A Critical Task

The forces going on in the society are not things the media can prevent or change.  But we can and should help understand this crisis and warn against false solutions.  If feelings are trumping arguments -- the pun is fully intended -- it doesn’t mean that arguments don’t still have to be made.  It may not win the news cycle.  It may not even win this election cycle.  But it’s a critical task.

-- Andrew Sullivan (1963-), libertarian conservative author and political commentator, as quoted in "Andrew Sullivan on His Brief Return to the Online Political Fray" by Jennifer Schuessler, in The New York Times, 29 July 2016

RIP Gawker.com

Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years after it began and two days before the end of my forties.  It is the end of an era.

It is a fitting conclusion to this experiment in what happens when you let journalists say what they really think.

-- Nick Denton, 22 August 2016, final post on gawker.com

The Cat Probably Deserved It

Omaha dad finds pot brownies, eats 4 of them, says mean things to cat

Paramedics called to the scene who checked the man found his vital signs to be normal.  But they noted that he was displaying odd behavior -- crawling around on the floor, randomly using profanities, and calling the family cat a "bitch".

-- Headline and snippet from an article by Kevin Cole in the Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald, 19 August 2016

http://tinyurl.com/gmxgxky

Letter Of Life

Dear DONALD GRAHAM APPLEMAN

Our records indicated that you were deceased.  This record was in error and has been corrected.

If you have any questions, you should call, write, or visit any Social Security office.  If you visit an office, please bring this letter.  It will help us answer your questions.

Social Security Administration

-- Contents of a letter I picked up at the local Social Security office today after I got an email from my credit card company telling me they had closed my account because I was dead

A Sad Thing

It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor the judgement to hold their tongues.

-- Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696), French essayist and moralist, "Of Society And Conversation", Les Caractères (1688)

A Hundred Times

Any trouble I get myself in now -- even an honest mistake -- will be a hundred times worse than if any normal person did it.

-- 30-year old Ahmed Abdul Qader, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was 17 at the time of his arrest, after his relocation to Estonia, New York Times, 29 July 2016

Wait, What?

Before Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks inside the United States.

-- Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, at an event for Donald Trump in Ohio, 15 August 2016

Closed Doors

It's hugely disappointing.  A trial is the one place where the system really gets tested.  Everything else is done behind closed doors.

-- Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a 20-year veteran of the Manhattan federal bench, on the sharp decline of jury trials, New York Times, 8 August 2016

Very Truly Yours

As Director of the Public Defender System, I can only hire attorneys when I have the funding to do so. ...  To avoid having to close one or more offices, the remaining option is to consider the use of Section 600.042.5, which gives the Director of the Public Defender System the authority to "[d]elegate the legal representation of any person to any member of the state bar of Missouri." ....

[P]ursuant to Section 600.0425 and as Director of the Missouri State Public Defender System tasked with carrying out the State's obligation to ensure that poor people who face incarceration are afforded competent counsel in their defense, I hereby appoint you, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon, Bar No. 29603, to enter your appearance as counsel of record in the attached case.

Very truly yours,

-- Michael Barrett, Director of the Missouri Public Defender System, in a letter assigning a case to Governor Jay Nixon, 2 August 2016

Refugee Olympic Team

Madam Tegla gives us a chance for other people to know the history of our lives.  And we can forget what happened before.

-- Yiech Pur Biel, 21, an 800-meter runner who fled his village in South Sudan in 2005, on Tegla Loroupe, a Kenyan marathoner who is leading a group of 10 displaced athletes, known as the Refugee Olympic Team, to Rio, New York Times, 5 August 2016

Life Doesn't Suck

Very occasionally, if you really pay attention, life doesn't suck.

-- Joseph "Joss" Hill Whedon (23 June 1964 -), American screenwriter, film and television director and producer, Liner notes to the cast album Once More, with Feeling (2002)

Lost Track

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true, and the tendency to miss lunch.

-- Tim Berners-Lee (1955-), Inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, interview by Kris Herbst for Internet World (June 1994)

Completely Different

I've also learned that my memory may be completely different than reality.  I've decided that my brain did that for a good reason (perhaps survival of that moment) or maybe it's just being an asshole again.  In either case, it's made me more humble and less insistent that I'm correct.  I've also put less weight on the past.  There's nothing I can do about it, except learn from it.  And I feel like I can learn no matter how I might mis-remember my alternate universe self, so I care less about what really happened.

-- Wendy, July 2016, http://wendria.blogspot.com/

Another First

And so it is with humility ... determination ... and boundless confidence in America's promise ... that I accept your nomination for President of the United States!

-- Hillary Clinton in her speech at the Democratic National Convention, becoming the first woman at the top of a major party ticket, 28 July 2016

More Yesterdays

Those of us who have more yesterdays than tomorrows tend to care more about our children and grandchildren.

-- Former President Bill Clinton in a speech at the Democratic National Convention, 27 July 2016, echoing a phrase he used on his 50th birthday, 19 August 1996

Quiet

There's nothing like a quiet ball park on the road.

-- Baseball announcer Tim McCarver, as the Cardinals tied the New York Mets 4-4 in the 9th inning at New York, 27 July 2016

Every Morning

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves -- and I watch my daughters -- two beautiful, intelligent, black young women -- playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.  And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters -- and all our sons and daughters -- now take for granted that a woman can be President of the United States.

-- First Lady Michelle Obama in a speech at the Democratic National Convention, 25 July 2016

Humbly And Gratefully

Friends, delegates and fellow Americans: I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.

-- Donald Trump, accepting the Republican nomination for president of the United States, 21 July 2016

Vote Your Conscience

We deserve leaders who stand for principle, who unite us all behind shared values, who cast aside anger for love.  That is the standard we should expect from everybody.  And, to those listening, please don't stay home in November. 

If you love our country, and love our children as much as you do, stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom, and to be faithful to the constitution. 

-- Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), speaking at the Republican National Convention, 20 July 2016

The Real Damage

The real damage from terrorist attacks doesn't come from the explosion.  The real damage is done after the explosion, by the victims, who repeatedly and determinedly attack themselves, giving over reason in favor of terror.  Every London cop who stops someone from taking a picture of a public building, every TSA agent who takes away your kid's toothpaste, every NSA spook who wiretaps your email, does the terrorist's job for him.  Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.      

-- Cory Doctorow (1971-), Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author, "BBC photographer prevented from shooting St Paul's because he might be 'al Qaeda operative'", 30 November 2009