Take Note

It is with regret and concern that we, the Leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom take note of President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States of America from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

-- Joint statement from Prime Minister May, Chancellor Merkel and President Macron following President Trump’s statement on Iran, 8 May 2018

Apologizing

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.

-- John Barrett (Jay) McInerney Jr (13 January 1955 -), American writer, The Last of the Savages (1996)

Never, Nor, Nor Have I Ever

I have never been disciplined, nor reprimanded, nor have I ever heard a complaint about my ministry during my time as House chaplain.

-- House Chaplain Reverend Patrick J. Conroy, in a letter to Paul Ryan rescinding his late-April forced resignation, 3 May 2018

Make Them Clear

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts.  Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.  A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in "philosophical propositions", but rather in the clarification of propositions.  Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951), Austrian-born philosopher, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), 4.112

Reality

Reality continues to ruin my life.

-- Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes Collection (2005)

Their Voice

Democracy demands that our election system be protected, and without vigorously enforced campaign finance laws, the people of this country lose their voice.  The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice are committed to the prosecution of individuals who abuse the very system of which they seek to become a part.

-- U.S. Attorney George Holding, announcing a federal grand jury indictment against two-time presidential candidate John Edwards, for soliciting and covering up the secret spending of more than $925,000 to hide his mistress and their baby during the peak of his 2008 campaign for the White House, The Associated Press, 3 June 2011

Hierarchy

We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress.  If you're a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn't talk to you.  If you're a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.

-- Whitehouse Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, addressing the American Bankers Associations conference in Washington DC, 24 April 2018, New York Times via Salon.com

Ideas About Reality

With our concept-making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us.  The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently.  It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ.  Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept.

-- Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, in Principia Discordia, Psycho-Metaphysics (1965)

Uncertainty

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

-- Carl von Clausewitz (1780 - 1831), Prussian general and influential military theorist, in A Reader in International Relations and Political Theory (1993), p. 150

Submarine For Fish

An aquarium is a submarine for fish.

-- Kevin Beckman (Chris Hemsworth), in Ghostbusters (2016)

It Has To Be Enough

I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God." Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life.  I'm not greedy.  I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough.  It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me.  It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more.  Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven.  I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

-- Penn Jillette (1955 -), American magician, in an essay titled "There Is No God (2005)" on NPR's This I Believe, 21 November 2005

Off The Hook

I'll give you a strange answer.  I hope not because I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook and have something happen indirectly that I believe they're duty bound to do directly.  People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values.

We'll fight about guns.  We'll fight about taxes.  We'll fight about all those other things down the road.  But you cannot have, as president of the United States, someone who does not reflect the values that I believe Republicans treasure and Democrats treasure and Independents treasure.  That is the core of this country.  That's our foundation.  And so impeachment, in a way, would short circuit that.

-- Former FBI Director James Comey, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, when asked whether President Trump should be impeached, 15 April 2018

RIP Barbara Bush

I am still old and still in love with the man I married 72 years ago.

-- Former First Lady Barbara Pierce Bush (8 June 1925 - 17 April 2018), in her final update in Smith Alumnae Quarterly, published March 2018.  On 6 January, the couple celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary, the longest presidential marriage in history

What You Get Out Of It

Life is like a sewer -- what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.  It's always seemed to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need today in these trying times of crisis and universal brouhaha.

-- Thomas Andrew Lehrer (9 April 1928 -), American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician, Introduction to "We Will All Go Together When We Go"

Part Animal, Part Angel

You just never know.  You drift along, year after year, presuming certain values to be fixed; like being able to drive on a public thoroughfare without somebody trying to murder you.  You came to depend on that sort of thing.  Then something occurs and all bets are off.  One shocking incident and all the years of logic and acceptance are displaced and, suddenly, the jungle is in front of you again.  Man, part animal, part angel.

--Richard Matheson (1926-2013), American author and screenwriter of horror and science fiction, "Duel" (1971), a short story, which he later adapted into a screenplay for Duel (1971), Steven Spielberg's first feature-length film

Robin Trower

Thank you! Good night!

-- Guitarist Robin Trower (9 March 1945 -), at the end of his show at the Virginia Theater in Champaign, IL, 11 April 2018

Juggling The Demands

Parenthood isn't just a women's issue; it's an economic issue and one that affects all parents -- men and women alike.  As tough as juggling the demands of motherhood and being a senator can be, I'm hardly alone or unique as a working parent.

-- Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), in a statement after becoming the first sitting US senator to give birth (to daughter Maile Pearl Bowlsbey), Washington Post, 9 April 2018

No Limits

There are no limits to my daily amounts though -- of weed or distance.

-- Roger Boyd, 37, of Bristol, UK, who cycled 19,000 miles around the world in the past 2 years, and who documents his travels on his blog at healthy-stoner.com, Bristol Post, 9 April 2018

Vice Basket

Bloomberg’s Vice Basket tracks average retail prices for:

* A pack of cigarettes, popular and premium
* A bottle of alcoholic beverages including beer, wine and spirits
* A gram of amphetamine-type stimulants, including methamphetamine and/or ecstasy
* A gram of cannabis, including marijuana hashish resin and/or cannabis oil
* A gram of cocaine, regardless of salts, paste or base forms
* A gram of opioids, including heroin and/or opium.

Data are sourced from the UN, World Health Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

This year the United States cost is $617.10, up $217.90 from a year ago. The US is ranked 38th in affordability, with the Vice Basket costing 53.9% of an average weekly wage.

The cheapest overall cost is in the Congo, at $18.30, though most affordable goes to Luxembourg at $206.20, just 10.0% of that nation's average weekly income.

-- Bloomberg, 3 April 2018

One Thing

The one thing that would be dishonorable for us is to bring all this attention to the assassination of Dr. King and not have a resurrection of the efforts and the unfinished business dealing with systemic racism, systemic poverty.

-- The Reverend Dr William Barber II, a North Carolina pastor whose sermons and outreach efforts have tended to align with the religious left, New York Times, 4 April 2018

Chief Reason

The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol.

-- Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook (1960)

Every Day In Every Way

If they continue to ignore us, to only pretend to listen, then we will take action where it counts.  We will take action every day in every way until they simply cannot ignore us any more.

-- Delaney Tarr, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, where a gunman killed 17 people last month, speaking to a crowd of thousands in Washington DC Saturday, when protests against gun violence took hold in cities across the country, New York Times, 25 March 2018

Perfectly Legitimate

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in January that Pyongyang was within "a handful of months" of being able to deliver nuclear warheads to the U.S.  How long must America wait before it acts to eliminate that threat?

Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an "imminent threat." They are wrong.  The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times.  Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute.  That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation. ...

In 1837 Britain unleashed pre-emptive "fire and fury" against a wooden steamboat.  It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current "necessity" posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons by striking first.

-- Incoming National Security Advisor John Bolton, The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First, Wall Street Journal Opinion page, 28 February 2018

In My View

In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.  When prime-time hosts -- who have never served our country in any capacity -- dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller -- all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of "deep-state" machinations -- I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove.  To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.

-- Retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Fox News contributor Ralph Peters, in an email to Fox colleagues explaining why he is leaving the network, BuzzFeed.com, 20 March 2018

Never Die Easy

Never die easy.  To me, there is no age.  Age is something other people put on you.  You put a person in an old folk's home, and this person's gonna die pretty quick because you tell them, "You're old now -- you're ready to go."

-- Dag Aabye, a 76-year-old ultramarathon runner and oldest competitor to complete the 125 Km "Death Race" ultramarathon, who lives entirely off the grid near Vernon, British Columbia, in the documentary "Never Die Easy", March 2018

Misconception

The misconception is that the president does not know what he does not know.  In my experience, the reality is that the president knows what he does not know and does not think he needs to know it.

-- Sam Nunberg, a former campaign adviser to President Trump, on Mr. Trump’s management style, New York Times, 22 January 2018

RIP Stephen Hawking

It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.

-- Stephen Hawking (8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018), English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author, as quoted in a statement from Hawking's family on the occasion of his death, 14 September 2018

Badge Of Honor

Let them call you racists.  Let them call you xenophobes.  Let them call you nativists.  Wear it as a badge of honor.

-- Stephen K. Bannon, former chief strategist for President Trump, addressing the party congress of the anti-immigrant National Front led by the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen in Lille, France, New York Times, 11 March 2018

Troublesome World

It's a troublesome world.  All the people who're in it
are troubled with troubles almost every minute.
You oughta be thankful, a whole heaping lot,
For the places and people you're lucky you're not!

-- Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904 - 1991), more famous by his pen name, Dr. Seuss, American writer and cartoonist, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? (1973)

Minuscule / Majuscule

There is no scule, there is only cule, and it is not mini; it is minus or majus.

Not Everything Is What It Seems

Social media is a virtual world that is filled with half bots, half real people.  You can't take any tweet at face value.  And not everything is what it seems.

-- Rami Essaid, founder of Distil Networks, a cybersecurity company that specializes in eradicating bot networks, New York Times, 28 January 2018

What Matters

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

-- Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, (6 March 1927 - 17 April 2014), Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, attributed

Big Mistakes

Xi Jinping is susceptible to making big mistakes because there are now almost no checks or balances. Essentially, he has become emperor for life.

-- Willy Lam, author of a 2015 biography of President Xi, on China’s moves to abolish term limits, New York Times, 26 February 2018

Sesquicentennial

Illinois Industrial University, later to become the University of Illinois, opened March 2, 1868, with 77 students and 4 faculty members.

The Urbana campus of the University of Illinois now employs 2,548 Academic staff, 7,801 Administrative staff, and serves a student body of 45,813.

General Principle

The general principle that motivates and binds people is "story".  The universal elements of a story are characters, a clear goal, and impediments to reaching that goal.  Every national story, without exception, is cast in these terms (usually with considerable distortion of the facts).

The best and most compelling stories involve righteous sounding goals and enormous obstacles.  We are fundamentally "wired" to be captivated by such narratives, and it's the most powerful force holding us together, much stronger than profit or self-interest.

-- Duncan McKenzie, in an on-line discussion about national identity, 1 March 2018

Free To Starve, Beat, Or Lash?

No one can claim, nor since the time of slavery has anyone to my knowledge successfully claimed, that persons held within the United States are totally without constitutional protection.  Whatever the fiction, would the Constitution leave the Government free to starve, beat, or lash those held within our boundaries?  If not, then, whatever the fiction, how can the Constitution authorize the Government to imprison arbitrarily those who, whatever we might pretend, are in reality right here in the United States?  The answer is that the Constitution does not authorize arbitrary detention.  And the reason that is so is simple: Freedom from arbitrary detention is as ancient and important a right as any found within the Constitution’s boundaries.

-- Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the minority with Justice Ginsburg and Justice Sotomayor in dissent in Jennings v Rodriguez, in which the majority held that a noncitizen can be held indefinitely without appeal to the courts for a bail hearing, 27 February 2018

Undesirable Elements

We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.

-- Edward Paul Abbey (1927 - 1989), American writer noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, and criticism of public land policies, Abbey's Road (1979)

Pistolero

Teachers have to teach, and that's what they should be doing.  It doesn't matter what a pistolero you are, or think you are.  You don't need to be in school in charge of protecting children.

-- Joel Myrick, a former assistant principal who survived a school shooting, on moves to arm teachers, New York Times, 22 February 2018

Prolong Civilization

Asimov certainly was influential because he was seriously paralleling Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but he applied that to a sort of modern galactic empire.  The lesson I drew from that is you should try to take the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a dark age, and reduce the length of a dark age if there is one.

-- Elon Musk (1971-), South African-born Canadian American entrepreneur, engineer, and inventor, on the influence of Isaac Asimov on his life goals, in an interview with Neil Strauss, 15 November 2017

RIP Billy Graham

I feel sorry for the man who has never known the bracing thrill of taking a stand and sticking to it fearlessly. Moral courage has rewards that timidity can never imagine. Like a shot of adrenaline, it floods the spirit with vitality.

-- William Franklin Graham, Jr. (7 November 1918 - 21 February 2018), better known as Billy Graham, Evangelical Christian and an evangelist, "A Time for Moral Courage", Reader’s Digest (July 1964)

I Love A Parade

I think confidence is silent and insecurity is loud.  America is the most powerful country in all of human history, everybody knows it, and we don't need to show it off.

-- Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, on President Trump’s desire to hold a military parade in Washington, New York Times, 8 February 2018

Throwing Stones

Picture a bright blue ball, just spinning, spinnin free,
Dizzy with eternity.
Paint it with a skin of sky,
Brush in some clouds and sea,
Call it home for you and me.
A peaceful place or so it looks from space,
A closer look reveals the human race.
Full of hope, full of grace
Is the human face,
But afraid we may lay our home to waste.

There's a fear down here we can't forget.
Hasn't got a name just yet.
Always awake, always around,
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.

-- Grateful Dead lyrics by John Perry Barlow, Throwing Stones (with Bob Weir), recorded on In the Dark for Arista Records (1987), Cora, WY, August through December, 1982

Calculations

www.salon.com Would Like To Use Your Computing Power

You can support www.salon.com by allowing them to use your processor for calculations.  The calculations are securely executed in your Browser's sandbox.  You don't need to install anything.

-- Pop-up at Salon.com offering an ad-free experience in exchange for allowing cryptocurrency mining with your spare CPU cycles, as quoted in Ars Technica, 13 February 2018

Snowman Of Peace

The female ice hockey players from the two Koreas are now holding a small snowball in their hands.  Now, if we put our hearts and minds together, it will continue to grow larger and larger and turn into a snowman of peace.

-- President Moon Jae-In of South Korea, referring to the joint Korean women's ice hockey team and prospects of warming relations with North Korea, New York Times, 11 February 2018

Feel Uncomfortable

The reason I'm here tonight is to put people on the spot.  I want people to feel uncomfortable.  I want them to have to answer people at home who said, "How come you were against President Obama's deficits and then how come you're for Republican deficits?"

-- Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), on why he is holding up the Senate vote on a budget deal, 8 February 2018

RIP John Perry Barlow

Imagine discovering a continent so vast that it may have no end to its dimensions.  Imagine a new world with more resources than all our future greed might exhaust, more opportunities than there will ever be entrepreneurs enough to exploit, and a peculiar kind of real estate that expands with development.  Imagine a place where trespassers leave no footprints, where goods can be stolen infinite number of times and yet remain in the possession of their original owners, where business you never heard of can own the history of your personal affairs ....

-- John Perry Barlow (3 October 1947 - 7 February 2018), American writer and internet activist, who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as quoted in Who Controls the Internet? : Illusions of a Borderless World (2006) by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu

Starman

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful launch system on Earth, roared into the sky on Tuesday afternoon atop a pillar of smoke.

The rocket's three reusable boosters lifted the vehicle skyward, ultimately helping send Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster on a journey toward Mars orbit.

"It looks so ridiculous and impossible.  You can tell it's real because it looks so fake, honestly," Musk said at the post-launch press conference.

But he added: "The imagery of it is something that's going to get people excited around the world, and it's still tripping me out.  I'm tripping balls here."

-- Elon Musk, as quoted in Business Insider, 6 February 2018

It Will Fluctuate

When asked what the stock market will do: It will fluctuate

-- J. P. Morgan, quoted by Benjamin Graham in The Intelligent Investor (Collins Business, revised 2003), p. 54

Money Quote

Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.

-- Money quote from the House Intelligence Committee's "Nunes Memo", publicly released 2 February 2018

On Mars

I'd like to die on Mars, just not on impact.

-- Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla founder, in a keynote address at SXSW, 9 March 2013