Such Character

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.

-- Jean de La Bruyère (1645 - 1696), French essayist and moralist, Les Caractères (1688) Du mérite personnel, Aphorism 21

Without Undue Haste

There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honours too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.

-- Jean de La Bruyère (1645 - 1696), French essayist and moralist, Les Caractères (1688) Des jugements, aphorism 108

Deep Springs Of Life

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

-- Samuel Ullman (1840 - 1924), American businessman, poet, and humanitarian, Youth (1918)

Friendship

Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Roman philosopher, politician, and political theorist, De Amicitia - On Friendship (44 B.C.)

A Fair Trial

I can guarantee everybody that there will be a fair process and a fair trial in this case.

-- Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, speaking to the court during the arraignment of Donald Trump, 3 August 2023

A Good Question

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to.  Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today?  But not my mother.  "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?"  That difference -- asking good questions -- made me become a scientist.

-- Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898 - 1988), American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance imaging, as quoted in "Great Minds Start With Questions" in Parents Magazine (September 1993)

This Time

The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.

Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway -- to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.

-- Introduction to the most-recent Federal indictment of Donald Trump, this time for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, 1 August 2023

Once In A Lifetime

Youth comes but once in a lifetime.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882), American poet and one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets, Hyperion (1839), Book II, Chapter X

It Worked

It worked!

-- Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), American physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, exclamation after the Trinity atomic bomb test (16 July 1945), according to his brother Frank Oppenheimer in the documentary The Day After Trinity

Loudest

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

-- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983), American writer on social and political philosophy, The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955) Section 70

A Fair Question

Who am I to talk?  That's a fair question, and one which deserves a better answer than I can give you.

-- Grace Allen (1895 [year uncertain] - 1964), American comedian, actress, singer, dancer; and the comedic partner and wife of George Burns, How to Become President (1940) Ch. 1 : Government jobs pay big money

Emmett Till And Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by section 320301 of title 54, United States Code, hereby proclaim, set apart, and reserve as the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument (monument), the objects identified above and all lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States within the boundaries described on the accompanying maps entitled "Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument Boundary," which are attached to and form a part of this proclamation, for the purpose of protecting those objects.   The reserved Federal lands and interests in lands within the monument's boundaries encompass approximately 5.7 acres, which is the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.

-- Proclamation on Establishment of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, enacted on what would have been Emmett Till's 82nd birthday, 25 July 2023

I'm Happy

Tadej Pogacar is the best rider in the world.  He can do everything: the classics, the one-week races, the Grand Tours.  Not me.  On the Tour de France, I'm happy to have been the best for the past two years.

-- Jonas Vingegaard (10 December 1996 -), Danish professional cyclist who rides for UCI WorldTeam Team Jumbo-Visma, after winning the Tour de France for the second year in a row, referring to Slovenian cyclist Tadej Pogacar, who came second both years after winning in 2020 and 2021, 23 July 2023

You Can't Always

You can't always explain everything you do to everybody, you know.

-- Robert Fulghum (4 June 1937 -), American author, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

Irrationalities

The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.

-- Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 - 1971), American Protestant theologian most famous for his efforts to relate the Christian faith to the realities of politics and diplomacy. as quoted in his obituary in The New York Times (2 June 1971)

Education Is

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

-- Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904 - 1990), American behaviorist, and social philosopher, "New methods and new aims in teaching", in New Scientist, 22(392) (21 May 1964), pp.483-4

I'd Rather Be Silly

The world may be utterly crazy
   And life may be labour in vain;
But I'd rather be silly than lazy,
   And would not quit life for its pain.

-- James Clerk Maxwell (1831 - 1879), Scottish mathematical physicist, who formulated the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, bringing together for the first time electricity, magnetism, and light as manifestations of the same phenomenon, Quotations from The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882) by Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, Part III Poems, Tune, Il Segreto per esser felice (24 March 1858)

By The Other, Virtue

Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body.  As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.

-- Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719), English politician and writer, The Tatler (1711–1714) No. 147

It Is What It Is

May it please milord Hero, the world is not what we wish it to be.  It is what it is.  No, I have over-assumed.  Perhaps it is indeed what we wish it to be.  Either way, it is what it is.

-- Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 - 1988) popular and influential author of science fiction, Glory Road (1963), Star, Empress of the 20 Universes, Ch. 10

Three Dog Night

Tonight I enjoyed a concert by Three Dog Night at Champaign's Virginia Theater.  Despite now being in their 70s and 80s, they put on a great show.  The three vocalists fronting the group tonight were Danny Hutton, David Morgan, and Paul Kingery, along with Timothy Hutton on bass, Pat Bautz on drums, and Howard Laravea on keyboards.

All of the songs played tonight were Top 40 hits, and they mentioned that they had a run of 21 consecutive singles that made it into the Top 40.  It was good to see them having a good time, and the music took me back to junior high.

RIP Milan Kundera

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

-- Milan Kundera (1 April 1929 - 11 July 2023), Franco-Czech novelist born in Brno, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) Part One: Lightness and Weight

Anthropocene

Couplets of organic matter capped by calcite precipitated each summer in alkaline surface waters of Crawford Lake accumulate undisturbed below the chemocline of this 23-m-deep meromictic lake in Ontario, Canada.  This records fallout from nuclear and thermonuclear testing, with strong activity during 1952–1953 CE and levelling associated with the fluctuations in yield, notably testing cessation between November 1958 and February 1961. 

The Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy is working towards formally defining an Anthropocene epoch/series, and its associated age/stage commencing in the mid-20th century.  

Given the intensity, magnitude, planetary significance and global isochroneity of the [observed effects], it provides a suitable level for recognition of the base of the Anthropocene as a series/epoch.  The chronostratigraphic Anthropocene, defined in strict accordance with ICS approved nomenclature and procedures, provides a clear and stable meaning to stratigraphic use of the term "Anthropocene".

-- Francine MG McCarthy, et al, "The varved succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a candidate Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the Anthropocene series", 4th International Congress on Stratigraphy 11-13 July 2023.  This paper asserts that measureable nuclear fallout in the strata beneath Crawford Lake provides evidence of the geological impact of mankind, marking the start of a new geological epoch dubbed "Anthropocene" (recent age of man)

Corners On The Curving Sky

Our earth is round, and, among other things, that means that you and I can hold completely different points of view and both be right.  The difference of our positions will show stars in your window I cannot even imagine.  Your sky may burn with light, while mine, at the same moment, spreads beautiful to darkness.  Still we must choose how we separately corner the circling universe of our experience.  Once chosen, our cornering will determine the message of any star and darkness we encounter.  These poems speak to philosophy; they reveal the corners where we organize what we know.

-- June Millicent Jordan (1936 - 2002), African-American bisexual political activist, writer, poet, essayist, and teacher, born in Harlem, New York, to Jamaican immigrants, Introduction to the "Corners on the Curving Sky" section of the book Soulscript (1970) compiled by Jordan

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