RIP Prince Philip

Constitutionally, I don't exist.

-- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, (10 June 1921 - 9 April 2021), husband from 20 November 1947 (73 years) of Queen Elizabeth II (coronation 2 June 1953).  He was the longest-serving, oldest-ever spouse of a reigning British monarch, and the oldest-ever male member of the British royal family, as quoted in "Royal wedding: Should the royals have real jobs?", BBC News (27 January 2011)

Imaginings

Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience.  Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

-- Philip Milton Roth (1933 - 2018), American novelist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for his novel American Pastoral, The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988), Opening letter to Nathan Zuckerman

Fathers Of Our Actions

This habit of forming opinions, and acting upon them without evidence, is one of the most immoral habits of the mind. ...  As our opinions are the fathers of our actions, to be indifferent about the evidence of our opinions is to be indifferent about the consequences of our actions.  But the consequences of our actions are the good and evil of our fellow-creatures.  The habit of the neglect of evidence, therefore, is the habit of disregarding the good and evil of our fellow-creatures.

-- James Mill (6 April 1773 - 23 June 1836), Scottish utilitarian philosopher.  He was the father of the political philosopher John Stuart Mill, The Westminster Review, vol. 6 (1826), p. 13

Outlier For Death

No harder measure of the coronavirus pandemic's toll exists: death from any cause rose 23% nationwide in 2020.

That meant 522,368 excess deaths from March through the end of 2020 compared with a projection from the prior 5 years, Steven Woolf, MD, MPH, of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond, and colleagues reported in JAMA.

It's well above the unofficial tally of COVID-19 deaths, which reached about 339,000 deaths by the end of 2020.  COVID directly accounted for about 72% of the excess mortality, Woolf's group found.

The rest might have been "either immediate or delayed mortality from undocumented COVID-19 infection, or non–COVID-19 deaths secondary to the pandemic, such as from delayed care or behavioral health crises," they suggested.

-- Crystal Phend, "Just How Much Was 2020 an Outlier for Deaths?", MedPage Today, 2 April 2021

Fair Use

We reach the conclusion that in this case, where Google reimplemented a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, Google's copying of the Sun Java API was a fair use of that material as a matter of law.  The Federal Circuit's contrary judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings in conformity with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

-- Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the 6-2 majority of the Supreme Court of the United States in Google LLC, Petitioner, v. Oracle America, Inc, ruling that software APIs are not protected by copyright, and specifically that Google's Android OS does not violate Oracle's Java copyright, 5 April 2021

Crucifixion?!

Stoning prophets and erecting churches to their memory afterwards has been the way of the world through the ages.  Today we worship Christ, but the Christ in the flesh we crucified.

-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 - 1948), commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, as quoted by Philip Yancey in Soul Survivor (16 February 2012), p. 179

Short Lent

Those have a short Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.

-- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, in The Way to Wealth: Advice, Hints, and Tips on Business, Money, and Finance (2011), p. 14

Decreased Substantially

I look at it this way.  The first time we have an excuse.  There were about a hundred thousand deaths that came from that original surge.  All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.

-- Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator under the Trump administration, in an interview with CNN, 27 March 2021

Crime Pays?

Obviously, crime pays, or there'd be no crime.

-- George Gordon Battle Liddy (30 November 1930 - 30 March 2021), chief operative for President Richard Nixon's White House Plumbers unit when they broke into the Watergate complex, which at the time was the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, in 1972, as quoted in "Does Crime Pay" in The Scandal Annual (1987) by the Paragon Project, p. 7

Every Blade Of Grass

I remember every blade of grass from my childhood.

-- Beverly Atlee Cleary (12 April 1916 - 25 March 2021), American writer of children's and young adult fiction, Columns magazine interview, September, 2008

Art Of The Possible

Die Politik ist die Lehre vom Möglichen (Politics is the art of the possible).

-- Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1815 - 1898), German aristocrat and statesman; he was Minister President of Prussia (1862-1890), and the first Chancellor of Germany (1871-1890), interview (11 August 1867) with Friedrich Meyer von Waldeck of the St. Petersburgische Zeitung

That's Heroism

I'm proud of what I did, but at the same time, I'm surprised by it.  My guess is that you have surprised yourself, too -- that there have been times when you didn't put much forethought into the moment but, looking back, you realize how boldly you acted.  It may have been the action of a moment or it could have been the strength and persistence of weathering a particularly difficult season in your life.  As you reflect on it now, you are probably surprised at what you were capable of doing.  The fallout of that time for you might not be as readily obvious as mine was, but the idea is the same: You did what you had to do and you made your world -- our world -- a little bit better.  That's courage.  That's heroism.  That's honor.  Thank you for your service.

-- William Kyle Carpenter (17 October 1989 -), medically retired US Marine who received the United States' highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, for his actions in Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2010.  Carpenter is the youngest living Medal of Honor recipient.  You Are Worth It: Building a Life Worth Fighting For (2019) p. 304

Substance, Quality, Or Relation

But suppose we take the noun "truth": here is a case where the disagreements between different theorists have largely turned on whether they interpreted this as a name of a substance, of a quality, or of a relation.

-- John Langshaw Austin (1911 - 1960), English philosopher of language and speech theorist, remembered primarily as the developer of the theory of speech acts, Philosophical Papers (1979) edited by James Opie Urmson and Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd edition, p. 73

In America, We Can't

In so many ways, our lives may soon start to return to normal after a long, difficult year filled with so much loss.  But in a normal life, we should be able to buy groceries without fear.  We should be able to go to school, or go out with our friends, or worship together without mentally planning our escape if someone shows up with a gun.  We should be able to live our lives without wondering if the next trip outside our home could be our last.

We should.  But in America, we can't.

A once-in-a-century pandemic cannot be the only thing that slows mass shootings in this country. ...  [T]his is a normal we can no longer afford.

-- Former president Barack Obama, in a statement about yesterday's mass shooting in Boulder, CO, 23 March 2021

Greatest Barrier

The greatest barrier to consciousness is the belief that one is already conscious.

-- Peter Dimianovich Ouspensky (1878 - 1947), Russian mystic philosopher, The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950)

Grim Reaping

• Total US deaths due to covid since 18 March 2020 : 547,510
• Number of minutes in a year : 525,600
• Deaths per minute over that 525,600 minutes : 1.04
• Average rate at which Americans died of covid : 57.5 sec

I have to say, I'm impressed by these numbers.  For me that death rate was unimaginable 13 months ago.  I knew that it got high during the peaks, but until the anniversary of the shutdown I didn't think to notice that total deaths exceeded the minutes in a year.

Future Self

Your future self is watching you right now through your memories.

-- Aubrey de Grey (1963 -), English author and biomedical gerontologist

Emotional Stress

I got my first Pfizer shot last week.  It's amazing how much emotional stress and baggage we carry around from this pandemic.  That shot is not only a vaccine, it's a cathartic.

-- Long-time friend and former bowling partner Patrick O'Halloran, replying to @RageMichelle as TheRealPatrick @TheRealPOH on Twitter, 11 March 2021

Functionally Illiterate

If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you. 

-- James Norman Mattis (1950 -), retired US Marine Corps general, and 26th US Secretary of Defense, Call Sign Chaos (2019)

Virtue Signalling

virtue signalling

noun: the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.

"It's noticeable how often virtue signaling consists of saying you hate things"

-- Definition of Virtue Signalling from Oxford Languages, via Google Search

Accountability Culture

Cancel culture is not a threat to free speech -- it is a manifestation of it.  Cancel culture is an evolving form of democratic discourse where individuals use their free speech rights to form masses.  These masses exert pressure on people and institutions.  A better term for it would be "accountability culture."

Americans have long used their rights to free expression to hold public officials, institutions and corporations accountable.  Groups, including conservatives, have organized boycotts.  They have called for people to resign.  They have protested.

[T]hose who decry the free speech dangers of cancel culture really just don't like how other people are using their free speech rights.

-- Jared Schroeder and Jessica Maddox, 'Cancel Culture' is just free speech holding others accountable, The Hill, 11 March 2021

Next, Please

It's been a year.

Impediment To Action

In a sense, people are our proper occupation.  Our job is to do them good and put up with them.  But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us -- like sun, wind, and animals.  Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions.  Because we can accommodate and adapt.  The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.  The impediment to action advances action.  What stands in the way becomes the way.

-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 - 180), Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher, Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V, 20  (Hays translation)

Protect These Values

[A]s our state legislators seek to turn back the clock through legislation that will restrict access to voting for many Georgians, I am disheartened, saddened, and angry.  Many of the proposed changes are reactions to allegations of fraud for which no evidence was produced -- allegations that were, in fact, refuted through various audits, recounts, and other measures.  The proposed changes appear to be rooted in partisan interests, not in the interests of all Georgia voters.

American democracy means every eligible person has the right to vote in an election that is fair, open, and secure.  It should be flexible enough to meet the electorate's changing needs.  As Georgians, we must protect these values.  We must not lose the progress we have made.  We must not promote confidence among one segment of the electorate by restricting the participation of others.  Our goal always should be to increase, not decrease, voter participation.

Statement by former President Carter on Efforts to Restrict Voting Access, 9 March 2021

Consequences And Rules Of Action

The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.  This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point.  It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

-- Albert Camus (1913 - 1960), French Pied-Noir author, absurdist philosopher, and 1957 Nobel laureate in Literature, review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in the newspaper Alger Républicain (20 October 1938), p. 5

Two Things

Two things have always been true about human beings.  One, the world is always getting better.  Two, the people living at that time think it's getting worse.

It's because you get older, your responsibilities are different.  Now I'm taking care of children instead of being a child.  It makes the world look scarier.  That happens to everyone.

-- Penn Fraser Jillette (5 March 1955 -), American magician, scientific skeptic, actor, musician, inventor, television presenter, and author, best known for his work with fellow magician Teller as half of the team Penn & Teller, "Honest Questions with Penn Jillette" (2 November 2007), CNN

Proud To Remember

You have many years to live -- do things you will be proud to remember when you're old.

-- John Kilian Houston Brunner (1934 - 1995), British author of science fiction novels and stories, in his Hugo Award winning novel Stand on Zanzibar (1968), continuity (27) "Manscape"

The Laborer Can Strike

I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to!  I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.

-- Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), 16th President of the United States, speech at Hartford, Connecticut (5 March 1860), Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 4, page 7, h/t Steve Inskeep @NPRinskeep

Make A Few Changes

But if I ran the zoo,
    Said young Gerald McGrew, 
I'd make a few changes.
    That's just what I'd do.

-- Theodor Seuss Geisel, writing as Dr. Seuss (2 March 1904 - 24 September 1991), "If I Ran The Zoo", stanza 2, lines 1-4 (1950)

Focused On Process

Perfectionism is not a quest for the best.  It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough -- that we should try again.  No.  We should not.  Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure.  Focused on product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren.

-- Julia Cameron (4 March 1948 -), American teacher, author, and artist, Inspirations : Meditations from The Artist's Way (2001)

It Follows

If we believe that moral leadership can improve a country, it follows that immoral leadership can debase it.

-- Michael Gerson, syndicated columnist and former aide to President George W. Bush, There's nothing conservative about CPAC, Washington Post, 25 February 2021

Obvious And Useful

But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.

-- Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), British author, linguist, and lexicographer, The Rambler (1750-1752), No. 175 (19 November 1751)

Ethics Is Disturbing

We hope for lives whose story leaves us looking admirable; we like our weaknesses to be hidden and deniable. ...  We want to enjoy our lives, and we want to enjoy them with a good conscience. ...  Ethics is disturbing.

-- Simon Blackburn (1944 -), British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularise philosophy, Being Good (2001)

More Americans

Each day, I receive a small card in my pocket that I carry with me in my schedule.  It shows the number of Americans who have been infected by or died from COVID-19.  Today, we mark a truly grim, heartbreaking milestone: 500,071 dead.  That's more Americans who have died in one year in this pandemic than in World War One, World War Two, and the Vietnam War combined.  That's more lives lost to this virus than any other nation on Earth. 

We often hear people described as "ordinary Americans."  There's no such thing; there's nothing ordinary about them.  The people we lost were extraordinary.  They spanned generations.  Born in America.  Immigrated to America.  But just like that, so many of them took their final breath alone in America.

So today, I ask all Americans to remember: Remember those we lost and those who are left behind.

This nation will smile again.  This nation will know sunny days again.  This nation will know joy again.  And as we do, we will remember each person we've lost, the lives they lived, the loved ones they left behind.  We will get through this, I promise you.  But my heart aches for you -- those of you who are going through it right now. 

-- President Biden, in remarks on the more than 500,000 American lives lost to COVID-19, 22 February 2021

Shade Of Retirement

Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome.

-- George Washington (22 February 1732 - 14 December 1799), American political leader, military general, statesman, and Founding Father who also served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797, Farewell Address (17 September 1796)

As Relentless

Chance is as relentless as necessity.

-- Simon Blackburn (1944 -), British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularise philosophy, Think, Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 85 (1999)

Touchdown

Touchdown confirmed.  Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars!

-- Swati Mohan, JPL engineer narrating the successful, autonomous landing of NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars using a sky crane, at a distance of 127,000,000 miles from mission control, 3:55PM EST, 18 February 2021

Herd Immunity

Today I did my bit to contribute to herd immunity.  I'm happy to report that I got my first dose of the covid vaccine today.  It was Moderna, administered by the department of public health in Piatt County, where I reside.  I qualified with Illinois' expanded criteria as a 61-year-old with a history of cancer.  They have what seems to be a very efficient operation, with 72 injections per hour, for 3.5 hours per day, for 3 days this week (just over 750).  We have a population of only 16,000, and this is one among many vaccine drives.  The inoculation itself was unremarkable.

This Optimism Is Countered

Capitalism is a mode of socio-economic organization in which a class of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial institutions provide the capital with which businesses produce goods and services and employ workers.  In return the capitalist extracts profits from the goods created.  Capitalism is frequently seen as the embodiment of the market economy, and hence may result in the optimum distribution of scarce resources, with a resulting improvement for all; this optimism is countered by pointing to the opportunity for exploitation inherent in the system.

-- Simon Blackburn (1944 -), British academic philosopher known for his work in quasi-realism and his efforts to popularise philosophy, editor Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Lemma "Capitalism" (1996)

What You Choose

You are what you choose to defend.

-- Actor Don Cheadle, in the PBS series African-American Lives (2008)

No Successful Appeal

Our popular Government has often been called an experiment.  Two points in it our people have already settled -- the successful establishing and the successful administering of it.  One still remains -- its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it.  It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections.  Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.

-- Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 - 15 April 1865), 16th President of the United States, Address to Congress (4 July 1861)

Frighteningly Confused

Notwithstanding that his beliefs were not rationally based; defendant was not acting out of criminal intent.  Defendant sought no personal nor pecuniary gain.  Rather defendant acted out of the delusional belief that he was a "patriot" protecting his country.  Defendant is former military who is sworn to protect his country.  He was responding to the entreaties of the then commander in chief, President Trump.  The President maintained that the election had been stolen and it was the duty of loyal citizens to "stop the steal."  Admittedly there was no rational basis for the claim, but it is apparent defendant was one of millions of Americans who were misled by the President's deception.  Defendant did not act out of criminal intent but out of conscience, albeit a frighteningly confused and distorted sense of conscience.  Hopefully, as a result of this experience he has learned not be so gullible and will not be so easily duped again.  

Press accounts of the underlying event are rampant with the universal claim by all protesters that they were acting at the behest of President Trump to save the country from a stolen election.  Many of those who heeded his call will be spending substantial portions if not the remainder of their lives in prison as a consequence.  Meanwhile Donald Trump resumes his life of luxury and privilege.

-- Defendant's Motion for Modification of Bond in the case of United States v Dominic Pezzola, 10 February 2021 (h/t Politico)

Rendered Himself Obnoxious

History furnishes one example only of a first Magistrate being formally brought to public Justice.  Every body cried out against this as unconstitutional.  What was the practice before this in cases where the chief Magistrate rendered himself obnoxious?  Why recourse was had to assassination in which he was not only deprived of his life but of the opportunity of vindicating his character.  It would be the best way therefore to provide in the Constitution for the regular punishment of the Executive when his misconduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused.

-- Benjamin Franklin, arguing in favor of an impeachment clause, Record of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, at 65, edited by Max Farrand (h/t John Dickerson)

Differently Right

Philosophical Aside 

In its OO [Object-Oriented] programming, Perl gives you a lot of freedom: the ability to do things more than one way (you can bless any data type to make an object), to inspect and modify classes you didn't write (adding functions to their packages), and to use these to write tangled pits of misery -- if that's really what you want to do.  

Less flexible programming languages are usually more restrictive.  Many are fanatically devoted to enforced privacy, compile-time type checking, complex function signatures, and a smorgasbord of other features.  Perl doesn't provide these things with objects because it doesn't provide them anywhere else, either.  Keep this in mind if you find Perl's object-oriented implementation weird.  You only think it's weird because you're used to another language's philosophy.  Perl's treatment of OO is perfectly sensible -- if you think in Perl.  For every problem that you can't solve by writing Perl as though it were Java or C++, there is a native Perl solution that works perfectly.  

Perl's objects are not wrong; they're differently right.

-- Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington in "Perl Cookbook", Chapter 13. "Classes, Objects, and Ties", O'Reilly (1998)

Dishonest Force

It strikes me that the mistake, the original sin for many in Washington, was in pretending that the Campaign Trump of 2016 was not the true Trump, when in reality they knew there was never going to be a governing Trump, never going to be a Presidential Trump.  What he said in all those rallies and tweets was his authentic self: foul-mouthed, bullying, self-obsessed, casually racist, and capable not only of breathtaking lies but of repeating them over and over until they became a strategy unto themselves. ...  The lies were the metastatic cancer of his Presidency. Many in his Republican base believed them; his party leadership succumbed to their dishonest force.

-- Susan B. Glasser, "Obituary for a Failed Presidency", The New Yorker, 20 January 2021

Attention

Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.  

-- Howard Rheingold (1947 -), American critic, writer, and teacher known for his specialties on the cultural, social, and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony, and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing), "The Virtual Community" (1993)

An Invitation

Dear President Trump,

Two days ago, you filed an Answer in which you denied many factual allegations set forth in the article of impeachment. You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue notwithstanding the clear and overwhelming evidence of your constitutional offense. In light of your disputing these factual allegations, I write to invite you to provide testimony under oath, either before or during the Senate impeachment trial, concerning your conduct on January 6, 2021. ... We would be pleased to arrange such testimony at a mutually convenient time and place.

[T]he Supreme Court held just last year that you were not immune from legal process while serving as President -- so there is no doubt that you can testify in these proceedings. Indeed, whereas a sitting President might raise concerns about distraction from their official duties, that concern is obviously inapplicable here. We therefore anticipate your availability to testify.

If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021.

-- Invitation from House impeachment managers for former President Trump to testify at his Senate trial, 4 February 2021

Perfect Alignment

It's remarkable how fast science can happen when everyone is focused on the same problem.  This devastating pandemic, with all its worldwide chaos and horror, has at the same time created a perfect alignment of technology, science, need, and opportunity.  The global impact of Covid-19 could change science forever.

-- Jane Metcalfe, co-founder and former president of Wired Ventures, creator and original publisher of the magazine Wired, Covid-19 Is Accelerating Human Transformation -- Let's Not Waste It, Wired (5 July 2020)

Student Pathway

We all have to be students, who are often wrong and always in doubt, while a professor is sometimes wrong and never in doubt.  Please join me on my student pathway.

-- Gerald Buckberg (1935 - 2018), Distinguished Professor of Surgery, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Vol. 124, No. 5, "Basic science review: The helix and the heart" (November 2002)

Youthful Folly

It is not I who seek the young fool;

The young fool seeks me.

-- I Ching, also known as the Book of Changes, a Chinese classical text believed to have been written by Fu Xi (c. 2800 BCE)