Double Double Toil And Trouble

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

-- William Shakespeare, Song of the Witches: "Double, double toil and trouble", Macbeth: IV.i 10-19; 35-38, The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983)

A Lantern On The Stern

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!  But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834), English poet, critic and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets, Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge 1821-1834 by Henry N. Coleridge (1835), 18 December 1831

Deep Sadness

Dear Friends and Community Partners of the Art Theater,

It is with deep sadness that the Art Film Foundation announces it has stopped showing films and that it will cease operations at the Art Theater on October 31, 2019.

We thank you for your donations, your volunteer hours, your memberships, and your attendance. While the Art Film Foundation and the Art Theater have come to an end, we truly believe that this incredible community of cinema-lovers in the local area will carry on.

With gratitude,
The Art Film Foundation

-- Farewell email from the Art Film Foundation, announcing the closing of The Art Theater in downtown Champaign, 25 October 2019

Intent

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

-- Stephen R. Covey (1932 - 2012), American author, The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, p. 239 (1989)

Reality Check

One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks ... who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.

-- Glen David Brin (1950 -), American science fiction author, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, former NASA consultant and physics professor, Earth Part VI (p. 311) (1990)

Functional Anonymity

Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion.  The approved reference now is to the market system.  This shift minimizes -- indeed, deletes -- the role of wealth in the economic and social system.  And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx.  Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces.  It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power.  They have now a functional anonymity.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006), Canadian-American economist and author, "Free Market Fraud", The Progressive (January 1999)

Basic Equipment

Thing is: the internet's made of IP addresses, opinions, and assholes.  It's what's there.  That's the basic equipment.

-- Merlin Dean Mann III (26 November 1966 -), author, speaker, and productivity consultant, "kung fu grippe" blog post, ~2010

Never Friendless Ever

Thorns may hurt you, men desert you, sunlight turn to fog;
but you're never friendless ever, if you have a dog.

-- Douglas Malloch (5 May 1877 - 2 July 1938), American poet, short-story writer and Associate Editor of American Lumberman, a trade paper in Chicago

Angie

For my 50th birthday (10 years ago), my kids got me an Australian Shepherd by the name of Angie (short for Evangeline). She was about 9 months old when I got her from a rescue place in St Louis.

A little under 3 hours ago, I had to let her go.

She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure (and pulmonary hypertension) in January, but the meds (lots of meds) were keeping it in check. Today things suddenly went south.

Her super power was that she didn't need a leash on walks. She had no interest in squirrels or rabbits, and only passing interest in other dogs while out walking.

There were a lot of walks.

She was the calmest, most laid-back Australian Shepherd I've encountered.

I'd like to go on one more walk, please.

RIP Elijah Cummings

My mission is one that comes out of a vision that was created long, long ago.  It is a mission and a vision to empower people. ... to make people realize that the power is within them, that they too can do the things that they want to do.

There's a poem that Parren Mitchell said many many years ago that I say sometimes 20 times a day, and it's a very simple poem, but it's one that I live by.

    I only have a minute.
    Sixty seconds in it.
    Forced upon me, I did not choose it.
    But I know that I must use it,
    give account if I abuse it,
    suffer if I lose it.
    Only a tiny little minute,
    but eternity is in it.

-- Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) (18 January 1951 - 17 October 2019), in his first speech from the floor of the House of Representatives, shortly after he was sworn into Congress by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on 25 April 1996, citing a poem written by Civil Rights pioneer Dr. Benjamin Mays, which he credited Mitchell as reciting many times.

No Reasonable Man

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?  This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked.  When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy -- for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically, after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas.

-- Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872 - 1970), British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic, 1950 Nobel laureate in Literature, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Lust

Lust brings with it a feeling of moral compromise.

RIP Robert Forster

You learn to take whatever jobs there are and make the best you can out of whatever you've got.  And anyone in any walk of life, if they can figure that out, has a lot better finish than those who cannot stand to take a picture that doesn't pay you as much or isn't as good as the last one.  Attitude is everything.

-- Robert Wallace Forster Jr. (born Robert Wallace Foster Jr.; 13 July 1941 - 11 October 2019), American actor known for his role as Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, in an interview with Todd Gilchrist for Indiewire, 4 October 2011

We Will Resist

We will resist.  We have been at war for seven years, so we can continue the war for seven more years.

-- Mazlum Kobani, commander of the Kurdish-led militia, in response to President Trump's abrupt withdrawal of US forces from Syria, in an interview with The New York Times, 9 October 2019

Same Bag

When people put drummers like John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell and Keith Moon in the same bag as me, it's really insulting.  I have a gift, and none of them is even on the same street as me.  The fact that I can still play is a miracle, isn't it?

-- Peter Edward "Ginger" Baker (19 August 1939 - 6 October 2019), English drummer and co-founder of the rock band Cream, Wall Street Journal, "Ginger Baker's Beef" by Marc Myers, 7 October 2013

Complexity

Fools ignore complexity.  Pragmatists suffer it.  Some can avoid it.  Geniuses remove it.

-- Alan Perlis (1922 - 1990), American comlputer scientists, first recipient of the ACM Turing Award, "Epigrams on Programming" (1982) (h/t Sukay)

Rewrite Their Teens

You couldn't get hold of the things you'd done and turn them right again.  Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing.  Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

-- Stephen Edwin King (21 September 1947 -), American author, screenwriter. 2003 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Book Awards, The Stand (1978)

Making It Come True

There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event.  But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.

-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 - 1936), prolific British writer, The Flying Inn (1914)

A Taste

It's a taste -- I'm telling these young guys -- it's a taste of what you'll chase for your whole career.  Once you taste that champagne in your beard or feel that burn of cold beer going down your back, there's nothing like it.  The top of your head going numb.  You can't replicate that in any other situation.

-- St Louis pitcher Adam Wainwright, after the Cardinals clinched the NL Central Division championship on the last day of the season, mlb.com, 29 September 2019

Romaine

If this was romaine lettuce our shelves would be empty.

-- Illinois mother Ruby Johnson, whose 18-year-old daughter was hospitalized after vaping, speaking at a congressional hearing on the dangers of e-cigarettes, 24 September 2019

A Lot Of Problems

The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, with largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place and largely the fact that we don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating the corruption already in the Ukraine, and Ukraine has got a lot of problems.

-- President Donald Trump, explaining the nature of a 25 July 2019 phone call with newly-elected Ukrainian President Zelensky that is the apparent subject of a whistle-blower complaint, speaking to reporters at the White House, 22 September 2019

We'll Be Watching You

This is all wrong.  I shouldn't be up here.  I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean.

You all come to us young people for hope.  How dare you?  You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I'm one of the lucky ones.  People are suffering.  People are dying.  Entire ecosystems are collapsing.

You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency.  But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that.  Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil.  And that I refuse to believe.

You are failing us, but young people are starting to understand your betrayal.  The eyes of all future generations are upon you.  And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

-- Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, speaking at the Climate Action Summit at the UN in New York, 23 September 2019

The Older I Get

The older I get, the more dead people I know.

For An Hour

... Any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to collapse for an hour, for a day, or however long.  That's when you find out the extent to which you are reliant on technology and don't even know it.  That's when you see that it's so interdependent, that if you take one thing away, the whole thing falls down and leaves you with nothing.

-- James Burke (1936 -), British science historian, author, and television producer best known for his documentary television series focusing on the history of science and technology leavened with a sense of humor, Connections "The Trigger Effect" (1979)

Memorable Life Moment

Finishing a Grand Tour is a memorable life moment for any rider, surviving a gruelling 21-day stage race is a big win even if you haven't crossed the finish line first at any point.

But Burgos-BH's Jesús Ezquerra made it an extra special day on the processional stage 21 into Madrid when he proposed to his girlfriend mid-race.

Race footage shows Ezquerra riding up to his team car, which he has organised for his girlfriend to travel in for the final stage, with the 28-year-old also informing the tv cameras of his intentions so they can be there to capture the moment.

Taking out a ring, he pops the questions and his girlfriend says yes.

-- From CyclingWeekly.com, "Vuelta a España rider proposes to girlfriend during final stage 21", 15 September 2019

Shallowness

We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk.  The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.

-- Robert Maynard Pirsig (1928 - 2017), American philosopher and novelist, most famous for his novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which he proposed what has become known as his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Ch. 1 (1974)

The Moon, Full-Orbed

The moon, full-orbed, forsakes her watery cave,
And lifts her lovely head above the wave;
The snowy splendours of her modest ray
Stream o'er the glistening waves, and quivering play;
Around her, glittering on the heaven's arched brow,
Unnumbered stars, enclosed in azure, glow,
Thick as the dew-drops of the April dawn,
Or May-flowers crowding o'er the daisy lawn;
The canvas whitens in the silvery beam,
And with a mild pale-red the pendants gleam;
The masts' tall shadows tremble o'er the deep;
The peaceful winds a holy silence keep.

-- William Julius Mickle (1734 - 1788), Scottish poet, The Lusiad (1776), Book I, line 417

Turning The Page

So I plan on spending tonight talking with you about my plans to address the problems that keep you up at night. But first, I have a few words for Donald Trump, who we all know is watching. ...

[H]ere's what you don't get: What you don't get you is that the American people are so much better than this.  And we know that the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us, regardless of our race, where we live, or the party with which we're registered to vote.  And I plan on focusing on our common issues, our common hopes and desires, and in that way, unifying our country, winning this election, and turning the page for America.

-- Senator Kamala Harris [D-CA], in her introductory remarks at the Democratic debate, 12 September 2019

A Lot Of Work

We started making our way down to the Trade Center.  I saw the building burning.  I looked over to my colleague Mike Garcia and I go, "I guess we’re going to get a lot of work in today."

-- Detective David Brink, New York City Emergency Service Squad 3, early in the morning of 11 September 2001, as quoted by Garrett M. Graff in "The Only Plane In The Sky"

To Get Free

We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get free from their authority.

-- David Herbert Lawrence (1885 - 1930), English novelist, poet, and playwright who published as D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Edward Garnett (1 February 1913)

I Have A Complaint

Ive had quite a few complaints lately from people who like it when I complain about things.  They say I havent complained about anything lately.  So tonight, for you complaint fans, I have a complaint.

-- Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (1919 - 2011), American radio and television writer, most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011, Years of Minutes (2003)

La Vuelta Helicopter Finds Grow Op

We received information thanks to the images that individuals posted on social media that had been taken from the helicopter of La Vuelta.  That has helped us to seize 40 marijuana plants.  No one has been arrested, but the investigation is still ongoing to find those responsible.

-- A police spokesperson speaking to ESPN, per an article at Deadspin.com, 4 September 2019


The Deadspin article continues:

Catalan cops seized over 40 cannabis plants from a rooftop near Barcelona yesterday thanks to information from an unexpected source: a TV helicopter broadcasting this month's Vuelta a España.  Stage 8 of the race finished in the town of Igualada on Saturday, and as the race made its way through the city streets at the end of the stage, helicopter footage showed a whole bunch of (presumably) dank weed on someone's rooftop.

Reactionary Temptation

We are living in an era of populism and demagoguery.  And yes, there's racism and xenophobia mixed into it.  But what we are also seeing, it seems to me, is the manifest return of a distinctive political and intellectual tendency with deep roots: reactionism.

Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism.  It's far more potent a brew.  Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age.  It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were.  It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt.  Though it took some time to reveal itself, today's Republican Party ... is not a conservative party.  It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power.

-- Andrew Michael Sullivan (1963 -), libertarian conservative author and political commentator, "The Reactionary Temptation" in New York magazine (30 April 2017)

Window Instead Of A Door

We rarely recognize how wonderful it is that a person can traverse an entire lifetime without making a single really serious mistake -- like putting a fork in one's eye or using a window instead of a door.

-- Marvin Lee Minsky (1927 - 2016), American scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of MIT's AI laboratory, author of several texts on AI and philosophy, and winner of the 1969 Turing Award, The Society of Mind (1987)

Those Who Achieve Great Things

It may seem a little crazy to walk directly into the line of fire... those who are willing, are those who achieve great things.

People say I’m crazy. I say thank you ;)

#fastestwomanonearth

-- Jessi Combs, Race Car Driver and "Mythbusters" Host, writing on Twitter as @TheJessiCombs, 6:07pm 24 August 2019; Combs died Tuesday 27 August while attempting to break her own 2013 land speed record of 398 mph

Principled Objection

We've been fighting against an imperial presidency for five and a half years.  Every time we go to the floor and push back against an overreaching president, we get accused of being partisan at best and racist at worst.  When we do it against a Republican president, maybe people will see that it was a principled objection in the first place.  So we actually welcome that opportunity.  It might actually be fun, being a strict-constitutionalist congressman doing battle with a non-strict-constitutionalist Republican president.

-- Representative Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), in June 2016, after Trump had captured the nomination, as quoted by Jonathan Chait in the New York Intelligencer, 24 August 2019; Mulvaney is now President Trump's Acting Chief of Staff

Our Bigger Enemy

As usual, the Fed did NOTHING!  It is incredible that they can "speak" without knowing or asking what I am doing, which will be announced shortly.  We have a very strong dollar and a very weak Fed.  I will work "brilliantly" with both, and the U.S. will do great ...  My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, [Trump-appointed Federal Reserve Chairman] Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?

-- President Donald Trump, in a series of tweets that triggered an immediate drop of 375 points in the Dow Jones, which closed lower by over 600 points for the day, 9:57am 23 August 2019

Bewilderment

We are living in a time of trouble and bewilderment, in a time when none of us can foresee or foretell the future.  But surely it is in times like these, when so much that we cherish is threatened or in jeopardy, that we are impelled all the more to strengthen our inner resources, to turn to the things that have no news value because they will be the same to-morrow that they were to-day and yesterday -- the things that last, the things that the wisest, the most farseeing of our race and kind have been inspired to utter in forms that can inspire ourselves in turn.

-- Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (1869 - 1943) English poet, lecture on opening a new library at Sutton High School (24 September 1938) during the Munich crisis, as quoted in "Books As Source Of Inner Strength," The Times (26 September 1938), p. 19

Undecided

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

-- Laurence Johnston Peter (1919 - 1990), Canadian educator and management theorist, best known for having formulated the Peter Principle, Peter's Almanac (1982) entry for September 24

Heresy

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.

-- Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH (1904 - 1991), prolific English novelist, playwright, short story writer, travel writer, and critic whose works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, "Freedom of Thought," speech accepting the Jerusalem Prize (6 April 1981)

RIP Peter Fonda

Part of my lifestyle you should all remember is having fun.  Being funny is a big part of it.  After all, if one is in tune, funny is the tune to play.  Giving laughter is more fun than giving advice.  Giving laughter while giving advice is the jackpot.

-- Peter Henry Fonda (23 February 1940 - 16 August 2019), American actor, director, and screenwriter; son of Henry Fonda, younger brother of Jane Fonda, and father of Bridget Fonda, autobiographical note on his official website; also quoted in "Peter Fonda, star of Easy Rider, dies aged 79" in BBC News (17 August 2019)

Two Feet

They certainly are -- give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.

-- Ken Cuccinelli, acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, when asked, "Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus' words etched on the Statue of Liberty -- give me your tired, your poor -- are also part of the American ethos?" by Rachel Martin on NPR's Morning Edition, 13 August 2019

Sacred

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet, "Self-Reliance," Essays: First Series (1883), p. 52

The Way Things Are

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.

-- Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1898 - 1956), commonly known as Bertolt Brecht, influential German Marxist dramatist, stage director, and poet of the 20th century, Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913–1956

Mud Is Mud

Mud is mud.  But, obviously, mud isn't mud.  We've had chemists look at it.  We've had engineers look at it.  We've had scientists study it.  When you hand Pitcher A the ball, he says, "I love it."  You hand Pitcher B the ball, he says, "Too tacky."  When you hand Pitcher C the ball, he says, "Not tacky enough."  How do you win?

-- Rawlings' chief marketing officer, Mike Thompson, on attempts to develop a substance to replace natural mud for rubbing up baseballs before use, Sports Illustrated, 29 July 2019

From Sports Illustrated:

Mud is a family business; it has been for more than half a century. For decades, baseball's official rule book has required that every ball be rubbed before being used in a game.  [Jim] Bintliff's mud is the only substance allowed.  Originally marketed as "magic," it's just a little thicker than chocolate pudding -- a tiny dab is enough to remove the factory gloss from a new ball without mucking up the seams or getting the cover too filthy.  Equipment managers rub it on before every game, allowing pitchers to get a dependable grip.  The mud is found only along a short stretch of that tributary of the Delaware, with the precise location kept secret from everyone, including MLB.

In 2019, a can goes for $100 -- in keeping with inflation, plus a little extra -- and every team orders four.

Real Monsters

[T]hose who choose not to empathise enable real monsters.  For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

-- Joanne "Jo" Rowling (31 July 1965 -), British novelist, most famous for writing the Harry Potter series as J. K. Rowling, a pen name devised using her grandmother's name, "Kathleen" as a middle name; she has also written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.  Commencement address at Harvard University, 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination' (5 June 2008)

Water Bears In Space

We chose them because they are special.  They are the toughest form of life we know of.  They can survive practically any planetary cataclysm.  They can survive in the vacuum of space, they can survive radiation.

-- Nova Spivack, co-founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, referring to tardigrades, aka "water bears", which were aboard an Israeli spacecraft and may have survived their crash onto the moon's surface in April 2019, via CNN, 7 August 2019

RIP Toni Morrison

It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction.  It keeps you from doing your work.  It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being.  Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do.  Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is.  Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up.  Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up.  None of that is necessary.  There will always be one more thing.

-- Toni Morrison (18 February 1931 - 5 August 2019), American writer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, "A Humanist View", an address at the Portland State University Black Studies Center Public Dialogue on the American Dream Pt. 2 (30 May 1975)

What's Hard

Cloudflare's mission is to help build a better Internet. At some level firing 8chan as a customer is easy. They are uniquely lawless and that lawlessness has contributed to multiple horrific tragedies. Enough is enough.

What's hard is defining the policy that we can enforce transparently and consistently going forward. We, and other technology companies like us that enable the great parts of the Internet, have an obligation to help propose solutions to deal with the parts we're not proud of. That's our obligation and we're committed to it.

Unfortunately the action we take today won't fix hate online. It will almost certainly not even remove 8chan from the Internet. But it is the right thing to do. Hate online is a real issue.

Our whole Cloudflare team's thoughts are with the families grieving in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio this evening.

-- Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in a blog post explaining Cloudflare's taking message board 8chan off the Internet in response to that site's popularity among domestic terrorists, including the shit-bag who on Saturday posted an anti-immigrant screed to 8chan, then murdered 22 in El Paso, 5 August 2019

Clorox

So the first thing that I'm going to do when I'm president is I'm going to Clorox the Oval Office.

-- Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) at the second night of the second Democratic Presidential Debate, 31 July 2019