Round-The-Clock Liturgy

It was one of the longest religious ceremonies ever recorded, lasting for more than three months and involving nearly 1,000 pastors and priests.

But on Wednesday afternoon [30 January], a Dutch church's nonstop 96-day vigil finally came to an end after its organizers received confirmation that a family of refugees sheltering inside the church would no longer face immediate deportation from the Netherlands.

Taking advantage of an obscure Dutch law that forbids the police to interrupt church services, ministers at Bethel Church in The Hague had been running a round-the-clock liturgy since Oct. 26 in order to prevent the five members of the Tamrazyan family from being arrested and sent back to Armenia.

-- Patrick Kingsley, New York Times, "96 Days Later, Nonstop Church Service to Protect Refugees Finally Ends", 30 January 2019

RIP John Dingell

The Lovely Deborah is insisting I rest and stay off here, but after long negotiations we've worked out a deal where she'll keep up with Twitter for me as I dictate the messages.  I want to thank you all for your incredibly kind words and prayers.  You're not done with me just yet.

-- Former Representative John Dingell (D-MI) (8 July 1926 - 7 February 2019), American politician and all-time longest-serving member of Congress (59 years), posting on Twitter as @JohnDingell, in his final public words, 4:41 PM on 6 February 2019

State Of The Union

What will we do with this moment?  How will we be remembered?

I ask the men and women of this Congress: Look at the opportunities before us!  Our most thrilling achievements are still ahead.  Our most exciting journeys still await.  Our biggest victories are still to come.  We have not yet begun to dream.

We must choose whether we are defined by our differences -- or whether we dare to transcend them.

-- President Donald J. Trump, in his second State of the Union Address, 5 February 2019

To The Grave

A cryptocurrency exchange in Canada has lost control of at least $137 million of its customers' assets following the sudden death of its founder, who was the only person known to have access to the offline wallet that stored the digital coins.

In a sworn affidavit filed Thursday by Jennifer Robertson, widow of QuadrigaCX's sole director and officer Gerry Cotten, Robertson testified that Cotten died of Crohn's disease in India in December at the age of 30.

Robertson testified that Cotten stored the cold wallet on an encrypted laptop that only he could decrypt.  Based on company records, she said the cold wallet stored $180 million in Canadian dollars ($137 million in US dollars), all of which is currently inaccessible to QuadrigaCX and more than 100,000 customers.

-- Ars Technica, "Digital exchange loses $137 million as founder takes passwords to the grave", 2 February 2019

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/digital-exchange-loses-137-million-as-founder-takes-passwords-to-the-grave/

3 Times In 13 Months

Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.

-- President Donald Trump, posting as @realDonaldTrump, 9:48 AM - 4 January 2018



The Stock Market hit 25,000 yesterday. Jobs are at an all time record - and that is before we fix some of the worst trade deals and conditions ever seen by any government. It is all happening!

-- President Donald Trump, posting as @realDonaldTrump, 4:46 AM - 14 July 2018



Dow just broke 25,000. Tremendous news!

-- President Donald Trump, posting as @realDonaldTrump, 3:54 PM - 30 January 2019

Precipitous Withdrawal

Statement of Purpose: To express the sense of the Senate that the United States faces continuing threats from terrorist groups operating in Syria and Afghanistan and that the precipitous withdrawal of United States forces from either country could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.

-- Amendment to Senate Bill 1, Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019, written by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and passed cloture with 68 votes, in a rebuke by Republicans of President Trump's announced US troop withdrawals from both conflicts, 31 January 2019

Brrr

Where I live in central Illinois, the high temperature today was 4 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit.  As USA Today points out, that's considerably colder than today's 17-degree high at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, as well as the average 2-degree high today in Fairbanks, Alaska.  Last night it was 13 below, and tonight it's expected to be 10 below.

Brrr.

An Opportunity

We assess that foreign actors will view the 2020 U.S. elections as an opportunity to advance their interests.  We expect them to refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other's experiences and efforts.

-- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, 29 January 2019

Timepiece Of The Mind

Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man.  The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time.  An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second.  This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be and deserves fuller investigation.

-- Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941), British writer, Orlando: A Biography, Chapter 2 (1928)

End The Shutdown

My fellow Americans, I am very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and re-open the federal government.  As everyone knows, I have a very powerful alternative, but I didn't want to use it at this time.  Hopefully it will be unnecessary.  I want to thank all of the incredible federal workers, and their amazing families, who have shown such extraordinary devotion in the face of this recent hardship.

-- President Donald J. Trump in a statement announcing the end of the 35-day government shutdown, 25 January 2019

No Next Step

I was made to feel the loneliness of life, which is that decisions aren’t made for you.  You get swallowed up by whatever the thing that you're a part of.  You get out of that ... and you're about to have a kid, and you're an adult now.  And you go, "Holy shit, I am in charge of my life.  I am making choices.  There's no next step."

-- Former Walking Dead actor Steven Yeun, on his realization of the nature of adult life, comicbook.com 5 October 2018

North Carolina 9

I think both sides agree that it's important that the people of North Carolina have a voice in Washington.

-- Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway, ruling against Republican candidate Mark Harris and refusing to certify Harris's election to North Carolina's 9th District seat in the House of Representatives, and allowing an investigation by the state board of elections to proceed, Charlotte Observer, 22 January 2019

Five Sentences

There is a reason that I require all new agents and analysts to study the FBI's interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to visit his memorial in Washington as part of their training.  And there is a reason I keep on my desk a copy of Attorney General Robert Kennedy's approval of J. Edgar Hoover's request to wiretap Dr. King.  It is a single page.  The entire application is five sentences long, it is without fact or substance, and is predicated on the naked assertion that there is "communist influence in the racial situation."  The reason I do those things is to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them.

-- Then-FBI Director James Comey, "Hard Truths: Law Enforcement and Racism" (12 February 2015), Georgetown University, Washington, D.C

Inseparable

Experience to be experience must be reality; truth to be true must be true of reality. Experience, truth, and reality are inseparable.

-- Michael Joseph Oakeshott (1901 - 1990), English philosopher and political theorist, Experience and Its Modes (1933)

Collusion Confusion

I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign ... I have not.  I said the president of the United States.

-- President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani in an interview on CNN, 16 January 2019

Interference

The Attorney General has very special obligations, unique obligations.  He holds in trust the fair and impartial administration of justice.  It is the Attorney General's responsibility to enforce the law evenhandedly and with integrity.  The Attorney general must ensure that the administration of justice -- the enforcement of the law -- is above and away from politics.  Nothing could be more destructive of our system of government, of the rule of law, or the Department of Justice as an institution, than any toleration of political interference with the enforcement of the law.

-- US Attorney General nominee William P. Barr, in his written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, quoting himself from his 1992 confirmation hearing to the same post, 15 January 2019

Pawns

Whatever the source of the leader's ideas, he cannot inspire his people unless he expresses vivid goals which in some sense they want.  Of course, the more closely he meets their needs, the less "persuasive" he has to be, but in no case does it make sense to speak as if his role is force submission.  Rather it is to strengthen and uplift, to make people feel that they are the origins, not the pawns, of the socio-political system.

-- David Clarence McClelland (1917 - 1998), American psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, noted for his work on motivation need theory, in Robert A. Portnoy (1986), Leadership: what every leader should know about people. p. 16

Ideology

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble -- and his conscience devoured him.  Yes, even Iago was a little lamb, too.  The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses.  Ideology -- that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.  That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.

-- Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008), Russian novelist, and 1970 Nobel laureate in Literature, exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, The Gulag Archipelago (1973)

RIP George

The last known Achatinella apexfulva in the Hawaiian Islands, "George," died on New Year's Day, 2019.  George was approximately 14 years old and his name was derived from the Pinta Island Galapagos tortoise, "Lonesome George," also the last of its species.

The Achatinella apexfulva was the first of over 750 species of land snails from the Hawaiian Islands described in western science.  The first mention dates back to at least 1787 when Captain George Dixon was docked on O'ahu and was given a shell on a lei.

In 1997, the last ten known Achatinella apexfulva were brought to a laboratory at the University of Hawaii for captive rearing.  Some additional offspring were produced but later all the Achatinella apexfulva died, except for George.

-- News release from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, 4 January 2019

All The Bulls Are Hard

For the past 15 years or so, bucking bulls have been intensively bred like racehorses to make them harder to ride.  Breeders use high-tech reproductive techniques and a detailed, computerized registry of 180,000 bulls and cows.  Cowboys have continued to be bred the old-fashioned way.

The end result of all this effort, unsurprisingly, is that the bulls are becoming harder to ride. In earlier times, a rider had a chance to draw an easy bull. Now, all the bulls are hard, as both the riders and breeders will attest. In 1995, cowboys finished their rides 46 percent of the time; in 2012 they managed just 26 percent. Since then, the cowboys seem to have caught on a bit: their success rate has hovered around 29 percent for the past two years. Still, getting thrown 71 percent of the time means absorbing a lot of pain.

-- James Gorman, How to Make a Bucking Bull: Good Breeding and, Just Maybe, a Cow's Love, New York Times, 5 January 2019

Merely Tenacity

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 Mary Earhart (born 24 July 1897 - missing in western Pacific Ocean from 2 July 1937), American aviator and noted early female pilot, The Official Website of Amelia Earhart - Quotes

Right To Be There

Russia used to be the Soviet Union.  Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan.  The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia.  They were right to be there.  The problem is, it was a tough fight.  And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union.  You know, a lot of these places you're reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan.

-- President Donald Trump, at a cabinet meeting, 2 January 2019; The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board responded that it could not "recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American president"

You Are What You Do

You are what you do.  If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous.  Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education.  People who are regimented all their lives, handed off to work from school and bracketed by the family in the beginning and the nursing home at the end, are habituated to hierarchy and psychologically enslaved.  Their aptitude for autonomy is so atrophied that their fear of freedom is among their few rationally grounded phobias.

-- Robert Charles "Bob" Black, Jr. (4 January 1951 -), American anarchist and author, The Abolition of Work (1985)

Ultima Thule

New Horizons is like a time machine, taking us back to the birth of the solar system.  We are seeing a physical representation of the beginning of planetary formation, frozen in time.

-- Mission Geology Manager Jeff Moore, discussing the visit by the New Horizons spacecraft to Ultima Thule, the most distant object ever explored by mankind, 4 billion miles away, AFP, 2 January 2019

HNY

Happy New Year!

The Future

The future will soon be a thing of the past.

-- George Denis Patrick Carlin (1937 - 2008), American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and social critic, Napalm and Silly Putty (2001), p. 260

The Same Weapons

Never let the future disturb you.  You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-- Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (121 - 180), Stoic philosopher, and Roman Emperor from 161 to his death in 180, Meditations (c. 121-180 AD)

A Spectrum

The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.

-- Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design (2010)

It Was Profound

I don't know, something overcame me.  I just felt locked in for the last 32 hours, like a deep flow state.  I didn't listen to any music -- just locked in, like I'm going until I'm done.  It was profound, it was beautiful, and it was an amazing way to finish up the project.

-- American Colin O'Brady, 33, who became the first person to traverse Antarctica from coast to coast solo, unsupported, and unaided by wind.  O'Brady covered the final 77.54 miles of the 921-mile journey across Antarctica in one final sleepless, 32-hour burst; speaking in a telephone interview, New York Times, 26 December 2018

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Real Spirit

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind.  To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.

-- John Calvin Coolidge Jr. (1872 - 1933), 30th President of the United States, reported in Canfield, Jack; Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Hansen, Irene Dunlap (2002). Chicken soup for the soul Christmas treasury for kids, page 1

Christmas Morning

There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

-- Erma Louise (Harris) Bombeck (1927 - 1996), born Erma Fiste, American humorist who achieved great popularity for a newspaper column that depicted suburban home life in the second half of the 20th century, in "I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression" (1970)

Clear-Eyed

My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues.  We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

-- Defense Secretary James Mattis, in his letter of resignation, 20 December 2018

Outrage Is A Brand

But today, too often, genuine disagreement quickly gives way to intense distrust.  We spend far more time trying to convict one another than we do developing our own convictions.

Being against someone has more currency than being for anything.  Each of us has found ourselves operating on the wrong side of this equation from time to time.

All of this gets amplified by technology, with an incentive structure that preys on people's fears, and algorithms that play on anger.  Outrage is a brand.

And, as with anything that gets marketed, it gets scaled up.

It becomes more industrialized, more cold, and more unfeeling.

-- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI), in his farewell address, 19 December 2018

Never Submit

Thought must never submit, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, save to the facts themselves, because, for thought, submission would mean ceasing to be.

-- Jules Henri Poincaré (29 April 1854 - 17 July 1912), one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science, in a speech at University of Brussels (19 November 1909), during the festival for the 75th anniversary of the university's foundation; published in Œuvres de Henri Poincaré (1956), p. 152

Heretics

The Republican Party isn't looking for converts, it's looking for heretics.

-- Syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Shields & Brooks, PBS Newshour, 14 December 2018

True Intentions

One never really knows one's own true intentions.

-- Lord Tuan, elder monk of the Order of the Crane Mother, on the Netflix series Iron Fist

Working At Scale

This is working at scale, and we don't manually intervene on any particular search result.

-- Google CEO Sundar Pichai in testimony before Congress, in response to Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who asked "Right now, if you google the word 'idiot' under images, a picture of Donald Trump comes up.  I just did that.  How would that happen?"

A Path Of Darkness

Your Honor, this may seem hard to believe, but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life.  The irony is today is the day I am getting my freedom back as you sit at the bench and you contemplate my fate.

I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a famous real estate mogul whose business acumen I truly admired.  In fact, I now know that there is little to be admired.  I want to be clear.  I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today, and it was my own weakness, and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.  It is for these reasons I chose to participate in the illicit act of the President rather than to listen to my own inner voice which should have warned me that the campaign finance violations that I later pled guilty to were insidious.

-- Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, in a courthouse statement just prior to being sentenced to 3 years in federal prison, 12 December 2018

Thrives On Confusion

This ought to be a time when democracy leaps forward, an informed citizenry being essential to self-government.  Instead, it's in retreat.  Three decades after the Cold War defeat of a blunt and crude autocracy, a more clever brand takes nourishment from the murk that surrounds us.  The old-school despot embraced censorship.  The modern despot, finding that more difficult, foments mistrust of credible fact, thrives on the confusion loosed by social media and fashions the illusion of legitimacy from supplicants.

-- Karl Vick in Time Magazine, Person of the Year 2018, The Guardians and the War on Truth, 11 December 2018

No Matter What Way It Be

If a man strictly observe the rules of his way, and keep a rein on himself, then no matter what way it be, he will be a scholar of renown and be a teacher of multitudes.

-- Yoshida Kenko (1283? - 1350?), Japanese author and Buddhist monk, born Urabe Kaneyoshi, The Tzuredzure Gusa (Essays in Idleness) of Yoshida no Kaneyoshi as translated by George Sansom (1911)

Water

Snow is water, and ice is water, and water is water; these three are one.

-- Joseph Dare (1831 - 1880), Australian Wesleyan Church leader, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, p. 285 (1895)

He Said Xi Said

Unfortunately until we get new news the market continues to be a cauldron of concerns causing caution with investors.  With the combination of he said Xi said on China trade, a fear of an economic slowdown in 2019, and the slow trickle of Mueller investigation reports coming out, it is not at all surprising to see a buyer's strike in the after-hours market.

-- Art Hogan, Chief Market Strategist at investment bank B. Riley FBR, on negative signs in the overnight futures market, CNBC, 6 December 2018; the market fell 784 points during the day before rebounding for a loss of just 79

Comfortable

Throughout history, people have never before expected to be as comfortable as people do today.

-- Jens Risom (1916 - 2016), Danish American furniture designer, Block Island Times, Meet Jens Risom by Jane Vercelli, Spring 2010, House and Garden Edition, New Shoreham, Rhode Island USA

RIP Paul Sherwen

His legacy is that he made it entertaining.  It wasn't just sport and results.  He brought the race and the racers alive for the viewers.

-- Professional cycling announcer Phil Liggett, on the late Paul Sherwen (7 June 1956 - 2 December 2018), who completed his 40th Tour de France this summer (7 cycling, 33 announcing), Velonews, 3 December 2018

These Triggers

These triggers could be things like a visa restriction, a pandemic, a trade war -- something like that that was outside of our control.

Hedging the risk that we face gives us more confidence to be able to continue proactively investing in the very strong relationships that we have in China.  We chose the $60 million figure because that roughly is our exposure across the two colleges.  If demand had actually completely disappeared, we'd be "made whole" for that year.

-- Jeff Brown, dean of the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois, describing insurance that would be triggered in the event of a 20% drop in revenue from Chinese students at the Business and Engineering colleges in a single year as a result of a "specific set of identifiable events."  Tuition revenue from Chinese students makes up about a fifth of the business college's revenue. Times Higher Education, 29 November 2018

A Book With Many Pages

I do not mistrust the future; I do not fear what is ahead.  For our problems are large, but our heart is larger.  Our challenges are great, but our will is greater.  And if our flaws are endless, God's love is truly boundless.

Some see leadership as high drama, and the sound of trumpets calling, and sometimes it is that.  But I see history as a book with many pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning.  The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds.  And so today a chapter begins, a small and stately story of unity, diversity, and generosity -- shared, and written, together.

-- George Herbert Walker Bush (12 June 1924 - 30 November 2018), American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States (1989–93), and the 43rd Vice President of the United States (1981–89), Inaugural Address, 20 January 1989

Newton Was The One

I'm not smart.  I try to observe.  Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked why.

-- Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870 - 1965), American financier, stock market speculator, statesman, and presidential advisor, New York Post (24 June 1965)

Times That Were

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.

-- Horace Greeley (1811 - 1872), American editor of a leading newspaper, New York Tribune, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer and a politician, as quoted in The American Conflict, A History of the Great Rebellion (1864)

InSight

This was an amazing, amazing day.  To be in the room when the data stops and to know how quiet it gets ... and then once the data comes back, the elation. ... Every milestone is something that happened 8 minutes ago.  It's already history.

-- NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on the agency's InSight Mars explorer, his first landing as head of the agency, at a news conference; because it takes more than eight minutes for light signals to travel 100 million miles to Earth, scientists have no control over the 7-minutes between entering the atmosphere and landing; Washington Post, 26 November 2018