Talking

Look at me when I'm talking to you.  You're telling me that my assault doesn't matter!

-- An angry sexual assault survivor berating Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake as he steps into the elevator after a break in hearings on Supreme Court Candidate Brett Kavanaugh.  Flake subsequently forced a delay and an investigation, 28 September 2018

Intercede

I don't believe it's possible to be neutral.  The world is already moving in certain directions, and to be neutral, to be passive in a situation like that, is to collaborate with whatever is going on.  And I, as a teacher, do not want to be a collaborator with whatever is happening in the world.  I want myself, as a teacher, and I want you, as students, to intercede with whatever is happening in the world.

-- Howard Zinn (1924 - 2010), American historian, political scientist, playwright and social activist, in Howard Zinn: You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train (2004) documentary film

The Difference Between The Two

Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell.  It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do.  Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same -- to prevent trade.  The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading.  What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.   

-- Henry George (1839 - 1897), American economic and social philosopher who popularized the economic policies which have become known as Georgism, Protection or Free Trade? (1886)

That's OK

Didn't expect that reaction, but that's OK.

-- President Donald Trump, speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, after attendees openly laughed in response to his assertions of record accomplishments by his administration, 25 September 2018

Fastest Human On A Bicycle

Denise Mueller-Korenek became the fastest human to ever ride a bicycle, hitting an average 183.932 miles per hour for one mile on a custom bicycle.  This shatters a record set in 1995.  They were only aiming for 175 miles per hour, tops, but ended up obliterating the 167 mile per hour record set by Fred Rompelberg.

-- Bill Chappell, NPR, via Numlock News, 20 September 2018

The Pleasure Of Hating

Scolding bad people makes us feel better about ourselves.  In his essay "On the Pleasure of Hating," William Hazlitt wrote, "There is no surfeiting on gall: Nothing keeps so well as a decoction of spleen.  We grow tired of every thing but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects."  We hate other people as a way to love ourselves.

-- Windsor Mann, quoting William Hazlitt (c. 1826), in The Week, "You'll miss Trump one day", (17 September 2018)


http://theweek.com/articles/795704/youll-miss-trump-day

What Happens

But fortunately, we had a good saying that we've held firm to to this day ... which is: What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.  That's been a good thing for all of us, I think.

-- Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, in a 2015 speech at Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law

Hereinafter Referred

This letter sets forth the full and complete plea offer to your client Paul J. Manafort, Jr. (hereinafter referred to as "your client" or "defendant") from the Special Counsel's Office (hereinafter referred to as "the Government" or "this Office").  If your client accepts the terms and conditions of this offer, please have your client execute this document in the space provided below.  Upon receipt of the executed document, this letter will become the Plea Agreement (hereinafter referred to as the "Agreement"). 

-- Opening paragraph of the plea agreement between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, filed 14 September 2018

Complexity And Uncertainty

Accepting and respecting neurodiversity is the key to surviving the transformation driven by the internet and AI, which is shattering the Newtonian predictability of the past and replacing it with a Heisenbergian world of complexity and uncertainty.

-- Joi Ito, in Wired Magazine, The Educational Tyranny Of The Neurotypicals, 6 September 2018


https://www.wired.com/story/tyranny-neurotypicals-unschooling-education/

Original Thought

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

-- Henry Louis (H. L.) Mencken (12 September 1880 - 29 January 1956), journalist, satirist, social critic, and freethinker, Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

RIP Burt Reynolds

We're only here for a little while, and you've got to have some fun, right?  I don't take myself seriously, and I think the ones that do, there's some sickness with people like that.

-- Burton Leon "Burt" Reynolds (11 February 1936 - 6 September 2018), American actor, director and producer, "Burt Reynolds Has Made Mistakes. But He Regrets Nothing" in The New York Times (23 March 2018)

A Spark

We have been through much darker times than these.  And somehow each generation of Americans carried us through to the other side.  Not by sitting around and waiting for something to happen, not by leaving it to others to do something, but by leading that movement for change themselves.  And if you do that, if you get involved and you get engaged and you knock on some doors and you talk with your friends and you argue with your family members and you change some minds and you vote, something powerful happens.  Change happens.  Hope happens.  Not perfection, not every bit of cruelty and sadness and poverty and disease suddenly stricken from the Earth.  There will still be problems, but with each new candidate that surprises you with a victory that you supported, a spark of hope happens.

-- Former president Barack Obama, in a speech at Foellinger Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois in Urbana, 7 September 2018

Resistance

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It's not just that the special counsel looms large.  Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump's leadership.  Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma -- which he does not fully grasp -- is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know.  I am one of them.

-- New York Times Op-Ed by a senior official in the Trump administration, published anonymously, 5 September 2018

2018 Mindset List

The 2018 Mindset list For the Class of 2022

* Human beings have always been living -- not just traveling -- in space.  The United States has always been in Afghanistan.  Same-sex marriage has always been legal somewhere and the once revolutionary "You've got mail" is almost forgotten.

* They have always been able to refer to Wikipedia.

* People loudly conversing with themselves in public are no longer thought to be talking to imaginary friends.

* They’ve grown up with stories about where their grandparents were on 11/22/63 and where their parents were on 9/11.

* There have always been space tourists willing to pay the price.

* There have always been more than a billion people in India.

* Films have always been distributed on the Internet.

http://themindsetlist.com

My Takeaway

My takeaway on this is there are a lot of idiots on the internet who come to conclusions over no factual evidence.

-- Reddit user Ravenchamps, after his account was incorrectly identified by far-right websites, including Infowars and Gateway Pundit, as belonging to the Jacksonville, FL video game tournament shooter who sometimes used the handle Ravens2012champs, NBC News, 28 August 2018

RIP John McCain

On the banks of the Ho Truc Bach Lake in downtown Hanoi.  Monument A stone sculpture of a person with arms raised and head lowered.  To the right of the person is USA and a star.  To the left of the person is the text in Vietnamese.

Approximate translation: "On 26 October 1967 near Truc Bach Lake in the capital, Hanoi, the citizens and military caught Pilot John Sidney McCain.  The US Navy Air Force Aviator was flying aircraft A4, which crashed near Yen Phu power station.  This was one of ten aircraft shot down that same day."

-- Description of the Vietnamese memorial to Senator John Sidney McCain III (29 August 1936 - 25 August 2018) at his Vietnam War crash site, courtesy of uswarmemorials.org

Murdered Your Best Friend

One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics.  You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.

-- Stanley Hauerwas (24 July 1940-), Christian theologian and ethicist, currently the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law, from The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life (1999, with William H. Willimon). Page: 89

Life Is

Life is a long lesson in humility.

-- Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860 - 1937), Scottish novelist and dramatist, more commonly known as J. M. Barrie; author of the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up;  in The Little Minister (1891), Ch. 3 : The Night-Watchers

Billionaires

$126 on opening day

Kevin Spacey’s latest film, "Billionaire Boys Club," earned $126 at the box office on its opening day this past weekend.  And no, there are no digits or words missing from that sentence.  Spacey has been mired in accusations of sexual assault since the fall.  The film opened in eight theaters, for an average of $15.75 per theater, or less than the price of a single small popcorn (give or take).

-- The Hollywood Reporter, via FiveThirtyEight's Significant Digits newsletter, 20 August 2018

Because I Had To Use It

Truth isn't truth.

-- Presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani, in a from-the-hip effort to explain the risks of a perjury charge in a he-said / he-said dispute, NBC's Meet The Press with Chuck Todd, 19 August 2018