almost 45 minutes and say almost nothing. ...  It's clear that the President would not be speaking today without the actions of Edward Snowden and whistle-blowers before him. ...  Security whistle-blowers have forced this debate.  This president has been dragged, kicking and screaming, to today's address.  He's been very reluctant to make any concrete reforms, and unfortunately, today we also see very few concrete reforms.

-- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on CNN's live coverage of President Obama's NSA speech, 17 January 2014

New Questions

When mistakes are made -- which is inevitable in any large and complicated human enterprise, they correct those mistakes, laboring in obscurity, often unable to discuss their work even with family and friends -- the men and women at the NSA know that if another 9/11 or massive cyber attack occurs, they will be asked by Congress and the media why they failed to connect the dots.  What sustains those who work at NSA and our other intelligence agencies through all these pressures is the knowledge that their professionalism and dedication play a central role in the defense of our nation.

Now, to say that our intelligence community follows the law and is staffed by patriots is not to suggest that I or others in my administration felt complacent about the potential impact of these programs.  Those of us who hold office in America have a responsibility to our Constitution.  And while I was confident in the integrity of those who lead our intelligence community, it was clear to me in observing our intelligence operations on a regular basis that changes in our technological capabilities were raising new questions about the privacy safeguards currently in place.

-- President Obama in his speech on NSA reforms, 17 January 2014

History

I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction.  I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta.  I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history.  History is ourselves.

-- Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), English author, museum director, and art historian, Civilisation (1969) Ch. 13: Heroic Materialism

Religious Freedom Day

In 1786, the Virginia General Assembly affirmed an ideal that has long been central to the American journey.  The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, penned by Thomas Jefferson, declared religious liberty a natural right and any attempt to subvert it "a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either." The Statute inspired religious liberty protections in the First Amendment, which has stood for almost two and a quarter centuries.

Today, America embraces people of all faiths and of no faith.  We are Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, atheists and agnostics.  Our religious diversity enriches our cultural fabric and reminds us that what binds us as one is not the tenets of our faiths, the colors of our skin, or the origins of our names.  What makes us American is our adherence to shared ideals -- freedom, equality, justice, and our right as a people to set our own course.

-- President Barack Obama, Religious Freedom Day Proclamation, 15 January 2014

Shut It Down

We squandered the goodwill of the world after we were attacked by our actions in Guantanamo, both in terms of detention and torture.  Our decision to keep Guantanamo open has helped our enemies because it validates every negative perception of the United States.

It is time that the American people and our politicians accepted a level of risk in the defense of our constitutional values, just as our service men and women have gone into harm's way time after time to defend our Constitution.  If we make a mockery of our values, it calls us to question what we are really fighting for.

It is time to close Guantanamo.  Our departure from Afghanistan is a perfect point in history to close the facility.

-- Retired Marine Major General Michael Lehnert, who opened the Guantanamo detention camp, in a column published in the Detroit Free Press, 12 December 2013

Separated

Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (15 January 1929 - 4 April 1968), African-American civil rights leader, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)

Per Minute?

How much is that per minute?

-- Emer Duffy, who was billed $1,696 after a hospital treated a cut on her daughter's forehead with a bit of skin glue, New York Times, 3 December 2013

Security Vs. Obscurity

If I take a letter, lock it in a safe, hide the safe somewhere in New York, then tell you to read the letter, that's not security.  That's obscurity. On the other hand, if I take a letter, and lock it in a safe, and then give you the safe along with the design specifications of the safe and a hundred identical safes with their combinations so that you and the world's best safecrackers can study the locking mechanism -- and you still can't open the safe and read the letter -- that's security.

-- Bruce Schneier (1963-), Applied Cryptography, 2nd Edition, p. xix (1996)

Kosovo Hits Facebook

As a prime minister of Kosovo, I found it difficult to accept that I have to declare myself as being from Serbia.  Being listed by Facebook was like being recognized by a global economic superpower.  It has enormous impact.

-- Hashim Thaci who had identified himself as being from neighboring Albania on Facebook until users were allowed to list their country as Kosovo, New York Times, 13 December 2013

Hell's Angels (TM)

Well, I don't want to sound pigheaded, but there's a million people out there that want to make a dollar off of the name Hells Angels and the emblem Hells Angels, and we try to stop them.

-- Sonny Barger, a longtime leader of the Hells Angels, on the group's willingness to litigate to protect its brand, New York Times, 28 November 2013

Traffic Problems

Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.

-- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's deputy chief-of-staff Bridget Anne Kelly, in an email that triggered punitive lane closures on the George Washington Bridge

Sphere

You call me a Circle; but in reality I am not a Circle, but an infinite number of Circles...  For even a Sphere -- which is my proper name in my own country -- if he manifest himself at all to an inhabitant of Flatland -- must needs manifest himself as a Circle.

-- Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838-1926), English schoolmaster, theologian, and author, Flatland, Chapter 16, "How the Stranger Vainly Endeavoured to Reveal to Me in Words the Mysteries of Spaceland (1884)

Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower

Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight.  He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service.  It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community. ...

When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government.

-- Editorial Board of the New York Times, "Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower", New York Times, 1 January 2014

Bitcoin

In the United States the question "Is money a form of speech?" is an important legal question, because of the protection afforded speech under the US Constitution.  In my (legally uninformed) opinion digital money may make this issue more complicated.  As we'll see, the Bitcoin protocol is really a way of standing up before the rest of the world (or at least the rest of the Bitcoin network) and avowing "I'm going to give such-and-such a number of bitcoins to so-and-so a person" in a way that's extremely difficult to repudiate.  At least naively, it looks more like speech than exchanging copper coins, say.

-- Michael Nielsen, "How the Bitcoin protocol actually works", 6 December 2013

Brrr

With a high temperature for the day of just -4F, today was the coldest day since January 1994. I have a kid in high school who can count today as the coldest day of her life.

Xmas

Merry Christmas!

Free Cheese

Free cheese is only found in a mousetrap.

-- Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, an opposition politician in Ukraine, referring to $15 billion in loans promised to his country by President Vladimir Putin of Russia, NY Times, 18 December 2013

The Path You Beat

Life is the path you beat while you walk it.  It is the walking that beats the path.  It is not the path that makes the walk.

-- Antonio Cipriano Jose Maria y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (1875-1939), known as Antonio Machado, Spanish poet

Indiscriminate And Arbitrary

I cannot imagine a more "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary" invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval.  ...  Surely, such a program infringes on "that degree of privacy" that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. ...

The question that I will ultimately have to answer when I reach the merits of this case someday is whether people have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the government, without any basis whatsoever to suspect them of any wrongdoing, collects and stores for five years their telephony metadata for purposes of subjecting it to high-tech querying and analysis without any case-by-case judicial approval.

-- Federal Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia, issuing an injunction against NSA collection of phone metadata, 16 December 2013

A Big Balloon

I don't see anything here that is going to harm the basic investment processes in the economy.  Before the crisis we had lots of trading, lots of liquidity. ...  What happened?  We had a big balloon.

-- Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, on the so-called Volcker Rule, a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, adopted this week by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Bank, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, 11 December 2013

Global Government Surveillance Reform

We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens.  But this summer's revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide.  The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual -- rights that are enshrined in our Constitution.  This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It's time for a change.

For our part, we are focused on keeping users' data secure -- deploying the latest encryption technology to prevent unauthorized surveillance on our networks and by pushing back on government requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope.

We urge the US to take the lead and make reforms that ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight.  To see the full set of principles we support, visit ReformGovernmentSurveillance.com

-- An open letter to Washington from AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo, 9 December 2013

Allergic

Humans are allergic to change.  They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that.  That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.

-- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992), US Naval officer, and an early computer programmer; developer of the first compiler for a computer programming language, "The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper" by Philip Schieber in OCLC Newsletter, No. 167 (March/April 1987)

Evangelii Gaudium

[S]ome people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.  This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.  Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

-- Pope Francis (17 December 1936-), Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013

RIP Nelson Mandela

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people.  I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.  I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.  It is an ideal which I hope to live for.  But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

-- Nelson Mandela (18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013), South African political activist, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and first President of South Africa in the post-apartheid era, statement in the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria Supreme Court, 20 April 1964

Pension AFU

Constitution of the State of Illinois
ARTICLE XIII, SECTION 5 -- PENSION AND RETIREMENT RIGHTS

Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.

--

I'll be interested to see how that reconciles with the apparent 30% reduction in the 20-year value of my pension that just got voted into law in Illinois.

Not What You're Going To Remember

Don't mistake my kindness for weakness.  I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.

-- Alphonse Gabriel Capone (1899-1947), American gangster

Facts And Opinions

Opinions don't affect facts.  But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational.

-- Ricky Gervais (1961-),English comedian, actor, and writer, on Twitter as @rickygervais, 9:21 AM, 4 October 2012

Diplomatically

I would like to say to the Iranian people:  You are not our enemies and we are not yours.  There is a possibility to solve this issue diplomatically.

-- Israeli President Shimon Peres regarding the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries, the US, Britain, China, Russia, France, and Germany, CNN, 25 November 2013

Nuclear Option

It's past time to fix Congress and make the legislative process work in a way that puts the American people ahead of petty politics.  It's past time Congress begins working together to move this country forward.

-- Senator Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.), one of three Democrats to side unsuccessfully with Republicans against changing Senate procedure regarding the filibuster, in a statement after the vote, 21 November 2013

Troublesome And Fatiguing

Most of us seldom take the trouble to think.  It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions.  But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

-- Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), Indian politican, first Prime Minister of India, The Unity of India: Collected Writings, 1937-1940 (1942), p94

I'm Outside

Oh my God.  I'm outside.  You see this on TV all of the time, but you never think it will happen to you.

-- Pat Whitaker, 82, of Gifford, IL on finding herself outdoors after having been upstairs at home when a tornado struck, 17 November 2013

Magic!

There's tons of magic in the world, and it's all science.

-- Martha Beck (29 November 1962-), The Four Technologies of Magic, at TEDx San Diego 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL7WTcF0-TY

Family Mission Statement

Family mission statement:

To cooperatively construct and maintain a safe, nurturing place to practice exercising our judgment, and respecting the judgment of others, in order to develop as autonomous individuals who are ready to contribute to the greater good while finding personal fulfillment.

11/12/13

Today is 11/12/13.  Sorry, that's all I've got.

Remembrance Day

Sitting in front of my fireplace, basking in it's warm glow gives me time to reflect upon the sacrifices that it has taken for me to enjoy the security of a good home, in a safe environment.  I can hear the soft whisper of the snow as it caresses my window and covers the ground outside in a scintillating display of sparkling lights under the full moon.  How many times have our service men and women watched this same scene from a foxhole, or camped in some remote part of the world.  Thankful for the silence of that moment, knowing it won't last long.  Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  He/she dresses in fatigues and patrols the world restlessly, ensuring that we can have this peaceful night.  Every day they give us the gift of this lifestyle that we enjoy, and every night they watch over us.  They are warriors, angels, guardians, friends, brothers, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers, forming a family that stretches back to the beginning of the country.  So tonight when you go to bed say a prayer that God watch over those who watch over us, and thank them for their sacrifices, on and off the battlefield.  Pray that they have a peaceful night, and will be home soon with their families who also share their burden.  Without them we would not have this moment.

-- Neil Leckman

Twitter

just setting up my twttr
2:50 PM - 21 Mar 2006

-- Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey @jack in the first Twitter post; Twitter's IPO opened at $45.10 on its first day of 7 November 2013, giving it a valuation of $31.5 billion

Illinois Is So Gay

Today the Illinois House put our state on the right side of history.

-- Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, in a statement after the Illinois House passed a bill legalizing gay marriage, 5 November 2013

Too Big To Jail

Sometimes, blame-worthy institutions need to be held accountable, too. No institution should rest easy in the belief that it is too big to jail. That is a moral hazard that a just society can ill afford.

-- US Attorney Preet Bharara on the $1.8 billion settlement of criminal charges against SAC Capital Advisors, 4 November 2013

Debacle

Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible.

-- Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a House committee hearing on the troubles with the health care website, New York Times, 31 October 2013