Appointments

Trump's appointments over the next six weeks will be very significant because they can show whether he wants to create some unity in the country, or whether he really intends to deliver on his ideas.

-- Presidential historian Robert Dallek, New York Times, 13 November 2016

A Good Rule

This a good rule: Don't answer any questions when they start yelling at you.

-- President Barack Obama to president-elect Donald Trump after they met for the first time at the White House, 10 November 2016

Tinnunculite

Tinnunculite: A mineral that grows in the feces of the Kestrel after being cooked by underground coal fires.

Tremendous Potential

As I've said from the beginning, ours was not a campaign, but rather an incredible and great movement made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their families.

It's a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will.

Working together, we will begin the urgent task of rebuilding our nation and renewing the American dream.  I've spent my entire life and business looking at the untapped potential in projects and in people all over the world.  That is now what I want to do for our country.

Tremendous potential.  I've gotten to know our country so well -- tremendous potential.  It's going to be a beautiful thing.  Every single American will have the opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential.  The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

-- Republican President-elect Donald J. Trump in his victory speech, 9 November 2016

Election 2016

Well, this election certainly isn't going as the pollsters predicted.

Rock The Vote!

Rock the vote, people!

Just A Headline

I'm just a headline -- the bad president, the bad guy, who is killing the good guys.  You know this narrative.  The real reason is toppling the government.

-- Syrian President Bashar al Assad, welcoming a group of Western visitors to his palace in Damascus, New York Times, 2 November 2016

Cubs Win!

Hey hey, holy mackerel!

Extraordinary

It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.

-- John D. Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, on the announcement from the FBI that it was investigating newly-surfaced emails related to Mrs. Clinton's handling of classified information, New York Times, 29 October 2016

Do Democracy

If we are to be a great democracy, we must all take an active role in our democracy.  We must do democracy.  That goes far beyond simply casting your vote.  We must all actively champion the causes that ensure the common good.

-- Martin Luther King III (1957-), human rights advocate and community activist, first son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech at the Democratic Convention (28 August 2008)

Ultra

I need a beer and my wife right now.

-- Ultramarathon runner Pete Kostelnick, after completing a record-setting run across the United States

Kostelnick kept a rigid routine, sleeping in an RV on the route until 3 a.m.  He would then run 40 miles in roughly seven hours -- a nine- to 10-minute per-mile pace.  He'd take a short break for lunch, then continue for 30 miles or more into the night.  He spent upwards of 14 hours running each day for six straight weeks.

The 29-year-old from Lincoln, Nebraska, left San Francisco's City Hall on September 12 -- his birthday -- at 8 a.m.  He then headed east for 3,067 miles, completing the trek in 42 days, 6 hours, and 30 minutes.  The feat is unprecedented, and ends one of the oldest ultrarunning records recognized by Guinness World Records [by more than 4 days].

Runners World, 24 October 2016
http://www.runnersworld.com/ultrarunning/ultrarunner-pete-kostelnick-smashes-record-for-run-across-us

Fail Forward

The conceit of "data journalism," at least as I see it, is to apply the scientific method to the news.  That means observing the world, formulating hypotheses about it, and making those hypotheses falsifiable.  (Falsifiability is one of the big reasons we make predictions.)  When those hypotheses fail, you should re-evaluate the evidence before moving on to the next subject.  The distinguishing feature of the scientific method is not that it always gets the answer right, but that it fails forward by learning from its mistakes.

-- Nate Silver (1978-), American statistician and writer, How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump (18 May 2016)

Suspense

CHRIS WALLACE: But, sir, there is a tradition in this country -- in fact, one of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard-fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to the winner -- not saying that you're necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and that the country comes together, in part for the good of the country.  Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle?

DONALD TRUMP: What I'm saying is that I will tell you at the time.  I'll keep you in suspense.  OK?

-- Exchange between the moderator and the Republican candidate during the 3rd and final Presidential Debate, 19 October 2016

2.7 Inches Per Year

Australia moves 2.7 inches a year because of its position on a remarkably active tectonic plate.  The country has issued a reset of its official coordinates four times in the past 50 years and will issue a fifth at the end of the year. 

The next adjustment, due at the end of the year, will be about 1.5 meters (4.9 feet).

-- New York Times, via Walt Hickey in Significant Digits, FiveThirtyEight.com, 13 October 2016

Fire In A Dark Night

The idea for a novel is like a little tiny fire in a dark night.  And, one by one, the characters come and stand around it and warm their hands.

-- Thomas Williams (1926-1990), American novelist, as quoted by Stephen King in an interview with Jeffrey Brown at the Library of Congress National Book Festival, NewsHour Bookshelf, 6 October 2016

Poetic Expressions

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016 is awarded to Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

-- Statement of the Nobel Academy, 13 October 2016

At A Deeper Level

The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level.

-- Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (1900 – 1958), Austrian-Swiss physicist, one of the pioneers of quantum physics, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945, to Jagdish Mehra, in Berkeley, California (May 1958), as quoted in The Historical Development of Quantum Theory (2000) by Jagdish Mehra

I'm The Slime

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

-- Frank Zappa (1940-1993), excerpt from the lyrics to "I'm The Slime" (1973)

Tic Tac

Tic Tac respects all women.  We find the recent statements and behavior completely inappropriate and unacceptable.

-- Tweet by @TicTacUSA in response to comments made by Donald Trump in 2005 during a taping of Access Hollywood, 2:03 PM - 8 October 2016

Unacceptable

The really sad part is that in the United States we accept 35,092 people dying on the roadways and thinking that's okay.  It should be unacceptable.

-- Mark Rosekind, the head of NHTSA, NPR, 5 October 2016

Gentlemen

Gentlemen, the people at home cannot understand either one of you when you speak over each other.  I would please ask you to wait until the other is finished.

-- Moderator Elaine Quijano of CBS News, after the first part of the Vice Presidential debate was marked by the candidates frequently interrupting and talking over each other, 4 October 2016

Doomsday Scenario

That is the doomsday scenario, in some respects, of having an eight-member court.

-- Carter G. Phillip, a lawyer, describing the possibility that a deadlocked Supreme Court might face a dispute over the outcome of the presidential race in its next session, New York Times, 2 October 2016

Possible For Beer

We got the idea from looking at other life provisions that run through pipes.  Water pipes, electricity pipes, cable distribution, etc.  So why wouldn't that be possible for beer?

-- Xavier Vanneste, director of De Halve Maan, or The Half Moon, a Belgian brewery, on the world's first beer pipeline, in Bruges, New York Times, 17 September 2016

The Same Way

Optimists and pessimists die the same way.  They just live differently.  I prefer to live as an optimist.

-- Shimon Peres (2 August 1923 - 28 September 2016), Polish-born Israeli statesman, as quoted in "Serving 60 Years to Life", Newsweek Europe (12 December 2005)

Ahead Of My Time

I haven't worried about an email being hacked since I've never sent one.  I'm, like, ahead of my time.

-- Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on the queasiness in Washington as yet another victim, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, fell prey to seeing his personal musings distributed on the Internet and highlighted in news reports, New York Times, 16 September 2016

A Million Pianos

It sounded like a million pianos just dropped.

-- Unidentified young girl near the scene of a terrorist bombing in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, 19 September 2016

Arab Dictator 2.0

He's a different kind of bloodthirsty dictator, the kind who shops online on his iPad. He's sort of Arab dictator 2.0.

-- Nadim Houry, of Human Rights Watch, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, New York Times, 18 September 2016

Worn Thin

Once again the crust of civilization has worn thin, and beneath can be heard the muttering of primeval fires.  Once again many accepted principles of government have been overthrown, and the world has become a laboratory where immature and feverish minds experiment with unknown forces.  Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other.     

--John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875 - 1940), Scottish novelist, poet, and politician, Augustus (1937)

Mother Teresa

I think, perhaps, we may have some difficulty in calling her St. Teresa: Her holiness is so near to us, so tender and so fruitful, that we continue to spontaneously call her Mother Teresa.

-- Pope Francis, in off-the-cuff remarks during his homily at the canonization ceremony elevating Mother Teresa to sainthood, New York Times, 5 September 2016

To Boldly Go

Space: the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

-- Canadian actor William Shatner (1931-), in the voice-over introduction to the television series Star Trek in its debut episode, 8 September 1966

We Will Rock You

It's just a dot of light, but it's a very special dot of light.

-- Queen guitarist Brian May, describing the asteroid (official designation: Asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury) named for his late friend and bandmate, Freddie Mercury


The celestial body was discovered in the same year Mercury died at age 45.  It was dedicated to the singer in honor of what would have been his 70th birthday, in a move that May announced in a video shown at a party for Mercury's 5 September 2016 birthday, in Montreux, Switzerland.

American Women

American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived on the face of the earth. We can do anything we want to do.

-- Phyllis Schlafly (15 August 1924 - 5 September 2016), American conservative political activist and Equal Rights Amendment opponent, Cultural Conservatism and the Religious Right, C-SPAN.org (4 April 2012)

Greenland Shark

It's no fish tale: The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet, a new study says.

The largest shark in the study, at 16.5 feet (five meters) in length, was estimated to be approximately 392 years old.  Nielsen says there is some uncertainty around that estimate.  He and his colleagues determined with 95 percent certainty that the shark was between 272 and 512 years old, and it was most likely around 390.

-- National Geographic, "272-Year-Old Shark Is Longest-Lived Vertebrate on Earth", by Mary Bates, 11 August 2016

What Problems

Don't ask kids what they want to be when they grow up.  Ask them what problems they want to solve.  This changes the conversation from who do I want to work for, to what do I need to learn in order to be able to do that.

-- Jaime Casap, Google Global Education Evangelist, on Twitter as @jcasap, 24 January 2015

RIP, Gene Wilder

It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get.  It's really crazy, isn't it?  We get to live, then we have to die.  What we put into every moment is all we have ....  What spirit human beings have!  It is a pretty cheesy deal -- all the pleasures of life, and then death.

-- Gilda Radner (1946 - 1989), American comedienne and actress, It's Always Something (1989), pg. 87 (2009 edition)

Rules Of The Road

Their relationship as a current president and a former president would be a very, very sensitive issue early on, and they'd need to carefully work out the rules of the road for the sake of both of them.

-- David Gergen, senior adviser to several presidents, including Bill Clinton, on his role if Hillary Clinton were to be elected president, New York Times, 27 July 2016

One Of The Shouts

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will.  Incredible.  The Life Force experimenting with forms.  You for one.  Me for another.  The Universe has shouted itself alive.  We are one of the shouts.

-- Ray Bradbury, American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer, "G. B. S. -- Mark V", in I Sing the Body Electric: And Other Stories (1998)

A Critical Task

The forces going on in the society are not things the media can prevent or change.  But we can and should help understand this crisis and warn against false solutions.  If feelings are trumping arguments -- the pun is fully intended -- it doesn’t mean that arguments don’t still have to be made.  It may not win the news cycle.  It may not even win this election cycle.  But it’s a critical task.

-- Andrew Sullivan (1963-), libertarian conservative author and political commentator, as quoted in "Andrew Sullivan on His Brief Return to the Online Political Fray" by Jennifer Schuessler, in The New York Times, 29 July 2016

RIP Gawker.com

Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years after it began and two days before the end of my forties.  It is the end of an era.

It is a fitting conclusion to this experiment in what happens when you let journalists say what they really think.

-- Nick Denton, 22 August 2016, final post on gawker.com

The Cat Probably Deserved It

Omaha dad finds pot brownies, eats 4 of them, says mean things to cat

Paramedics called to the scene who checked the man found his vital signs to be normal.  But they noted that he was displaying odd behavior -- crawling around on the floor, randomly using profanities, and calling the family cat a "bitch".

-- Headline and snippet from an article by Kevin Cole in the Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald, 19 August 2016

http://tinyurl.com/gmxgxky

Letter Of Life

Dear DONALD GRAHAM APPLEMAN

Our records indicated that you were deceased.  This record was in error and has been corrected.

If you have any questions, you should call, write, or visit any Social Security office.  If you visit an office, please bring this letter.  It will help us answer your questions.

Social Security Administration

-- Contents of a letter I picked up at the local Social Security office today after I got an email from my credit card company telling me they had closed my account because I was dead

A Sad Thing

It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor the judgement to hold their tongues.

-- Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696), French essayist and moralist, "Of Society And Conversation", Les Caractères (1688)

A Hundred Times

Any trouble I get myself in now -- even an honest mistake -- will be a hundred times worse than if any normal person did it.

-- 30-year old Ahmed Abdul Qader, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was 17 at the time of his arrest, after his relocation to Estonia, New York Times, 29 July 2016

Wait, What?

Before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks inside the United States.

-- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, at an event for Donald Trump in Ohio, 15 August 2016

Closed Doors

It's hugely disappointing.  A trial is the one place where the system really gets tested.  Everything else is done behind closed doors.

-- Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a 20-year veteran of the Manhattan federal bench, on the sharp decline of jury trials, New York Times, 8 August 2016

Very Truly Yours

As Director of the Public Defender System, I can only hire attorneys when I have the funding to do so. ...  To avoid having to close one or more offices, the remaining option is to consider the use of Section 600.042.5, which gives the Director of the Public Defender System the authority to "[d]elegate the legal representation of any person to any member of the state bar of Missouri." ....

[P]ursuant to Section 600.0425 and as Director of the Missouri State Public Defender System tasked with carrying out the State's obligation to ensure that poor people who face incarceration are afforded competent counsel in their defense, I hereby appoint you, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon, Bar No. 29603, to enter your appearance as counsel of record in the attached case.

Very truly yours,

-- Michael Barrett, Director of the Missouri Public Defender System, in a letter assigning a case to Governor Jay Nixon, 2 August 2016

Refugee Olympic Team

Madam Tegla gives us a chance for other people to know the history of our lives.  And we can forget what happened before.

-- Yiech Pur Biel, 21, an 800-meter runner who fled his village in South Sudan in 2005, on Tegla Loroupe, a Kenyan marathoner who is leading a group of 10 displaced athletes, known as the Refugee Olympic Team, to Rio, New York Times, 5 August 2016

Life Doesn't Suck

Very occasionally, if you really pay attention, life doesn't suck.

-- Joseph "Joss" Hill Whedon (23 June 1964 -), American screenwriter, film and television director and producer, Liner notes to the cast album Once More, with Feeling (2002)

Lost Track

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true, and the tendency to miss lunch.

-- Tim Berners-Lee (1955-), Inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, interview by Kris Herbst for Internet World (June 1994)

Completely Different

I've also learned that my memory may be completely different than reality.  I've decided that my brain did that for a good reason (perhaps survival of that moment) or maybe it's just being an asshole again.  In either case, it's made me more humble and less insistent that I'm correct.  I've also put less weight on the past.  There's nothing I can do about it, except learn from it.  And I feel like I can learn no matter how I might mis-remember my alternate universe self, so I care less about what really happened.

-- Wendy, July 2016, http://wendria.blogspot.com/