The Torch Of Truth

It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard.

-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799), German scientist, satirist, and philosopher, Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

Happy Anniversary, Mr & Mrs Carter

The family is keeping a low profile around the anniversary this year.  President Carter and Mrs. Carter will celebrate their 77th wedding anniversary privately at their home in Plains tomorrow along with family members.

-- Matthew De Galan, spokesman for the Carter Center, referring to the 77th wedding anniversary of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who are celebrating the 77th anniversary of their 7/7/1946 wedding

Association

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

-- Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924), Bohemian-Jewish novelist, The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918), Aphorism #77

Everyday Life

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness.  You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.

-- Erma 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, as quoted in 50 Ways to Stand Up for America : Put the Spirit of July 4th Into Everyday Life (2002) by W. B. Freeman

Visiting Family

This long holiday weekend I had the pleasure of visiting my #3 daughter, Heather, and her family in Louisiana.  They're in a new house which I saw for the first time, and we visited a number of touristy things, including the Audubon Aquarium and Insectarium where my two granddaughters especially like the Butterfly Garden.  

For what it's worth, this concludes three consecutive weekends of travel by car, 2 weekends ago to Indiana, last weekend to Nebraska, and this weekend to Louisiana.  It's been fun, but I'm looking forward to not driving out of state for a while.

A Dollar In The Hands

The unattractive lesson of the majority opinion is this: What's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours.  The lesson of the history of public accommodations laws is altogether different.  It is that in a free and democratic society, there can be no social castes.  And for that to be true, it must be true in the public market.  For the "promise of freedom" is an empty one if the Government is "powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of [one person] will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a[nother]." Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 443 (1968).  Because the Court today retreats from that promise, I dissent.

-- Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, in which the majority found a free speech right for a business to deny service, 30 June 2023

Affirmative Action

Of course, students on my campus and countless others across the country were -- and continue to be -- granted special consideration for admissions.  Some have parents who graduated from the same school.  Others have families who can afford coaches to help them run faster or hit a ball harder.  Others go to high schools with lavish resources for tutors and extensive standardized test prep that help them score higher on college entrance exams.  We don't usually question if those students belong.  So often, we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level.

And while I know the strength and grit that lies inside kids who have always had to sweat a little more to climb the same ladders, I hope and I pray that the rest of us are willing to sweat a little, too.  Today is a reminder that we've got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods.

-- Statement by former First Lady Michelle Obama in response to the Supreme Court decision against affirmative action in college admissions, 29 June 2023

Working And Playing

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation.  He hardly knows which is which.  He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing.  To himself he always seems to be doing both.  Enough for him that he does it well.

-- Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, Education through Recreation (1932)

Canadian Wildfires

And he opened the pit of the abyss, and smoke ascended out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun was darkened, also the air, by the smoke of the pit.

-- Book of Revelation Chapter 9, Verse 2; To make this apropos for today, simply substitute "Canadian wildfires" for "pit of the abyss"

Structure The Flow

Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.

-- Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (1882 - 1971), Russian-born composer, Quoted by Géza Szamosi, The Twin Dimensions: Inventing Time and Space (New York, 1986), p. 232

Birthday Gathering

Whatever with the past has gone
the best is always yet to come.

-- Lucy Larcom (1824 - 1893), American poet, "Poems" (1869) p.179

[Tonight I wish my Aunt Margaret a happy 90th birthday!  I'm with my 3 brothers in Lincoln, Nebraska, along with our cousins, to help her celebrate the occasion.]

Titan

We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost. 

These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans.  Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time.  We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew. 

-- Statement from OceanGate regarding the loss of their Titan submersible, 22 June 2023

Nothing Begins

Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.

-- Lillian Florence Hellman (1905 - 1984), American playwright, An Unfinished Woman (1969)

The First Price

Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things.  It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.

-- Adam Smith (1723 - 1790), Scottish-born economist and philosopher, widely considered the "father of modern economics", The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter V, p. 38

Superfoot

This weekend I had the pleasure of joining Bill (Superfoot) Wallace (standing, far right, in the photo; I'm kneeling, in white, near the middle) for a sparring seminar.  Per Wikipedia, from 1974 to 1980 he was the Professional Karate Association (PKA) World Full-Contact Champion, and the Middleweight Kickboxing Champion, retiring with a 23-0-0 record.

The 3-hour seminar was held at The Way Martial Arts in the Indianapolis area on Saturday June 17th.  It consisted of punching and (mostly) kicking, with an emphasis on offensive footwork.

Bill Wallace is currently 77 years old and impressively fit.  He does the splits, kicks above head height, and leads 3-hour sparring seminars around the country.  If I get a chance to sign up for another (nearby) seminar, I will.  Good fun.

RIP Daniel Ellsberg

The American public was lied to [about the Vietnam War] month by month by each of these five administrations [Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon].  It's a tribute to the American public that their leaders perceived that they had to be lied to.  It's no tribute to us that it was so easy to fool the public.

-- Daniel Ellsberg (7 April 1931 - 16 June 2023), United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, released in 1971 the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers, Hearts and Minds (1974), a documentary of the Vietnam War [1:17:35 onward]

Wandering Attention

The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgement, character, and will.

-- William James (1842 - 1910), pioneering American psychologist and philosopher, Principles of Psychology (1890) Chapter XI "Attention" (h/t Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, on the Hidden Brain podcast, episode "Seeking Serenity: Part 1")

As He Wills It

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.

-- Anne Sullivan, The Story of My Life: with her Letters by Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, pg 313, letter of 28 March 1887 

RIP Cormac McCarthy

People were always getting ready for tomorrow.  I didn’t believe in that.  Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them.  It didn't even know they were there.

-- Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.; 20 July 1933 - 13 June 2023), American novelist, playwright, short-story writer, and screenwriter, The Road (2006)

United States Of America v. Donald J. Trump

United States District Court
Southern District Of Florida
Case No. 23-80101-CR-CANNON/REINHART

United States Of America v. Donald J. Trump

Counts 1-31 Willful Retention of National Defense Information 
(18 U.S.C. 793(e))

Count 32 Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice
(18 U.S.C. 1512(k))

Count 33 Withholding a Document or Record

(18 U.S.C. 1512(b)(2)(A),2)

Count 34 Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record

(18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(1),2)

Count 35 Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation

(18 U.S.C. 1519,2)

Count 36 Scheme to Conceal

(18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(1),2)

Count 37 False Statements and Representations

(18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(2),2)

-- Federal charges (h/t politico.com) brought against former president Donald Trump accusing him of mishandling and concealing secret documents after leaving office, 8 June 2023

Friday

It's fine work.  Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes.  That's our official slogan.

-- Guy Montag to Clarisse McClellan in "The Hearth and the Salamander" Pt. 1 of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), p. 6

Thursday

This must be Thursday.  I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

-- Arthur Dent in Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Wednesday

Wednesday can only dream of becoming Thursday.

-- Anthony T. Hincks

Tuesday

Nothing matters but the weekend

From a Tuesday point of view

--  John Picard and David Broadbent of The Kings, "Switchin' to Glide" from The Kings Are Here (1980)

Monday

In all possible universes, Monday was the same.

-- Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982), American writer, whose published works mainly belong to the genre of science fiction, Eye in the Sky (1957), ch. 9 p. 119

Always, Every Moment

The only joy in the world is to begin.  It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment.  When this sensation is lacking -- as when one is in prison, or ill, or stupid, or when living has become a habit -- one might as well be dead.

-- Cesare Pavese (1908 - 1950), Italian author and poet, This Business of Living, (23 November 1937)

Pull Over

If life is a journey, time should pull over at a rest stop sometimes -- we should all be given a chance to get off and stretch our legs, collect our thoughts and reorganize.

-- Rob Payne (1973 -), Canadian novelist, Working Class Zero (2003) Chapter 24, p. 191

Here We Stand

I and this mystery here we stand. 

-- Walt Whitman (31 May 1819 - 16 March 1892), American journalist and poet, Song of Myself (1855; 1881), Section 3

To Destroy

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.

-- Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908 - 1964), British author and journalist, paraphrasing Reverend William Anderson Scott; Fleming created the character of James Bond and also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang; From Russia with Love (1957), Ch. 11 : The Soft Life

Contemplating A Memorial

Five score years ago the ground on which we here stand shuddered under the clash of arms and was consecrated for all time by the blood of American manhood.  Abraham Lincoln, in dedicating this great battlefield, has expressed, in words too eloquent for paraphrase or summary, why this sacrifice was necessary.  Today, we meet not to add to his words nor to amend his sentiment but to recapture the feeling of awe that comes when contemplating a memorial to so many who placed their lives at hazard for right, as God gave them to see right. 

-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy (29 May 1917 - 22 November 1963), 35th president of the United States, "Message from the President on the Occasion of Field Mass at Gettysburg, delivered by John S. Gleason, Jr." (29 June 1963)

Wake Up And Find

It is my firm belief that all our lives we are preparing to be somebody or something, even if we don't do it consciously.  And the time comes one morning when you wake up and find that you have become irrevocably what you were preparing all this time to be.

-- Katherine Anne Porter (1890 - 1980), American journalist, essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Writers at Work interview (1963)

Retire To

Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.

-- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878 - 1969), American Baptist and Presbyterian minister, as quoted in Wisdom for Our Time (1961) by James Nelson

RIP Tina Turner

People think my life has been tough but I think it's been a wonderful journey. The older you get, the more you realise it's not what happens, it's how you deal with it.

-- Anna Mae Bullock (26 November 1939 - 24 May 2023), singer, dancer, actress, and author, known by her stage name Tina Turner, quoted by Michelle Davies, "TINA TURNER", Marie Claire South Africa (May 2018), p. 125

Forgetting-Machines

We're forgetting-machines.  Men are things that think a little but chiefly forget.  That's what we are.

-- Henri Barbusse (1873 - 1935), French novelist, journalist, and member of the French Communist Party, Under Fire (1916) Ch. 24 "The Dawn"

Their Consciences

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

-- John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873), English political philosopher and economist who was an advocate of utilitarianism, On Liberty (1859)

Bad Salad

The Bad Salad of William Archibald Spooner

Why do I always watch my birds?
I know that statement sounds absurd
but today I reached an all-lime toe
when I received a blushing crow.

It's wetting gorse -- and here's the crunch:
my conversation packs a lunch.
I'm not sure when all this began
but I think I need a plaster man

to help me when my stouth gets muck.
I should sit, perhaps, and bead a rook,
fight a liar, or flick some powers.
Think I'll go and shake a tower.

-- Brian Bilston, posting on Twitter as @brian_bilson, 2 December 2022

First They Came

First they came for the journalists.  We don't know what happened after that.

-- Sign held by a protestor, perhaps in the Philippines, ca. 2017

Canola Fields

And there's not much moving on the romance radar
Not that I'm craving it all that much
But I still need to feel every once in a while
The warmth of a smile and a touch

Cashing in on a thirty-year crush
You can't be young and do that

-- James McMurtry (1962 -), American Texas rock and Texas country singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Canola Fields (2021)

I Am A Man

That hand is not the color of yours, but if I prick it, the blood will flow, and I shall feel pain.  The blood is of the same color as yours.  God made me, and I am a man.

-- Standing Bear, Ponca chief and Native American civil rights leader, successfully arguing in United States ex rel. Standing Bear v. Crook that Native Americans are "persons within the meaning of the law" and have the right of habeus corpus (April 1879)

Cavalier Attitude Towards Accuracy

Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report.  As noted, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith committed a criminal offense by fabricating language in an email that was material to the FBI obtaining a FISA surveillance order.  In other instances, FBI personnel working on that same FISA application displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness.  FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging -- both then and in hindsight -- that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power, or knowingly helping another person in such activities.  And certain personnel disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination.

-- Special counsel John Durham, in the conclusion to his "Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns" (12 May 2023)

Stop And Think

It pays to stop and think whenever you've got time to stop and think.

-- Eric Frank Russell (1905 - 1978), British author best known for his science fiction novels and short stories, Major Ingredients (2000), Hobbyist (p. 202)

My Nature

It's my nature to go around in high spirits most of the time and then to collapse.

-- Margaret Sullavan (1909 - 1960), American stage and film actress, Haywire (1977) by Brooke Hayward, Jonathan Cape Ltd., p. 215

Full Of Strangers

Great cities are not like towns, only larger.  They are not like suburbs, only denser.  They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of them is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.

-- Jane Jacobs (1916 - 2006), American-born Canadian urbanist, writer, and activist, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) p. 30

Questioned

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.  But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

-- Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, passed by Congress 13 June 1866, ratified 9 July 1868

Define Creativity

I define creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value.

-- Sir Kenneth Robinson (1950 - 2020), British author, speaker, and international advisor on education in the arts to governments and non-profits, speaking at a TED Conference (2006)

When I'm Sixty-Four

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four?

-- John Lennon & Paul McCartney, "When I'm Sixty-Four" from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967)

[I have these lyrics looping through my head this week, as today I turned 64!  Sir Paul, who sang these lyrics back in the day, turned 64 in 2006.]

Shouldn't Be A Thing

No one should assume that the Fed can really protect the economy and the financial system and our reputation globally from the damage that [a U.S. default] might inflict.  We shouldn't even be talking about a world in which the U.S. doesn't pay its bills.  It just shouldn't be a thing.

-- Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, in a press statement announcing an interest rate hike of 0.25%, 3 May 2023

Market Signals

A state that does not plan does not, by default turn this function over to the market.  Even if the market is perfectly efficient, it still suffers from two ineradicable defects.  The first relates to the distribution of income and power: the market conveys signals only in relation to the purchasing power of the individuals transmitting them.  The poor do not matter to the market.  The second relates to representation: people not yet born do not turn up at the stores.  They send no market signals at all.

-- James K. Galbraith (1952 -), American economist who writes frequently for the popular press on economic topics, The Predatory State (2008) p. 116

Shape The Clay

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be.  Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate.  Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.  The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.

-- Louis Dearborn L'Amour (1908 - 1988), American novelist and short story writer whose works consisted primarily of Western novels, The Walking Drum (1984), Chapter 46

I Do Not Yet Know

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

-- Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 - 1855), German mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, The Mind and the Eye (1954) by A. Arber