Big Bird And Oscar The Grouch

I always thought, How fortunate for me that I got to play the two best Muppets?  Playing Big Bird is one of the most joyous things of my life. ...  I don't get to play him -- I get to live his life.

-- Caroll Spinney, who leaves "Sesame Street" this week after nearly 50 years of playing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, New York Times, 17 October 2018

First Legal Gram

I came out tonight to be the first person in Canada to purchase the first legal gram of recreational cannabis, to help see the end of prohibition in Canada finally.

-- Canadian Ian Power, who with Nikki Rose completed the first legal marijuana sale in Canada, shortly after midnight in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada's easternmost province, Reuters.com, 17 October 2018

Tribal Affiliation

Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation.

-- The Cherokee Nation’s secretary of state, Chuck Hoskin Jr., in a statement Monday in response to a DNA test showing Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American, Washington Post, 16 October 2018

Are You Surprised?

When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?

-- Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi (13 October 1958 - ?), missing Saudi journalist and author.  He is currently missing amid allegations that he was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on 2 October 2018.  "Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive.  Now it’s unbearable." in The Washington Post (18 September 2017)

Disasters

This is what disasters look like.

-- Former FEMA Chief W. Craig Fugate, on the damage in Florida from Hurricane Michael, New York Times, 12 October 2018

Distance

If you can repair your future child's myopia with preemptive genetic tinkering, you might also want to increase her I.Q. by a few dozen points. Will it lead to a world as utopian as Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average? Of course not. It will just add genetic manipulation of embryos and child cloning to the means by which affluent, fussy people try to distance themselves from bad luck, disappointment, menial work, death, and poor people.

-- David Quammen (1948-), award-winning science, nature and travel writer, "Clone Your Troubles Away: Dreaming at the Frontiers of Animal Husbandry", Harper's Magazine (February 2005)

Thanks, Mark

I don't have a clever quote tonight, just the fading reverberations of a "China Grove" encore as the Doobie Brothers wrapped their set at State Farm Center in Champaign, IL tonight.

Cheers.

Girl With(out) Balloon

LONDON -- The British street artist Banksy pulled off one of his most spectacular pranks on Friday night, when one of his trademark paintings appeared to self-destruct at Sotheby's in London after selling for $1.4 million at auction.

The work, "Girl With Balloon," a 2006 spray paint on canvas, was the last lot of Sotheby's "Frieze Week" evening contemporary art sale.  After competition between two telephone bidders, it was hammered down by the auctioneer Oliver Barker for 1 million pounds, more than three times the estimate and a new auction high for a work solely by the artist, according to Sotheby's.

-- New York Times, 6 October 2018



A few years ago, I secretly built a shredder into a painting in case it was ever put up for auction ....

-- British street artist Banksy, in a video explaining how he did it, posted to his Instagram, 6 October 2018

I Will

Mr. President, I will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.

-- Final line of remarks by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) on the Senate floor to announce her decision to vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 5 October 2018

His Performance

At that time, I thought [Kavanaugh] had the qualifications for the Supreme Court should he be selected.  I've changed my views for reasons that have no relationship to his intellectual ability ....  I feel his performance in the hearings ultimately changed my mind.

-- Lifelong Republican and retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who was nominated by Gerald Ford and unanimously confirmed, speaking to a small group of retirees at The Institute for Learning in Retirement in Boca Raton, FL, when asked about praise of Brett Kavanaugh in his 2014 book "Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.", Palm Beach Post, 4 October 2018

Presidential alert

Presidential alert

THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.

Oct 3, 13:18

-- Text of the first test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System, 3 October 2018 at 13:18

Weakness

The greatest weakness of all weaknesses is to fear too much to appear weak.

-- Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627 - 1704), French bishop, theologian, and court preacher. Bossuet was one of the first to advocate the theory of political absolutism; he made the argument that government was divine and that kings received their power from God, Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture (1709)

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