Infallible

Reversal by a higher court is not proof that justice is thereby better done.  There is no doubt that if there were a super-Supreme Court, a substantial proportion of our reversals of state courts would also be reversed.  We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.

-- Robert Houghwout Jackson (1892 - 1954), United States Solicitor General (1938-1940), United States Attorney General (1940–1941) and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1941–1954).  He is the only person in US history to have held all three of those offices, concurring in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 540 (1953)

Good Ancestors

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.

-- Jonas Salk (1914 - 1995), medical researcher and author, inventor of the Salk vaccine against Polio, and founder of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, as quoted in Learning from the Future : Competitive Foresight Scenarios (1998) by Liam Fahey and Robert M. Randall, p. 332

Deceive Ourselves Twice

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love -- first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

-- Albert Camus (7 November 1913 - 4 January 1960), French Pied-Noir author, absurdist philosopher, and winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, A Happy Death (1938), first published as La mort heureuse (1971), as translated by Richard Howard (1972)

Engineers

On the sixth day God saw He couldn't do it all, it read, so He created engineers.

-- Lois McMaster Bujold (2 November 1949 -), American author of science fiction and fantasy works, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 1 (p. 14)

No Art Or Learning

No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly ... and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.

-- Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973 - c. 1014 or 1025), Japanese novelist, poet, and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period, The Tale of Genji

It Just Gets More So

One thing you don't really get until middle age is this absolutely wild perspective where you've seen people go from zero to twenty five and others from twenty five to fifty and from fifty to seventy five and seventy five to dead. 

It used to be I'd seen people of every age, now I've seen people span wide swaths of their lives.  It's beautiful and intense and scary and rich and immense. 

I imagine it just gets more so.

-- Hank Green, Long-time Internet guy, posting on Twitter as @hankgreen, 2 November 2023

Texas Rangers Win World Series

The Texas Rangers have claimed their first World Series title in team history.

They bested the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 5 on Wednesday night, 5-0.

It's a first in the 63-season history of a franchise that started as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961.

The team did not lose a postseason game on the road this year, finishing it out 11-0.  

-- The Associated Press, "Texas Rangers are World Series champs for first time in team's 63-year history" (1 November 2023)

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!  Despite the 35-degree temperature and the blustery north wind, I had 74 trick-or-treaters stop by my house this evening.  My youngest (age 25) daughter decorated my house, and worked at a haunted house, and kids and grandkids generally had a good time.  I hope you all did as well.

Motivation

It's not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.

-- Louise Bourgeois (1911 - 2010), French-American artist and sculptor, quoted in The Guardian, "She'll put a spell on you" (14 October 2007)

Disinclination

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. 

-- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001), English author and satirist, most famous for his The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of radio plays and books, Last Chance to See, Chapter 4: Heartbeats in the Night, p. 116

Political Contests

If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority.

-- Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (27 October 1858 - 6 January 1919), American statesman, author, explorer, and soldier who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909, speech before the Federal Club, New York City, (6 March 1891), as published in New York Daily Tribune (7 March 1891)

Chanute AFB

RANTOUL, Ill. (WCIA) — Chanute Air Force Base is officially in the hands of the Village of Rantoul after 30 years of environmental cleanup and redevelopment efforts.

Air Force and village officials held a ceremony celebrating the completion of the transfer on Wednesday.  The base was established in 1917 as a training center for pilots and ground crews.  It closed in 1993 as part of the base realignment and closure program, leaving behind more than 2,000 acres of land and hundreds of buildings.

Since then, acres have slowly been given back to the village.  Now, they own it all.

-- Will Simmons, "Rantoul celebrates official transferring of Chanute Air Force Base", wcia.com, 25 October 2023

[My dad went through meteorologist training at Chanute AFB at the beginning of WW II, and stuck around to teach for a year or so before being dispatched to the Pacific.  When I first started "trvth" on CERL PLATO in 1981 I was working as a PLATO lab manager and developer for the Department of Defense (3330th TCHTW/TTGH) at Chanute AFB as appleman/chanute.]

Only As Young

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.

-- Timothy Leary (1920 - 1996), American writer, psychologist, and counterculture icon, as quoted in Office Yoga : Simple Stretches for Busy People (2000) by Darrin Zeer, p. 52

The Mistakes Of Others

You must learn from the mistakes of others -- you will never live long enough to make them all yourself.

-- Harry Myers and Mason M. Roberts, credited to an unnamed person in their book Human Engineering (1932)

Mastery

Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity.

-- Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS (1925 - 2016), British mathematician known for his work in geometric topology and singularity theory, in From Human to Robot and Back Again: The Process of Rehearsing and Performing, p. 1

Silly Putty

I don't think there is a single person in that room that can get 217 votes.  People are starting to realize that Kevin McCarthy kept this thing together with duct tape and silly putty.  And it's not as easy as they think.

-- Representative Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) on the difficulties the Republican party is having electing a new Speaker of the House of Representatives, which office has now been vacant for 16 days, Politico.com, "House GOP drowning as crisis reaches breaking point", 19 October 2023

Managed To Conceal

I have managed to conceal my madness fairly effectively, and as far as I know it hasn't hurt anybody badly, for which I am grateful.

-- William Saroyan (1908 - 1981), Armenian American author, My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Limited Amount Of Damage

There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people.  For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.

-- Thomas Sowell (1930 -), American economist and political commentator, Orange County Register, 30 September 2009

No Need

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006), Canadian-American economist and author, Economics, Peace and Laughter (1971), p. 50

Yanking Its Tail

A dragon’s inertia is not shifted by yanking its tail.

-- Glen David Brin (1950 -), American science fiction author, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, former NASA consultant and physics professor, Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 551)

Without An Eraser

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

-- John William Gardner (1912 - 2002), President of the Carnegie Corporation and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) under President Lyndon Johnson, as quoted in Matthew M. Radmanesh, Cracking the Code of Our Physical Universe, p. 269

Calisthenics

There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit.  Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.

-- Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967), American writer, poet, and critic, Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)

From Minds Profound

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.

-- Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967), American writer, poet, and critic, "The Little Hours" in Here Lies (1939)

Pardelas

Saw pardelas and a green rush near the vessel.  The crew of the Pinta saw a cane and a log; they also picked up a stick which appeared to have been carved with an iron tool, a piece of cane, a plant which grows on land, and a board.  The crew of the Nina saw other signs of land, and a stalk loaded with rose berries.  These signs encouraged them, and they all grew cheerful.

-- Christopher Columbus (1451 - 1506), Italian explorer and navigator who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas, Journal of the First Voyage, 11 October 1492

Quite So Flexibly

Do American faces so often look so lost because they are most tragically trapped between a very real dread of coming alive to something more than merely existing, and an equal dread of going down to the grave without having done more than merely be comfortable?  If so, this is the truly American disease.  And would account in part for the fact that we lead the world today in insanity, criminality, alcoholism, narcoticism, psychoanalysm, cancer, homicide and perversion in sex as well as in perversion just for the pure hell of the thing.  Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder.  Never has any people lived so hygienically while daily dousing itself with the ritual slops of guilt.  Nowhere has any people set itself a moral code so rigid while applying it quite so flexibly.

-- Nelson Algren (1909 - 1981), American novelist, essayist, and short story author, Nonconformity (1953/1996)

Not At All The Same

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 - 1936), British writer, A Short History of England (1917)

National Alert

National Alert

THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert system.  The purpose is to maintain and improve alert and warning capabilities at the federal, state, local, tribal and territorial levels and to evaluate the nation's public alert and warning capabilities.  No action is required by the public.

-- Text of the most recent, triennially mandated test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System, 4 October 2023

Vacant

On this vote, the Yea's are 216, the Nay's are 210, the resolution is adopted.  Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.  The office of the Speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant.  

-- Representative Steve Womack (R-Arkansas), tallying the vote on House Resolution 757, "Declaring the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant", as Kevin McCarthy (R-California) became the first House Speaker in history to lose a vote of no confidence, 3 October 2023

A Convert's Enthusiasm

A convert's enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born into it.

-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 - 30 January 1948), Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, in his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics, vol. I, p. 144

RIP Dianne Feinstein

I truly believe that there is a center in the political spectrum that is the best place to run something when you have a very diverse community.  America is diverse; we are not all one people.  We are many different colors, religions, backgrounds, education levels, all of it.

-- Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein (born Dianne Emiel Goldman; 22 June 1933 – 28 September 2023), American politician serving as the senior United States senator from California, previously Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988, "Sen. Dianne Feinstein's rise: How one badass woman fought to keep going" by Dana Bash, CNN (9 August 2017)

By Practice

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

-- Confucius (551 B.C. - 479 B.C.), Chinese social philosopher, The Confucian Analects, Vol. I of Legge's Chinese Classics (1861)

Fists Clenched

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

-- George Jean Nathan (1882 - 1958), American drama critic and editor, The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness, Volume 69 "Undeveloped Notes" (August 1922)

As A Thing

If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.

-- John Brunner (1934 - 1995), science fiction author, The Shockwave Rider (1975), Book 3, Ch. "Like They Say, It's Bounce Or Break"

OSIRIS-REx

We've got a busy week ahead of us.

-- Dante Lauretta, planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and leader of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, after the successful recovery of samples taken from asteroid Bennu in a mission that launched in 2016, 24 September 2023

Gun Violence Prevention

I'm proud to announce the creation of the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. ...

Today, guns -- I never thought I'd even remotely say this in my whole career -- guns are the number one killer of children in America.  Guns are the number one killer of children in America -- the United States of America.  More than car accidents, more than cancer, more than other diseases.

In 2023 so far, our country has experienced more than 500 mass shootings and well over 30,000 deaths due to gun violence.  That's just totally unacceptable.  It's not who we are.  And we have to act, and we have to act now. ...

We all want our kids to have the freedom to learn how to read and write in school instead of duck and cover, for God's sake.  And it matters. ...

May God bless you all.  May God protect our troops.  And may God protect our children.  Thank you so very much.

-- President Joe Biden, Remarks on Gun Safety, 22 September 2023

Out Of The Mist

Memory, out of the mist, in a long slow ripple
Breaks, blindly, against the shore.

-- Alfred Noyes (16 September 1880 – 28 June 1958) was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright, Songs of Shadow-of-a-leaf and other poems (1924), "Seagulls on the Serpentine"

Our Job

Our job is not to take orders from the President, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate.  As the President himself has said, and I reaffirm here today: I am not the President's lawyer.  I will also add that I am not Congress's prosecutor.  The Justice Department works for the American people.

-- U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, in his opening statement before the House Judiciary Committee, 20 September 2023

A Crazy Three Weeks

It's incredible to be here.  Normally I'm a bit out there watching these two guys stand up on the podium and, yeah, like I told them earlier on the bus, for me being with these two, with Primoz (Roglic) for the Giro and Jonas (Vingegaard) for the Tour, I feel so proud and honored to to be standing with them here in La Vuelta and it's been a crazy three weeks.

-- Sepp Kuss, support rider for cycling team Jumbo-Visma, on his overall victory at the Tour of Spain (La Vuelta a Espana), as he shared the podium with his teammates Primoz Roglic, winner of this year's Tour of Italy (Giro d'Italia), and Jonas Vingegaard, winner of this year's Tour de France, speaking at the finish in Madrid, 17 September 2023

Unreasonable

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and political activist cited in: Stanley Marcus (1979) Quest for the Best. p. 97

An Excuse

[M]ost propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.

-- Michael Rivero (1952 -), American film worker, from his IMDB bio

Survival Rate

On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everybody drops to zero.

-- Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (1962 -), American satirical novelist and freelance journalist, Fight Club (1996)

Debacle

A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.

-- Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921 - 1990), Swiss author and dramatist, Portrait of a Planet (1971)

Pay Our Debts

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

-- John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875 - 1940), Scottish novelist, poet, and politician, Address to the people of Canada on the coronation of George VI (12 May 1937)

Remembrance

Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.

-- Oliver Goldsmith (1728 - 1774), Irish novelist, playwright, poet, and physician, The Deserted Village, 1770, l. 81

Living Well

Living well is the best revenge.

-- George Herbert (1593 - 1633), English poet, Jacula Prudentum (1651) Full title: Jacula Prudentum; or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. Selected by Mr. George Herbert, Proverb 520; from The Complete Works in verse and prose of George Herbert: Volume III, Prose (1874)

Each Of Us

Americans have a strong interest in supporting democratic movements and respect for human rights around the world because free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home.  But that interest is undermined when others see our own house in disarray.  The world will not wait for us to address our problems, so we must both continue to strive toward a more perfect union and help those abroad looking for U.S. leadership.

Each of us has a role to play and responsibilities to uphold.  Our elected officials must lead by example and govern effectively in ways that deliver for the American people.  This, in turn, will help to restore trust in public service.  The rest of us must engage in civil dialogue; respect democratic institutions and rights; uphold safe, secure, and accessible elections; and contribute to local, state, or national improvement.

-- A statement from 13 presidential centers, signed by Obama Foundation, George W. Bush Presidential Center, Clinton Foundation, George & Barbara Bush Foundation, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, The Carter Center, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, Richard Nixon Foundation, LBJ Foundation, John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, Truman Library Institute, Roosevelt Institute, Hoover Presidential Foundation (7 September 2023)

I'm Looking

The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.  Puzzling.

-- Robert M. Pirsig (6 September 1928 - 24 April 2017), American philosopher and novelist, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) Ch. 1

Totally Screwed Up

Guns, knives, and martial arts skills do not ward off danger.  They help you deal with it more effectively and only in select circumstances.  Never forget that self-defense is really about not being there, using awareness, avoidance, and de-escalation to eliminate the need to fight.  Fighting is what you do when you've totally screwed up your self-defense.  

-- Lawrence A. Kane and Kris Wilder, The Little Black Book Of Violence (What Every Young Man Needs To Know About Fighting), Section 3, Aftermath Of Violence, Handling Blows To Your Self Esteem, p 249 (2009)

Solidarity

The most important word in the language of the working class is solidarity.

-- Harry Bridges (1901 - 1990), Australian-born American union leader, first with the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), quoted in Glass, Fred (2016). From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement

Experience And History

What experience and history teach is this -- that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831), German philosopher, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832) Volume 1, Introduction, as translated by H. B. Nisbet (1975)