The Apple Cannot Be Stuck Back

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

-- Arthur Asher Miller (1915-2005), American playwright, essayist, and author, commenting on After the Fall (1964) in The Saturday Evening Post (1 February 1964)

Arm Themselves

A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.  Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

-- James Madison (1751-1836), Fourth US President (1809-1817), co-author, with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, of the Federalist Papers, Letter to W.T. Barry (4 August 1822)

More Clearly

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.

-- Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885-1962), Danish physicist, 1922 Nobel laureate in physics, as quoted in Values of the Wise: Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 63

At What Point?

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?  By what means shall we fortify against it?  Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?  Never!  All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.  At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?  I answer.  If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad.  If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.

-- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th President of the United States, The Lyceum Address (1838)

We All Like Our Own Best

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

-- Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist, Persuasion (1818), Chapter 13

Paper Tigers

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.  The fears are paper tigers.  You can do anything you decide to do.  You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

-- Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), American aviator, attributed, in Nicole Davenport's "Stepping Into Destiny" (1954), pg 71

Accustom To The Veneer Of Noise

Accustom to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.

-- John Lahr (1941-), American theater critic, in Carolyn Howard-Johnson The Frugal Book Promoter, Star Publish (2004) p. 147

You Must Allow People To Be Right

You must allow people to be right, because it consoles them for not being anything else.

-- Andre' Gide (1869-1951), French author, 1947 Nobel laureate in literature, The Immoralist (1902)

Reason To Think

There is reason to think, that, if men were better instructed themselves, they would be less imposing on others.

-- John Locke (1632-1704), English philosopher and social contract theorist, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) Book IV

The Traveller Is Unaware

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.

-- Martin Buber (1878-1965), Jewish philosopher, theologian, story-teller, and teacher, The Legend of the Baal-Shem (1955)

No Room Left

There is simply no room left for "freedom from the tyranny of government" since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare.  Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission.  Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.

-- William Seward Burroughs II (5 February 1914 - 2 August 1997), American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter, and spoken word performer, Cities of the Red Night (1981)

Anti-Vaxxers

I said, "I'd rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot."

-- Crystal McDonald, whose daughter was sent home from school during a measles outbreak because she had not been vaccinated, New York Times, 31 January 2015

Like Money In A Bank

Unexpressed, rage is like money in a bank, deposited into a resentment account with seething interest compounded every minute.  There seems to be a point beyond which the vault can no longer contain that amount of currency, and it explodes.

-- Gordon Fellman, Chairman of Brandeis University's Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies Program, Rambo and the Dalai Lama pg 46

The Line Grows Thinner

I want to feel the nearness of something secure.  It is such a lonely, lost feeling that I am cut off from life.  I am nothing.  I belong nowhere and to no one.  There is just so much hurt, disappointment and oppression one can take.  The bubble of life grows larger.  The line between reason and madness grows thinner.

-- Rosa Parks (4 February 1913 - 24 October 2005), African-American Civil Rights activist, in hand-written journals recently made public at the Library of Congress

Then You Cash In

"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris.  "We want them to be broken.  You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against...  We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men.  The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.  Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them.  One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.  Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens?  What's there in that for anyone?  But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt.  Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

-- Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-American novelist and philosopher, Atlas Shrugged (1957), ch 3

I Never Know

I never know how much of what I say is true.  If I did, I'd bore myself to death.

-- Bette Midler (1945-), American comedic actress, in her autobiography, A View From a Broad (1980)

Friendship Nine

In 1961, when we were downtown, it wasn't for any glory.  We were not looking for any hero worship.  We were simply 10 students who was tired of the status quo, tired of being treated like second-class citizens, tired of being spat on, kicked, called the N-word, drinking out of the colored water fountain.  We got tired of that.

-- Clarence Graham, 1 of 9 found guilty of trespassing in 1961 for sitting at an all-white South Carolina lunch counter; their records were recently cleared by Judge John C Hayes III, nephew of the judge who handed down the original sentence, Democracy Now, 29 January 2015

Belief System

Everyone has a Belief System (BS); the trick is to learn not to take anyone's BS too seriously, especially your own.

-- Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007), American novelist, essayist, and Absurdist philosopher, famous for The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Reality Is What You Can Get Away With (1993, 1996)

An IPhone And A Better TV

The middle has basically stayed the same; it hasn't improved.  You've got an iPhone now and a better TV, but your median income hasn't changed. What's really changed is the penthouse has become supernice.

-- Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard economist, on the shrinking American middle class, New York Times, 26 January 2015

Psychic Entropy

The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.

-- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934-), Italian-born American psychologist, Flow, page 228

Idiot Savant

Every normal man, woman, and child is, then, a genius at something, as well as an idiot at something.

-- Charles Spearman (1863-1945), English psychologist and statistician, on his theory conceiving intelligence as made up of a "general factor" as well as "special factors" more specific to particular mental tasks, The Abilities of Man: Their Nature and Measurement (1927) p221

On That Understanding

Unlike the exemption this Court approved in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., accommodating petitioner's religious belief in this case would not detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner's belief.  On that understanding, I join the Court's opinion.

-- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concurring with the Court's unanimous decision in Holt v. Hobbs, establishing that a Muslim inmate may grow a half-inch beard "in accordance with his religious beliefs", 20 January 2015

SOTU 6

Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?  Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?

Will we approach the world fearful and reactive, dragged into costly conflicts that strain our military and set back our standing?  Or will we lead wisely, using all elements of our power to defeat new threats and protect our planet?

Will we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another, or will we recapture the sense of common purpose that has always propelled America forward?  ...

Fifteen years into this new century, we have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and begun again the work of remaking America.  We have laid a new foundation.  A brighter future is ours to write.

-- President Obama, in his 6th State of the Union address, 20 January 2015

No Freedom Should Be Abandoned

No freedom should be abandoned.

-- Former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, cautioning against an overreaction to recent terrorism, New York Times, 17 January 2015

True Peace

True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (15 January 1929 - 4 April 1968), African-American civil rights leader, 1955 response to an accusation that he was "disturbing the peace" by his activism during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, as quoted in Let the Trumpet Sound : A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr (1982) by  Stephen B. Oates

Yourself

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

-- Andy Warhol (1928-1987), American painter, filmmaker, publisher, actor and major figure in the Pop Art movement, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again) (1975) Ch. 7: Time

Car ce n'est pas assez d'avoir l'esprit bon, mais le principal est de l'appliquer bien.

It is not good enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.

-- Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, writer, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Pt 1 (1637)

Primordial Concern

Terrorism being a complex phenomenon, is an alarming kind of violence, threat, a method to combat or a strategy to achieve certain goals aiming to induce a state of fear in the victim, which is ruthless and does not confirm to humanitarian norms where publicity becomes an essential factor in the terrorist strategy indulging killing of innocent and destruction of much valuable property thereby creating wide panic and gripping the remotest part of the world.  Thus, the fight against terrorism has not only become a primordial concern for all the nations but also for research study in the context of global security under the impact of globalization.

-- Shreyasi Ghosh, Research Scholar, Presidency University, Kolkata India, Understanding Terrorism in the Context of Global Security, Socrates, Edition II, Vol II, June 2014

State Of Fear

We cannot go on like this, living in a state of fear.  There must be liberty of expression; expression cannot be met with violence.

-- Mustafa Qadir, a Pakistani citizen who works in London but traveled to Paris for a march against terrorism that reportedly drew more than one million people, New York Times, 12 January 2015

2014 Mileage

It's been a while since I gave an annual summary of my auto usage, but I've got some numbers for 2014.  They're not as good as the numbers I formerly got when using software on my Palm phone to track it.

I still drive my 1999 Saturn SC2.  The car finished 2014 with 360,902 miles, an increase of 28,982 for the year.  That's more than I used to drive, with 26,777 in 2013.  I'm not clear why this year's total was higher, so I need to do some research on that.

I used a total of 834.118 gallons of gasoline to get the job done, giving me an average of 34.745 miles per gallon for the year.  One of the things that keeps me in this car, besides its general reliability, is the high gas mileage.  Unfortunately, I don't have numbers on the cost of that gasoline.

If I averaged 60 mph, it would take me 6000 hours to drive 360,000 miles; I'm sure I've spent many more hours than that in the Saturn.  I'm finally starting to get a little tired of it, but it's fun to run up the miles. I'm forming a plan to either hand it down to my youngest daughter, or retire it at 400,000 miles, which should come sometime in the summer of 2016.

In Order To Exist At All

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.

-- William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897-1962), American novelist and poet, 1949 Nobel laureate in Literature

Put Something Back

Anyone who has got any pleasure at all from living should try to put something back. ...  I'm glad to be giving something back because I've been so extraordinarily lucky and had such great pleasure from it.

-- Gerald Durrell (1925-1995), naturalist, zookeeper, and author, as quoted in Gerald Durrell:  The Authorised Biography (1999) by Douglas Botting

2014 Workout Summary

I previously mentioned in here that I use MapMyRide.com, an on-line site that tracks my workouts (walking, running, and cycling tracked with GPS, swimming, tae kwon do, and some other activities tracked manually).

My workout summary for the year 2014:

Workouts    : 666
Duration    : 478:24:56
Miles       : 1268.73
Calories    : 241,873

The high number of workouts (and a significant portion of the duration) result from 342 walks.

I got these numbers by summing the 12 monthly totals for 2014. Interestingly, I was prompted to write this trvth on the basis of an "annual summary email" they sent me -- and that email summary significantly overstates all of these values, so I added them up instead of using what they sent me.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Festivus

In the ancient days when gods played their own games, and had their own celebrations, tossing lightning bolts between mountaintops, hurling great boulders -- Festivus came out of that.  It's a holiday that celebrates being alive at a time when it was hard to be alive.

There was no Christ yet, no Yahweh, no Buddha.  There were great ruins and raw nature.  But there was a kindling spark of hope among men.  They celebrated that great thunderous storms hadn't enveloped them in the past year, that landslides hadn't destroyed them.  They made wishes that their crops would grow in the fields, that they'd have food the next year and the wild animals wouldn't attack and eat them.

There's something pure about Festivus, something primal, raw in the hearts of humans.

-- Jerry Stiller (1927-), American comedian and actor, foreword to Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us (2005) by Allen Salkin

Christmas Gift Suggestions

Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.

-- Oren Arnold (1900-1980), American novelist, journalist, and humorist

True Nobility

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

-- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961), American author and journalist, For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940)

History Will Judge Us

History will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say "never again".

-- Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), after the release of a Senate report condemning C.I.A. interrogations, New York Times, 10 December 2014

Again!

I would do it again in a minute.

-- Former Vice President Dick Cheney, defending his advocacy of interrogation techniques that a Senate report last week condemned as inhumane and ineffective, NY Times, 15 December 2014

Imagine

Imagine if we didn't go down that road.  Imagine.  We played into the enemy's hand.  Now we have American hostages in orange jumpsuits because we put people in orange jumpsuits.

-- Ali H. Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who clashed with the C.I.A. over its interrogation tactics, New York Times, 11 December 2014

12/13/14

The most basic sort of trvth:

    Tomorrow will be 12/13/14

Problem?

If there is no solution to the problem then don't waste time worrying about it.  If there is a solution to the problem then don't waste time worrying about it.

-- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama (1935-), born Lhamo Dhondrub, renamed Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (Holy Lord, Gentle Glory, Compassionate, Defender of the Faith, Ocean of Wisdom) upon being officially recognized as the Dalai Lama

Evolution

Congrats to Ray Ozzie for his success and his inclusion on this list.  But the article ...  Perhaps the most blindly uninformed and reductionist view of PLATO ever expressed in print:

UIUC: Amazing Tech Visionaries Who Went To School There
Business Insider - 1 December 2014

http://tinyurl.com/qfudsg6

Ray Ozzie -- Lotus Notes

Ozzie was a computer science student at UIUC when he started working on PLATO system, which later evolved into Lotus Notes, one of the earliest enterprise collaboration software tools.  Lotus was later sold to IBM for $3.5 billion.

News Is A Business

Indeed.  News is a business, and it is, by and large, an advertising business.  In other words, the viewer isn't the customer, the advertiser is.  And the predominate marketing strategy for the news business for the last several decades has been to scream at us "WATCH OUR PROGRAM OR YOU WILL DIE!!!  AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE EATEN BY DINGOS AND SOMEONE WILL KICK YOUR DOG!!!!"

-- Comment on an article about media coverage in Ferguson, MO, by taustin on Slashdot, 3 December 2014 @12:13PM

Young Men Have A Passion

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

-- Henry Brooke Adams (1838-198), US historian, journalist, and educator, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Chapter XI The Battle of the Rams

32-Bit Overflow

The Korean pop star PSY's viral music video "Gangnam Style" has reached the limit of YouTube's view counter.  According to YouTube's Google+ account,

"We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met PSY.  'Gangnam Style' has been viewed so many times we had to upgrade to a 64-bit integer (9,223,372,036,854,775,808)!"

-- From Slashdot, 3 December 2014


I think wrote about this once before.  As of this morning, the 4 minute 13 second Gangnam Style video had been viewed 2,158,281,339 times.  This adds up to 6,288,349 days, or 17,216 years total viewing time.  Since this morning, it's been watched another 1,548,865 times, racking up another 12.4 years of viewing.

Stick To The Facts

Give It To Them Straight.  You've probably heard your professors tell you over and over again, "stick to the facts".  And they're right: there's no better way to make your point and win your argument.  And even those who disagree with your conclusion will respect you for being honest and having the guts to tell it like it is.

-- Michael Bloomberg (1942-), former New York City mayor, Tufts University commencement address (2007)

Pretend

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

-- Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), American novelist and satirist, Mother Night, Introduction (1961)

Business Plan

This appears to be the business plan.  It appears to be, you do whatever you have to do, and you know that eventually you will pay fines, but you will pay the fines and still make a lot more.

-- Eric G. Campbell, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, on conflicts of interest between doctors and the drug industry, New York Times, 28 November 2014

World AIDS Day

The AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.

-- Susan Sontag (1933-2004), American essayist, literary critic, cultural theorist, and political activist, AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989), p. 180.