Doubt All

Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.

-- André Gide (1869 - 1951), French author, 1947 Nobel laureate in literature, Gallimard, ed. (1952), Ainsi soit-il; ou, Les Jeux sont faits ("So be it; or, The die is cast"), p. 174

Sought For And Attended To

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

-- Abigail Adams (1744-1818), wife of John Adams, second President of the United States, in a letter to John Quincy Adams (8 May 1780)

The Parent

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

-- Herman Melville (1819 - 1891), American novelist, essayist, short story writer, and poet, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) Chapter 3 "The Spouter-Inn" Paragraph 56

Contrary To Everything

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge.  I was 38 years old.  At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life.  However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved.

My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom.  President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.  This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench.  The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out.  Silence, for me, is now intolerable.

I resigned in order to speak out, support litigation, and work with other individuals and organizations dedicated to protecting the rule of law and American democracy.  I also intend to advocate for the judges who cannot speak publicly for themselves.

I cannot be confident that I will make a difference.  I am reminded, however, of what Senator Robert F. Kennedy said in 1966 about ending apartheid in South Africa: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope."  Enough of these ripples can become a tidal wave.

-- Mark L. Wolf, retired senior United States district judge in Massachusetts, "Why I Am Resigning", The Atlantic (9 November 2025)

Shipwrecked

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

-- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), German-born theoretical physicist, in his Essays Presented to Leo Baeck on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (1954), p. 26

Stop Making Cents

The U.S. ended production of the penny Wednesday, abandoning the 1-cent coins that were embedded in American culture for more than 230 years but became nearly worthless.

When it was introduced in 1793, a penny could buy a biscuit, a candle or a piece of candy.  Now most of them are cast aside to sit in jars or junk drawers, and each one costs nearly 4 cents to make.

Billions of pennies are still in circulation and will remain legal tender, but new ones will no longer be made.

The last U.S. coin to be discontinued was the half-cent in 1857.

Most penny production ended over the summer, officials said.  During the final pressing, workers at the mint stood quietly on the factory floor as if bidding farewell to an old friend.  When the last coins emerged, the men and women broke into applause and cheered one another.

-- MaryClaire Dale, writing for Associated Press, "US Mint presses final pennies" (12 November 2025)

Brexit Impact Update

This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016.  Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from micro data collected through our Decision Maker Panel survey.  These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time.  We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%.  

These large negative impacts reflect a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources from a protracted Brexit process.  Comparing these with contemporary forecasts -- providing a rare macro example to complement the burgeoning micro-literature of social science predictions -- shows that these forecasts were accurate over a 5-year horizon, but they underestimated the impact over a decade.

-- Nicholas Bloom, et al, "The Economic Impact of Brexit", National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2025

Immortal Truth

Lower a bucket into a well of self-deception, and what comes up must be immortal truth, mustn't it?

-- Charles Reade (1814 - 1884), English novelist and dramatist, The Cloister and the Hearth (1861) Ch. V

One Never Notices

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.

-- Marie Curie (1867 - 1934), Polish-born scientist, first woman to win the Nobel Prize (for Physics in 1903); first person to win a second Nobel Prize (for Chemistry, 1911), Letter to her brother (1894)

Continual Accretion

Congress, as a practical matter, can't get this power back once it's handed it over to the president.  It's a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people's elected representatives.

-- Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, in an exchange with Solicitor General D. John Sauer about Trump invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs (6 November 2025)

Web Crawler Meta

For the last 10 days I've been observing somewhat odd web traffic at trvth.org.  First I noticed that traffic was significantly higher than usual, with a few days of 300 to 500 page views, instead of the usual 70 to 100.  The next couple of days had more than 1000 page views each, and I started to look into it.

The culprit appears to be a bot running on Tencent Cloud Computing, connecting out of Singapore.  I suspect it is consuming trvth.org as training material for an AI.

The connections come every 1 to 2 minutes and last less than 5 seconds.  It started by reading the pages by year and is following every link, though not in any recognizable order, and the queries come from a range of IP addresses, not a single address.

I'm not sure how I should feel about all that.

A Price To Be Paid

All life is based on the fact that anything worth getting is hard to get.  There is a price to be paid for anything.  Scholarship can only be bought at the price of study, skill of craft or technique can only be bought at the price of practice, and eminence in any sport can only be bought at the price of training and discipline. 

-- William Barclay (1907 - 1978), Scottish author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister, and Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, The Gospel of John (1955) Vol. 2 (1964), p. 77

Refusing To Accept

It is only by refusing to accept the situation that in the end we can change the situation.

-- William Barclay (1907 - 1978), Scottish author, radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister, and Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, The Plain Man's Guide to Ethics (1973) Ch. 7, p. 89

Happy Halloween!

Tonight I had 106 Trick or Treaters come to my house for Halloween.  I started the evening with 102 full-size candy bars, with plenty of backup candy when that ran out.  The house was well decorated by my #5 daughter (pictured).  

Happy Halloween!

Generally Wrong

Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.

-- George Edward Bateman Saintsbury (1845 - 1933), prolific and popular English historian and literary scholar, as quoted in A Last Vintage (1950) John W. Oliver et al. (eds.) p. 172

Absolute Conviction

All political movements are like this -- we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong.  The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies.  With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority.  There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

-- Doris Lessing (1919 - 2013), British writer, 2007 Nobel laureate in Literature, "A Notorious Life" -- interview with Dwight Garner at salon.com (11 November 1997)

Armed Men

Armed men don’t sit down and talk.

-- Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 - 2018), American writer, recipient of the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, The Eye of the Heron (1978) Chapter 8 (p. 107)

Facebook Privacy

Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation Settlement Administrator has sent you $36.12 USD.

Note from Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation Settlement Administrator:

"Your Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation settlement payment is now available in PayPal.

Thank you."

-- Email from PayPal telling me that I received $36.12 USD from the Facebook privacy class-action initiated in 2018 and settled for $725 million (27 October 2025)

Yi Dan

A hearty congratulations to my Taekwondo student, David, on achieving the rank of Second Degree Black Belt (Yi Dan) this past Saturday, October 18th.  

Although he turned 13 years old just 2 weeks before the test, David is an experienced martial artist with considerable skill.  His fine test performance demonstrated the integrity with which he prepared.  

Last October David became my third student to go from White Belt to Black Belt.  He is the first to continue on to advanced rank.  

Safety Valve

The continuing episodes of protest and dissent in the United States have their basis in the First Amendment to the Constitution, a great safety valve that is lacking in most other nations of the world.  The First Amendment creates a sanctuary around the citizen's beliefs.  His ideas, his conscience, his convictions are his own concern, not the government's.

-- William Orville Douglas (1898 - 1980), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court with a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, Points of Rebellion (1970) p. 3