May 2012 Quotations

"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable."
~~ attributed to James A. Garfield [1831-81]
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."
~~ Gloria Steinem

"If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet."
~~ rock legend Keith Richards

"It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach."
~~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]

"Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it."
~~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky [1821-81]

"Growing old is a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form."
~~ André Maurois [1885-1967]

"Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite -- but they all worship money."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"An idiot will try anything. That is how you know [that] he is an idiot."
~~ Michel Audiard [1920-85]

"All diseases run into one, old age."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"Every act of rebelling expresses a nostalgia for innocence."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything was last year."
~~ comedian Marty Allen

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; n othing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
~~ Calvin Coolidge [1872-1933]

"An idea doesn't have to be true, or even especially convincing, to be politically effective."
~~ Elizabeth Kolbert

"Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll give you a picture."
~~ Cecil B. DeMille [1881-1959]

"Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. This – the supremacy of reason – was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism."
('Brief Summary', The Objectivist Sept 1971)
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts."
~~ Serge Gainsbourg [1928-91]

"If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice."
~~ playwright Tom Stoppard

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."
~~ Carl Gustav Jung [1875-1961]

"Never say [that] you know a man until you have divided an inhereitence with him."
~~ poet Johann Kaspar Lavater [1741-1801]

"Civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention [that] it deserves."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain."
~~ Vivian Greene

"I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they are not around."
~~ Charles Bukowski [1920-94]

"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."
~~ Bambi's friend Thumper

"Always make new mistakes."
~~ Esther Dyson

"To some extent what we saw in the 2007, 2008 crash was the result of the throwing off of Glass-Steagall."
~~ Richard Parsons, former Citigroup board chairman

"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."
~~ last words of physicist Richard P. Feynman [1918-88], as quoted in the biography "Genius"

"Better to do a good deed near at home than to go far away to burn incense."
~~ aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty."
~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]

"When I was young, I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I'm old, I know it is."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic."
~~ Cullen Hightower [1923-2008]

"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667–1745]

"If you have talent, you don't have to tell [people."
~~ baseball great 'Pee Wee' Reese [1918-99]

"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence [that] we have that people are still thinking."
~~ Jerry Seinfeld

"Tradition is tending the flame, it's not worshiping the ashes."
~~ composer Gustav Mahler [1860-1911]

"'Love thy neighbor' is a precept which could transform the world if it were universally practiced."
~~ Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune [1875-1955]

"The only difference between science and science fiction is timing."
~~ Ted Bell

"Remember, what happens in Las Vegas goes on Facebook."
~~ reporter Ungelbah Daniel-Davila

"We are stuck with an unemployment rate three points higher that the postwar average, and the percentage of working adult Americans is as low as it's been in almost thirty years."
~~ James Suroweicki, New Yorker Magazine
{"Be sure to thank a Republican." ~~ G.E. Nordell}

"Meetings are indespensible when you don't want to do anything."
~~ economist John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006]

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world."
~~ British author John le Carré

"If evolution really works, how come mothers have only two hands?"
~~ Milton Berle [1908-2002]

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages [that] you've been."
~~ author Madeleine L'Engle [1918-2007]

"It is cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age."
~~ Margaret Mead [1901-78]

"Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes the edge off admiration."
~~ William Hazlitt [1778-1830]

"Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]

"Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act, and in that action are the seeds of new knowledge."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

April 2012 Quotations

"The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for."
~~ Dostoyevsky [1821-81]

"The middle class built America. It's time for America to rebuild the middle class."
~~ Rev. Al Sharpton

"The only lord I know, is the landlord."
~~ bookseller Lewis Micheaux [1885-1976]

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to concieve."
~~ Don Herold [1889-1966]

"God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"Never interrupt someone doing something [that] you said couldn't be done."
~~ aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"If we do not speak up for our children, they may not be heard. And if we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much."
~~ Marian Wright Edeleman

"Vanity is a mortgage that must be deducted from the value of a man."
~~ Otto von Bismarck [1815-98]

"Silence is the unbearable repartee."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"There is no perception that is not full of memories."
~~ Henri Bergson [1859-1941]

"The most important four words in politics are 'up to a point'."
~~ conservative columnist George Will

"It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet."
~~ Margaret Mead [1901-78]

"The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown."
~~ sci-fi novelist Frank Herbert [1920-86]

"You want me to do something? Tell me [that] I can't do it."
~~ Maya Angelou

“To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible.”
~~ Plato [428?-327? B.C.E.]

"The greatest thing in the world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"All that we see or seem / Is but a dream, within a dream"
~~ Edgar Allan Poe [1809-49]

"Conceit may puff a man up, but can never prop him up."
~~ John Ruskin [1819-1900]

"To try to be better is to be better."
~~ actress Charlotte Cushman

"Exhilaration is that feeling [that] you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it."
~~ British actor Rex Harrison [1908-90]

"It is my rule never to lose my temper till it would be detrimental to keep it."
~~ Irish playwright Sean O'Casey [1880-1964]

"Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"Beauty is a short-lived tyranny."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]

"Whoever has learned to be anxious the right way has learned the ultimate."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]

"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
~~ Wm. Jennings Bryan [1860-1925]

"Nothing is more responsible for 'the good old days' than a bad memory."
~~ Franklin P. Adams [1881-1960]

"The only reason [that] some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory."
~~ actor Paul Fix [1901-83]

"There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown helpless about them."
~~ Clare Boothe Luce [1903-87]

"Our reality is determined by our usefulness."
~~ playwright Edward Albee, in 1978

"Believe those who search for truth. Doubt those who claim to have found it."
~~ Nobel Laureate André Gide [1869-1951]

"At the moment of creativity, absolute inner peace is essential for the artist."
~~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky [1840-93]

"I feel sorry for future generations that won't have polar bears or coastal cities."
~~ TIME Magazine columnist Joel Klein

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
~~ Berthold Auerbach [1812-82]

"Speak truth to power!" ~~ slogan created by the American Friends Service Committee {Quakers} circa 1955

"If states are the laboratory for democracy, [then] Arizona is a meth lab."
~~ educator quoted by Native American activist Winona LaDuke (in 2012)

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, misdiagnosing it, and applying the wrong remedies."
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"World history is nothing but an endless, dreary account of the rape of the weak by the strong ... (It is) a race with time, a scramble for profit, for power, for treasures."
~~ Herman Hesse [1877-1962], in "The Glass Bead Game", 1943

"When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble."
~~ James H. Boren [1925-2010]

"Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in a man."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Every dream has a price."
~~ Louis L'Amour [1908-88], in "Sitka" 1957

"One kind of change occurs when you add something. If you take an entity and add something to it, it's changed. Another kind of change occurs when you take an entity and subtract something from it – so you've got two kinds of changes there. There's a third kind of change which is very strange – the only kind which I think has any real value – and that is when you take a thing and get it to be itself. You neither add to it nor subtract from it. This is almost a definition of consciousness for me."
~~ Werner Erhard (KQED radio interview, 1975)

"The single most exciting thing [that] you encounter in government is competence, because it is so rare."
~~ Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan [1927-2003]

"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"There is no country in which people live under more overpowering compulsions [than America]. You must wave, you must shout, you must go with the irresistible crowd: otherwise, you will feel like a traitor, a soulless outcast, a deserted ship high and dry upon the shore . . . In a country where all men are free, every man finds that what most matters has been settled for him beforehand."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

November is going to be fun!

The Republicans have a dilemma – vote for a Mormon or for a Muslim – and the Democrats have a choice – a constitutional scholar who happens to practice Christianity.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Apartheid In Arizona

The Arizona Legislature has passed a series of laws that essentially bring Apartheid Law to America. In fulfillment of the new laws, the Board of Education in Tucson, Arizona made a list of fifty books in its Xicano & Ethic Studies programs in January, and then over-reacted by sending jackbooted thugs to classrooms to rip the banned books from the hands of students and off the shelves of libraries and classrooms; the captured books, especially the top seven offenders, were boxed up and taken to an undisclosed location for 'storage'.

So I have begun coding links to the Seven Major Offenders on the Spirit of America Bookstore Ethnic Authors page { click here }; works 'Banned in Tucson' include a stageplay by Wm. Shakespeare and books by Rudolfo Anaya, N. Scott Momaday, Sherman Alexie, poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, Henry David Thoreau [1817-62], and others.

Aren't you glad to be living in 'modern' times?

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

News Factoids for February & March 2012

Barack Obama began his campaign for re-election with a video about his accomplishments in the first three years: "Five years ago, we started a movement for change ..." [4:32] on Youtube

Arizona's Republican-led Legislature has written H.C.R. 2065 to put a referendum on the ballot to lower the state's minumum wage from $7.65 per hour and pay teens and young adults as little as $4.65 per hour.

The value of the minimum wage has gone up 21 percent since 1990; the cost of living has increased 67 percent since 1990. ~~ Economic Policy Institute, July 2011

Here's exactly why the price of gasoline has gone up, per Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida: "Congress deregulated oil traders in December 2000."

For further detail, click on this blog's short report on the subject "Root Cause of High Gas prices" posted on February 25th

Toward the end of February, many polls were showing President Obama getting re-elected by as many as ten or fifteen points. Lots of new messes might show up during this election year, especially since the Republican fascists have no scruples whatsoever, but I am predicting (right here and for the record) that Barack Obama will get his second term in office by a landslide of 60-40.

"Television journalism's most pathological mutation, Fox News, propagandizes for the Republican right as faithfully, slickly, and humorlessly as Russian state television does for Vladimir Putin." ~~ Hendrick Herzberg

At the beginning of March, Bank of America pulled the ATM machines from local Valero gas stations, which leaves only one official Bank of America ATM in Los Lunas (12 miles away from me) to serve the 70,000 residents of Valencia County. The next closest Bank of America branch is 30 miles from me in Albuquerque's South Valley. (Good thing that I already began moving banking matters to the local U.S. Bank branch last year.)

The dainty 'Mormon fritillary' butterflies are dying off in Colorado's Rockies because earlier snowmelts are killing off the wild flowers that they feed on.
~~ per LiveScience

“The Republican Party is the 'special olympics' for politicians.” ~~ G.E. Nordell

I finally saw Oscar-nominated "The Tree of Life" at the local library. Terrence Malick is the greatest living director of cinema in America. The only guys who come close are Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, but their narrative styles are nothing like the absolute poetry of Malick's innovative masterpiece.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

WM Essay #98: "Jesus vs. Pseudo-Christians"

No problem here stipulating that there was an individual in history named Jesus, even that he was a carpenter in Nazareth. It is probable that he walked around Judea (where Israel is today) giving speeches, otherwise nobody in that illiterate society would have noticed him nor would versions of his speeches have been written down by the scribes.

The supernatural aspects of the Jesus story are not stipulated here, and anyway are not relevant, except that millions of people are stuck in the magical thinking provided to them by the purveyors of magical thinking.

There are probably not more than a handful of actual practicing Christians on the planet at this time. The word 'christian' is defined as someone who lives their life according to the principles of the New Testament character Jesus of Nazareth, who was given the title 'Christ' in that book. ('Christ' is the Greek word for 'anointed', meaning the same as the Hebrew word 'Messiah', which really means nothing more than 'leader'.)

Take care of the poor? The poor of today are not taken care of. The poor of today are exploited, with many governments allowing dangerous and inhumane environments, with token 'dollar-a-day' wages so they cannot be chastised for condoning abject slavery.

Heal the sick? Modern pseudo-christians prefer to dismantle Obamacare, which isn't that good a solution anyway, because the pseudo-christians prevented and continue to prevent all progress in healthcare, women's rights, safety in the workplace, food & drug safety, etc.

Pollute the environment? Jesus would not do that.

Maybe you should compare his Matthew 25:40 statement "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" with slavery in Africa and Asia, with Mitt Romney's "I don't care about poor people', with poison fracking fluids injected into the ground, with the billions of tons of garbage killing the Pacific Ocean, with cutting the minimum wage in America.

What would Jesus do? Not that.

Pre-emptive war? Constant saber-rattling about North Korea and Iran and Pakistan and Israel? Jesus would not. Even though Jesus never called himself the Prince of Peace, the actions and statements on record were all about non-violence, so anyone acting as a warmonger cannot call themselves 'christian'.

The historical Jesus ran the moneychangers out of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, a rare tale that is included in all four Gospel accounts. Compare that to modern pseudo-christians who worship Wall Street – ticker reports on every news channel – and there is even a bronze bull on Wall Street as stand-in for the golden calf of the Israelites.

Three of the Gospels relate the quotation “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”. Millionaires and billionaires are disqualified, according to the words of Jesus himself.

It is also probable that the reason that magical Jesus has not returned is that the institutions operating in the name of christianity have worked very hard to create a physical and moral cesspool here on Planet Earth. Humanity at large does not qualify for that Kingdom that Jesus talked about.

The Beatitudes were not about making it tougher for people to make a living, that would be Economic Darwinism. The pseudo-christians on the right insist on 'survival of the fittest', which in practice is the time-worn practices of the barbarians – might makes right, the Oligarchy deserves to rule the planet by 'divine right', and anybody in opposition is beaten, killed, or banished.

Or would Jesus side with the Progressive Movement? "Everybody is better off when everybody is better off."

The record gives evidence that Jesus was about the rights of the people to assemble (the Romans and Pharisees felt threatened by his large crowds), the right of free speech, freedom of religion, collective survival (Loaves and Fishes, anyone?), and non-violence.

But the pseudo-christians will have none of that. Kill all the buffalo! Exterminate the homing pigeon and the whale and the tuna and the salmon! Set uniformed goon squads against peaceful Occupy Movement protesters! Foreclose on families who were sold usurious mortgages by banks – and by god protect the banks from any consequences or regulation! Steal elections across America. Buy politicians for further nefarious ends!

Lie and lie again and loot and cheat and steal are not principles of anyone in the New Testament. Even Judas Iscariot had a conscience – eventually.

The Declaration of Independence created a new model for existence, a new possible future for Mankind. What made the United States special was the attempt by a people to be better than previous societies, to declare their right to give it a try, King of England be damned! The historical Forefathers didn't get it all right – slaves were accorded three-fifths the worth of free men, women demanded the vote and it took 150 years to happen – but the design was intended to capture and maintain and expand on the 'unalienable rights' that were prevented by monarchies and despots and barbarian oligarchs.

Freedom is an idea, it is a promise. Freedom is never guaranteed, it must be protected and nurtured like a flame against the whirlwind. Freedom is something that an individual or a group or a society can only be for or against. There is no middle ground. And the funny thing about rights is that rights exist only when they exist for everyone. Martin Luther King nailed it: “Until all are free, none are free.”

The very sad thing about life in modern America is that half the population wants oppression, for themselves and for the world. They vote for fascism (under the false label Conservative or Republican), and they work very hard to destroy the teetering freedoms that provide the facade that the United States is a free country.

Registered as a Republican? Jesus would not approve.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

WM Essay #97: Reason-Based Social Security

The intended result of the implementation of Reason-Based Taxation in federal and state and local jurisdictions is that revenues match the fiscal budget, and that the national debt is being paid down.

Since the oligarchs own 65 percent of everything and the wealthy class owns 85 percent of everything, Congress needs only to revise the tax code so that each bracket pays for the services that they receive from government.

In Reason-Based Taxation, the oligarchs are levied for 65 percent of the Defense Department budget, and for 65 percent of the budgets for Commerce, Labor, Education, Interior, Transportation, Homeland Security, Justice, Health – in fact, their share of each and every bureau and service and department. The larger wealthy class pays for 85 percent of all the above.

The remaining 15 percent is spread among the weakened middle class, and the bottom 40 percent of the population pays only their social security and local taxes.

* *          * *          * *          * *
This latter thought is what triggered a new concept, which is the topic of this essay.

A sizable portion of the poor class and of the working poor class will not get much return from their social security program benefits, because their lifetime wages and the subsequent contributions to social security were so meager.

And people who live in the panic-ridden 'cash only' economy may never pay anything into social security, from having no regular jobs or being off-record, i.e. paid 'under the table'. These people cannot expect to retire in any sense of the word.

Here's the new idea: What if anybody could pay into their social security account at any time – without having to earn a paycheck. Poor people or rich people, no difference. Much better odds than the numbers racket or lotto games or casinos: the social security program has always guaranteed its payout.

Any dollars contributed directly by any citizen or legal resident to his/her social securiy account would be added to the social security database for that year precisely as if it were receipt of social security tax coming by way of an employer payroll system.

Reason is the only frontier left.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Getting Lazy?

Don't know if I am getting lazy, or if this is a function of getting old. But I decided to give up, or at least back off from, the world of fiction writing. I still will (and do) obey my longtime rule that "I do not argue with my Muse" – whatever shows up to my mind to be written gets written, and then simply filed away.

The year 2012 is critical in the political realm, so I plan more-direct activity there, such as being an official Delegate to last weekend's Democratic Party of New Mexico state pre-primary convention, all day last Saturday up in Albuquerque.

That leaves daily concern for my bookstore websites, the main philosophy website, and the satellite sites Meaning & Purpose and Reason-Based Taxation and The United Federation of Indentured Servants.

Further Rick Walker, P.I. detective novels will have to wait, mainly because I have no skills in marketing. Although non-fiction, the memoir "Hollywood Tales: An Entertainment" is also on hold.

A parallel category to fiction is my various screenplays which include:
"El Tigrón" {online synopsis} - script completed;
"Nostalgia" {online synopsis} - treatment available;
the "Little Hero" rock musical feature - script completed;
the "Sacre Merde!" comedy feature - treatment available.
. . . and lots more ideas that likely will never be put on film.

Thanks for listening. Life moves on. I better get back to work.

“Where there is oppression, Liberty must light the dark.”

“Battling ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full-time job.”

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

March 2012 Quotations

"The Republican Party is the 'special olympics' for politicians."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect."
~~ Lionel Trilling [1905-75]

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."
~~ Thornton Wilder [1897-1975]

"The tavern chair is the throne of human felicity."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]

"The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person."
~~ Quentin Crisp [1908-99]

"Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it."
~~ Langston Hughes [1902-67]

"A smile is the shortest distance between two people."
~~ Victor Borge [1909-2000]

"The first 40 years of life give us the text; the next 30 supply the commentary."
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860]

"Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"We can never be sure that the opinion ]that] we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still."
~~ John Stuart Mill [1806-73]

"It's too bad [that] the people who really know how to run the country are so busy cutting hair and driving taxis."
~~ George Burns [1896-1996]

"A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults."
~~ lawyer Louis Nizer [1902-94]

"The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less."
~~ Eldridge Cleaver [1935-98]

"Ideology is just a pejorative word for principles in which you happen not to believe."
~~ Lexington column in "The Economist"

"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character."
~~ Horace Greeley [1811-72]

"We must learn to love life without ever trusting it."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"Woman was God's second mistake."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi."
~~ William Faulkner [1897-1962]

"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned."
~~ bookseller Lewis Micheaux [1885-1976]
in "The Black Power Mixtape" docufilm [2011]

“I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state are absolute . . . To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up.”
~~ Rick Santorum
"Rick Santorum makes me want to throw up."
~~ Spokane, Washington blogger 'duroc'

"Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
~~ Thomas Alva Edison [1847-1931]

"Chastity – the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]

"Alcohol may lead nowhere, but it sure is the scenic route."
~~ columnist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]

"If you survive long enough, you are revered, rather like an old building."
~~ Katharine Hepburn [1907-2003]

"They failed because they did not start with a dream."
~~ Nick Shakespeare

"Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money."
~~ Robert H. Jackson [1892-1954], U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1941-54

"What looks like tomorrow's problem is rarely the real problem when tomorrow rolls around."
~~ journalist James Fallows

"All our life is but a mass of habits."
~~ William James [1842-1910]

"Worry is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere."
~~ Erma Bombeck [1927-96]

"The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world's problems."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"There is a dilemma, to reconcile three time scales: in the short term, the economy; in the middle range, global well-being generally; and, in the long range, the environment."
~~ Matthieu Ricard

"Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise."
~~ Thomas Gray [1716-71]

"They only call it class war when we fight back."
~~ cover art of Z Magazine

"Readers should be led into temptation."
~~ Anthony Lane, New Yorker Magazine reviewer

"One sits and beats an old tin can lard pail / One beats and beats for that which one believes"
~~ poet Wallace Stevens [1879-1955]

"Reality is a dirty word for me. There's too much of it about."
~~ director Ken Russell [1927-2011]

"Learn from the masses, and then teach them."
~~ Chairman Mao Tse-tung [1893-1976]

"Take my country forward."
~~ Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

"Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture."
~~ aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"Every time I make a picture the critics' estimate of American public taste goes down ten percent."
~~ Cecil B. DeMille [1881-1959]

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."
~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

Recipe of The Day: Italian Pasta

STEP 1: Cook up some pasta, of your choice. For this dish I like small elbows, or sometimes flat egg noodles. Single serving is 4-5 ounces dry. Pour cooked pasta into collander to drain.

STEP 2: In that same saucepan, pour two 'blorts' of Caesar dressing (the brand that I use is Ken's Steak House). Bring fire up to medium high, to boil away ('reduce') the liquid. Also add one tablespoon of butter.

Chop a package of Buddig deli meat, such as ham or beef. Add to saucepan.

Chop one green onion; chop one Roma tomato. Optional: chop a few black olives. Add all to the saucepan. Add drained pasta to the saucepan.

STEP 3: Keep stirring over medium-high heat, until liquid is reduced. Add 1/4 cup parmesan or romano cheese to thicken further.

STEP 4: Serve on a dinner plate. Serve with a glass of red wine if you were a 'good kid' today.

Root Cause of High Gas Prices

An email yesterday from Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida clarified the root cause of today's high gas prices, in just one short sentence: "Congress deregulated oil traders in December 2000."

On December 14 in 2000, Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, deregulating all derivatives trading, which was signed into law by President Clinton on December 21.

That law was a major cause of The Enron Scandal in 2001, and also deregulated petroleum futures traders, the cause of rising gas prices ever since.

The price at the pump was $1.29 when George W. Bush became President in January of 2001, and is now a nationwide average of $3.63 – nearly three times higher. The prediction for the Summer of election year 2012 is that gas is likely to be $5.00 per gallon.

I figured this could be blamed on Newt Gingrich, but he was replaced as House Speaker in January 1999 by Republican Dennis Hastert of Illinois. Senator Phil Gramm is currently a full-time lobbyist for Union Bank of Switzerland.

The Republican propaganda machine will, of course, point the finger at President Obama. But the factual root cause of high gas & oil prices remains Republican Senator Phil Gramm and the fascist Republican agenda of deregulation.

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

February 2012 Quotations

"At this point, the Republican candidates for U.S. President in 2012 can be referred to as 'The Four Stooges'."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess."
~~ lawyer Louis Nizer [1902-94]

"The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man."
~~ Madame de Stael [1766-1817]

"Democrats would never win if we took away women's right to vote."
~~ Ann 'The Man' Coulter

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
~~ Noam Chomsky

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
~~ British prime-minister William Pitt [1759-1806]

"You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep."
~~ Navajo Proverb

“We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers and sisters.”
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere."
~~ Frank A. Clark [1911-91]

"All ideals are dangerous: because they debase and brand the actual; all are poisons, but indispensable as temporary cures."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats."
~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it."
~~ aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard."
~~ comedian Steven Wright

"I had, out of my sixty teachers, a scant half dozen who couldn't have been supplanted by phonographs."
~~ Don Herold [1889-1966]

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"Getting old is not for sissies."
~~ actress Bette Davis [1908-89]

"I make my pictures for people, not for critics."
~~ Cecil B. DeMille [1881-1959]

"Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today – perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850."
~~ Adam Gopnik

"Since the 1980s, the great American principle that we're all free to start our own business has been deliberately distorted into an ideology that labels as 'socialist' any regulations that block businesses from lying, stealing, polluting, maiming, or even killing our citizens."
~~ Laura Sanchez of Los Lunas, New Mexico

"Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other."
~~ William Faulkner [1897-1962]

"Don't you walk away from that vote! People died for the right to vote!"
~~ Rev. Jesse Jackson, in 1984 speech

"It takes two to speak truth, one to speak and another to hear."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"How can [our] society that is so undemocratic claim to be a model of democracy for others?"
~~ comment on IMDb by 'green elephant' of Canada

"I'm not concerned about the very poor."
~~ candidate Mitt Romney

"The only thing new in this world is the history we don't know."
~~ Harry S. Truman [1884-1972]

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"Wit has truth in it. Wisecracking is merely calisthenics with words."
~~ Dorothy Parker [1893-1967]

"It's impossible not to take advantage of the people. The trick is to take advantage of them in their own best interest."
~~ Ralph Ellison [1914-94]

"They call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
~~ George Carlin [1937-2008]

"Expectation is the root of all heartache."
~~ Wm. Shakespeare [1564-1616]

"Words are like money. There is nothing so useless, except when put to use."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]

"We cannot control the evil tongues of others, but a good life enables us to disregard them."
~~ Cato the Elder [234-149 B.C.E.]

"Discussion is an exhange of knowledge; an argument is an exchange of ignorance."
~~ journalist Robert Quillen

"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it."
~~ comedian Steven Wright

"Actions define character, not the other way around."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil - but there is no way around them."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]

"A healthy pessimism may be better than a suicidal optimism."
~~ Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz [1941-2011]

"Battling ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full-time job."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"In the end, I want you to join my gang. I do not want to join yours."
~~ poet Vachel Lindsay [1879-1931]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

Windows Mail cleanup tip

I got to doing some backups of very old data files from my hard-drive to a storage area on my website, whose server moves around but seems to be in New York nowadays.

The plan was to backup all my Windows Mail files, then delete the very old stuff on my hard-drive, those not really of use unless I needed to revisit some communication from several years ago, such as when I uploaded my detective novel to the publisher in 2005.

During my first attempt to upload the data offsite, the FTP software crashed and I found that there were hundreds of null files stored among my real emails, mostly at the top. Each null file had an encrypted name (and thus a directory entry) but size of zero. So I figured no harm in deleting the null files, and removed the ones FTP'd off site, then removed the original null files on my hard drive.

That process got rid of 7500 directory entries from my hard drive, and if each one took 100 bytes to store the name of nothing, then I removed 750K bytes that has been loaded to my RAM every time that I opened Windows Mail.

Two days since I did that, Windows Mail seems to run faster (hard to tell), so today I deleted the 7500 null files from my Recycle Bin too.

So here is how to find the files on your harddrive, knowing of course that my Windows Vista system can easily be different than your Windows system files.

Drill down from your *user name* to AppData then Local then Microsoft then Windows Mail – Local Folders will display the same folder structure as what you see inside your personal Windows Mail. The null files are simple to spot: encrypted name and size of zero. Be very careful not to include any file with non=zero size, but otherwise all you have to do is highlight & Shift-Down, then Delete the file groups in chunks.

(And don't forget to clear the Recycle Bin, which you should be doing on a regular basis anyway.)

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

News Factoids for December 2011 & January 2012

"At this point, the Republican candidates for U.S. President can be referred to as 'The Four Stooges'."
~~ G.E. Nordell

Notice arrived that I am getting a C.O.L.A. increase (Cost of Living Adjustment) of $40 on my monthly Social Security check, which started in January – after no increase for the last three years. Thank you, President Obama!

About a third of all land on the planet is now desert, almost 20 million square miles, which increases every year.
~~ per New Yorker Magazine

If you are looking for a replacement for WebRing, try Nexus Links

Apparently, the Gingrich gang are paying to destroy Romney by promoting the half-hour docufilm "King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came To Town". What I've seen of the film is all anti-Romney and does not promote anything or anyone on the Republican fascist side of U.S. politics.

The percent increase in [people on food stamps] during Mr. Bush's presidency was higher than it has been under Mr. Obama.
~~ CBS News, January 2012

General Motors sold only 7,671 Chevy Volt hybrid electric vehicles in 2011, and Nissan sold only 8,729 Leaf electric cars.
~~ news item

Copyright 2012 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

January 2012 Quotations

"The people have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
~~ Frank Norris [1870-1902]

"I was friends with President Ronald Reagan and he once said to me, 'I don't know how anybody can serve in public office without being an actor'."
~~ Warren Beatty

"While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
~~ Eugene V. Debs [1855-1926]

"You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do."
~~ Kilgore Trout character, in "Timequake" novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]

"It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit."
~~ Noël Coward [1899-1973]

"Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. It doesn't work."
~~ economist Allan Meltzer

"The most miserable possession [that] a man can have is the thing [that] he hurt somebody to get."
~~ writer & cartoonist Frank A. Clark [1911-91]

"No one changes the world who isn't obsessed."
~~ Billie Jean King

"It is impossible to go thru life without trust. That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself."
~~ Graham Greene [1904-91]

"Law is not an instrument of politics but the other way around."
~~ octogenarian Russian activist Sergei Kovalyov

"Ask not what America can do for women, but ask what women can do for America."
~~ Geraldine Ferraro [1935-2011]

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"The man who dies ... rich dies disgraced."
~~ Andrew Carnegie [1835-1919]

"Truths are illusions [that] we have forgotten are illusions."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82], in "Circles" 1841

"Flying may not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price."
~~ Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it."
~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]

"Ambition is a dream with a V-8 engine."
~~ Elvis Presley [1935-77]

"The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected."
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007] in 2004

"Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor."
~~ Stephen Sondheim

"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many people want in ... and how many people want out."
~~ Tony Blair

"I honestly think that it is better to be a failure at something [that] you love than to be a success at something [that] you hate."
~~ George Burns 1896-1996]

"Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf."
~~ Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941]

"The only truly serious questions are the ones that even a child can formulate."
~~ Milan Kundera

"Any girl can look glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid."
~~ actress/inventor Hedy Lamarr [1913-2000]

"Expressing anger is a form of public littering."
~~ Prof. Willard Gaylin

"Moral indignation is just jealousy with a halo around it."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we loved deeply becomes part of us."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]

"It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"[The internet] is a vanity press for the demented, the conspiratorial, or the merely self-important."
~~ Lars-Erik Nelson [1941-2000], New York Daily News reporter

"I find the argument that we need lower taxes to create jobs mystifying, because we've had the lowest taxes in this decade and about the worst job creation ever."
~~ Warren Buffett

"Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can think of no milder term to apply to ... the general prey of the rich on the poor."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"Hope is the raw material of losers."
~~ Fernando Flores

"Every act of love is a change in the universe."
~~ Aleister Crowley [1875-1947]

"Enough is better than too much."
~~ French proverb

"The biggest thing [that] you can do for kids is [to] give them the ability to figure things out."
~~ musician Frank Zappa [1940-93]

"Lying about the future produces history."
~~ Umberto Eco

"When I am happy I am always good, but when I am good I am seldom happy."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"It is said that paradox is a Truth standing on its head to attract attention."
~~ Allan W. Watts [1915-73]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

2011 Websites Statistics

The editing software on Blogger does not work well with table structure code, so the prior attempts to display the annual statistical accomplishments on my two main domains were pulled away from the blog back in April 2008 and consolidated on www.genordell.com/webstats.htm.

The stats for 2011 are now posted on that page. In summary: Ye Olde Webmaster created 142 new pages & coded 2,571 new covers (books, albums, DVDs, etc.) during the calendar year 2011.

2011 Year-End Bonus Quotations

"One of the good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]

"All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]

"Talent hits a target [that] no one can hit; genius hits a target [that] no one can see."
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860]

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."
~~ Robin Williams

"The best diet is having to pay for your own groceries."
~~ Aaron Karo

"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."
~~ Henry J. Kaiser [1882-1967]

"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?"
~~ Jean Kerr [1922-2003]

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"God may have had fun at creation, but he really didn't think things through."
~~ filmmaker Lars von Trier

"It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism."
~~ activist Malcolm X [1925-65]

"Equality with whites will not solve the problems of either whites or Negroes if it means equality in a world society stricken by poverty and in a universe doomed to extinction by war."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68], from "Where Do We Go From Here", 1968

"In Hollywood, you're as good as your last picture. If you didn't have one in production within the last three months, you're forgotten, no matter what you have achieved [before] this."
~~ Erich von Stroheim [1885-1957]

"Food is an important part of a balanced diet."
~~ Fran Lebowitz

"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women."
~~ Margaret Thatcher

"Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us."
~~ minimalist sculptor Carl Andre

"Circumstances make man, not man circumstances."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"The pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful."
~~ Edgar Allan Poe [1809-49]

"Wanting to meet an author because you like his books is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté."
~~ Margaret Atwood

"Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion."
~~ Franklin Pierce [1804-69]

"He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news."
~~ Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956]

"Newt Gingrich embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive."
~~ conservative columnist George Will

"Asking a writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp post how it feels about dogs."
~~ Ann Landers {Eppie Lederer 1918-2002}

“In the war of ideas, it's not enough just to be against something; you have to be for something that is sound as well.”
~~ Lech Walesa

"The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds."
~~ Lenny Bruce [1925-66]

"Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes."
~~ John Le Carre

"Always make the audience suffer as much as possible."
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]

"I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good."
~~ Hollywood mogul Harry Cohn [1891-1958]

"Capitalism must be holy because religion is a business."
~~ minimalist sculptor Carl Andre

"Saving is a very fine thing. Especially if your parents have done it for you."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"Character is much easier kept than recovered."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]

"Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides."
~~ Margaret Thatcher

"Intelligence requires that you don't defend an assumption."
~~ physicist David Bohm [1917-92]

"Wishes cost nothing unless you want them to come true."
~~ cartoonist Frank Tyger

"No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the rights of minorities."
~~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]

"The man who does more than he is paid [for] will soon be paid for more than he does."
~~ Napoleon Hill [1883-1970]

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]

"Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadfully uneasy to take."
~~ Josh Billings [1818-85]

"Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

December 2011 Quotations

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
~~ Frederick Douglass [1818-95]

"Action will remove the doubts that theory cannot solve."
~~ Tehyi Hsieh [1884-1972]

"One person speaking up makes more noise than a thousand people who remain silent."
~~ Thom Hartnett

"Only one letter divides the comic from the cosmic."
~~ Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977]

"Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?"
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude."
~~ novelist Cynthia Ozick

"Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people."
~~ boxing champion Joe Frazier [1944-2011]

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
~~ Herbert Spencer [1820-1903]

"It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of a spider."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667-1745]

"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses."
~~ Shirley Chisolm [1924-2005]

"The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it."
~~ journalist Mignon McLaughlin [1913-83]

"Being a celebrity is probably the closest to being a beautiful woman as you can get."
~~ Kevin Costner

"Our government is in our education."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"If we are to reach real peace in this world, we shall have to begin with the children."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."
~~ Frederick Douglass [1818-95]

"Your silence will not protect you."
~~ Audre Lorde [1934-92]

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time and your government when it deserves it."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice."
~~ Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"As individual fingers we can be broken, but together we make a mighty fist."
~~ Native American leader Sitting Bull [1831?-1890]

"Make cornbread, not war."
~~ Charleston, South Carolina chef Sean Brock

"If people actually knew what was happening, they would be really pissed off. They should be."
~~ activist Barbara A. Brenner

"Old age is not a disease, it is a triumph."
~~ Maggie Kuhn [1905-95], founder of the GrayPanthers

QUIDQUID LATINE DICTUM SIT, ALTUM VIDETUR
("Anything said in Latin sounds profound")

DIEM DULCEM HABES ("Have a nice day")

"Virtue is necessary for the good life but not sufficient for the good life."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"Money is necessary for the good life but not sufficient for the good life."
~~ mis-attributed to Aristotle

"We are moving from a world created by privilege to a world created by community ... Global themes are emerging in response to cascading ecological crises and human suffering."
~~ eco-activist Paul Hawken

"The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]

"It is better to live rich than to die rich."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]

"There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing."
~~ explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes

"He who fights for his rights can lose; he who does not fight has lost already."
~~ German labor slogan

"The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that [we] can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want."
~~ per Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]

"You are master of your words, but, once spoken, they control you."
~~ author uncertain

"Life is a four-letter word."
~~ Lenny Bruce [1925-66]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

News Factoids for November 2011

Due to the small crop (global warming!), U.S. peanuts tripled in price this Fall; expect the price of peanut butter to double or worse before the end of the year.

Use this free online refinance calculator to see what future interest rate will be the optimal one for refinancing your old fixed-rate mortgage:
zwicke.NBER.org/refinance

Last year, total U.S. student loan debt exceeded U.S. credit card debt for the first time ever. — Time Magazine
The cost of college has increased 538 percent over the past 30 years.
— Time Magazine

There are around 5,000 privately-owned Bengal tigers in the U.S., more than the 3,600 that are living in the wild in Asia. — Xian Science Monitor

Just 147 interlocking companies control 40 percent of the world economy; the top 25 companies include Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Vanguard Group, United Bank of Switzerland, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Walton Enterprises, Bank of New York Mellon, Goldman Sachs, T. Rowe Price Group, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America. — per New Scientist Magazine, Oct 2011

Several U.S. Senators & candidates are promoting a Constitutional amendment that would declare that only humans are 'persons' under U.S. law.
'Reverse Citizens United' Constitutional Amendment

Income for the poor rose 18 percent between 1979 and 2007 (in inflation-adjusted dollars), while middle-class income rose 40 percent and the income of the top one percent rose 275 percent.
— Congressional Budget Office report, October 2011

Commercial helium gas is extracted from natural gas, mostly in Texas and China. At the present rate of consumption, we will reach peak supply in twenty years, after which the supply will drop sharply.

Movie attendance dropped to a 17-year low in Summer 2011, and more viewers chose 2-D tickets over 3-D for expected blockbusters "Pirates of The Caribbean" #4, "Harry Potter" #8, "Green Lantern", and "Kung Fu Panda 2".

Information on the Occupy Movement
Progressivism / 'Occupy Movement' at Working Minds Philosophy website

There are 65 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S.A.; 48 of them are leaking radioactive tritium.
— two federal reports, 2011

Copyright 2011 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

November 2011 Quotations

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."
~~ President Herbert Hoover [1874-1964]

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."
~~ Ben Hecht [1894-1964]

"Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity/"
~~ adventurer Thor Heyerdahl [1914-2002]

"An expert is [someone] who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a narrow field."
~~ physicist Niels Bohr [1885-1962]

"When dealing with people, remember [that] you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice, and motivated by pride and vanity."
~~ Dale Carnegie [1888-1965]

"Finance, like Time, devours its own children."
~~ Honoré de Balzac [1799-1850]

"Story is the shortest distance between people."
~~ Jeffrey Courion

"I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things."
~~ Antoine de St-Exupéry [1900-44]

"Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science. It was a miracle."
~~ Igor Sikorsky [1889-1972]

"Whether outwardly or inwardly, whether in space or time, the farther we penetrate the unknown, the vaster and more marvelous it becomes."
~~ Charles A. Lindbergh [1902-74], in 'Autobiography of Values' 1978

"God gave us memories that we might have roses in December."
~~ J.M. Barrie [1860-1937]

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
~~ rock legend Jimi Hendrix [1942-70]

"Don't declare victory at halftime."
~~ Stephen Windwalker

"Why should we believe [that] the private sector will take care of poverty? It never has in our history."
~~ Gene Nichol

"Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another. ... Inequality undermines democracy."
~~ George Packer, columnist at The New Yorker Magazine

"[The United States is] a dysfunctional plutocracy serving the biggest corporations and the billionaires behind them."
~~ Dave Johnson, Campaign For America's Future blogger

"The creative process is a process of surrender, not control."
~~ Julia Cameron

"Two dangers threaten the universe: order and disorder."
~~ French poet Paul Valéry [1871-1945]

"Everybody wants to save the earth. Nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes."
~~ P.J. O'Rourke

"The only true voyage of discovery would not be to visit strange lands but to behold the universe thru the eyes of another."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]

"We always want the best man to win an election. Unfortunately, he never runs."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"The key to success isn't much good until one discovers the right lock to insert it [into]."
~~ Chinese author & lecturer Tehyi Hsieh [1884-1972]

"Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral."
~~ Rosalind Russell [1907-76]

"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher."
~~ Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]

"If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"Don't get it right, just get it written."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you $50,000 for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul."
~~ Marilyn Monroe [1926-32]

"The clowns have finally taken over the circus ... [The Republican Party] is now overwhelmed by its own nonsense."
~~ Timothy Egan, in The New York Times

"If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"In this country, everything is possible."
~~ Shakira

"The lure of flying is the lure of beauty."
~~ Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

News Factoids for October 2011

Albertson's and Walgreen's have already put out a row of Xmas decorations, in the middle of October! The Halowe'en candy has been on the shelves for weeks, so long by now that it is probably already stale.

The Film News Briefs free weekday newsletter is full of information that is useful for anyone in the movie or TV business, or wanting to be. There is so much info on new movies and casting deals (I skip the TV deals and the executive hiring announcements) that I am often a day or two behind in updating that data to my various websites.    free signup here

"The average real weekly earnings of a typical [American] blue-collar worker are lower today than in 1964." == Time Magazine

Taxes at the end of the Reagan administration were 18 percent of GDP; today taxes are 15 percent of GDP. Spending under Reagan averaged 22.4 percent of GDP "well above the 1971-2009 average of 20.6 percent", while spending today is 24 percent of GDP. == per Time Magazine, August 2011

The wealth gap between white and black American households doubled in the last two decades, to a ratio of twenty to one. == per a Pew Study, 2011

Internet Explorer’s overall share dropped from 56% in July to 54% in August while Firefox’s market share increased from 19% to 20% and Safari’s share grew one point to 9%. Between July 2010 and July 2011, however, Microsoft’s browser share remained steady at 56%.

The world human population reached 7 billion sometime during the month of October 2011.

Median income of U.S. college graduates declined 9.6 percent since 2000, a difference of more than $4,000 in salary. == per Time Magazine

"The U.S. collects less tax as a percentage of national income than any other leading economy." A graphic showed Denmark at the top with 48 percent and the U.S. at #16, with half that rate. == per Time Magazine

The U.S. Postal Service announced that the price of a basic stamp is going up a penny, to 45¢ on January 22 in 2012.

Copyright 2011 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

October 2011 Quotations

"The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible."
~~ financier Bernard Baruch [1870–1965]

"It's just amazing how long this country has been going to hell without ever having got there."
~~ TV curmudgeon Andy Rooney

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."
~~ eco-activist Edward Abbey [1927-89]

"You will not become a saint thru other people's sins."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]

"A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth."
~~ Thomas Mann [1875-1955]

"The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference."
~~ Bess Myerson

"The expression 'as a matter of fact' precedes many an expression that isn't."
~~ Laurence J. Peter [1919-90]

"You are made in the image of what you desire."
~~ Thomas Merton [1915-68]

"Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good [that] we often might win, by fearing to attempt."
~~ activist Jane Addams [1860-1935]

"We must try to contribute joy to the world. I didn't always know this and am happy [that] I lived long enough to find it out."
~~ Roger Ebert, in 2011

"Racecar spelled backwards is racecar."
~~ Kevin Kennedy

"I do want to get rich, but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]

"History keeps repeating itself. That's one of the things wrong with history."
~~ Clarence Darrow [1857-1938]

"Character is like a tree and a reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
~~ Maya Angelou

"The proper time to influence the character of a child is about 100 years before he is born."
~~ theologian Wm. Ralph Inge [1860-1954]

"Being right half the time beats being half-right all the time."
~~ Malcolm Forbes [1919-90]

"There are some days I practice positive thinking, and other days I'm not positive [that] I am thinking."
~~ John M. Eades

"Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"To have joy one must share it."
~~ George Gordon, Lord Byron [1788-1824]

"An idea that isn't dangerous is hardly worth calling an idea at all."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. / Mere Anarchy is loosed upon the world. / ... / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
~~ W.B. Yeats [1865-1939], in "the Second Coming" 1919

"If someone thinks that he does not live by a philosophy, then what he really lives by are the scraps and tail-ends of other people's broken and discarded philosophies."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"The blackest despair that can take hold of any society is the fear that living honestly is futile."
~~ Italian journalist Corrado Alvaro [1895-1956]

"There can be no happiness if the things [that] we believe in are different from the things [that] we do."
~~ Freya Stark [1893-1993]

"The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]

Zuckerberg's Law: "The amount of sharing by a Facebook user roughly doubles each year."

"Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there."
~~ Josh Billings [1818-85]

"[Steve Jobs] revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing."
~~ biographer Walter Isaacson

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], in 2005

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is.”
~~ Mary Pettibone Poole [?-??]

"Hóka-héy, today is a good day to die!"
~~ Sioux leader Crazy Horse [c. 1840-1877]

"The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
~~ General Phillip Sheridan [1831-88]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}

The U.S. Beer Monopoly

The United States ranks 13th in per capita beer consumption at 81.6 liters, and is second in total volume against #1 China.

Beer accounts for roughly 85% of all alcohol volume sold in the United States and annually generates over $91 billion in retail sales. South African Breweries-Miller became the largest brewing company in the world when it acquired Royal Grolsch in 2002; InBev was then the second-largest beer-producing company in the world, and Anheuser-Busch was third.

But when Anheuser-Busch acquired InBev in November 2008, the new Anheuser-Busch InBev company became the largest brewer in the world.

2010 statistics from Beverage Industry Magazine, March 2011

Anheuser-Busch InBev places first:
#1 Bud Light – 28.5% market share
#2 Budweiser – 11.4% market share
#5 Natural Light – 6.0% market share
#6 Busch Light – 4.0% market share
#7 Busch – 3.6% market share
#10 Natural Ice – 1.9% market share
— for a total of at least 55.4 percent share of the U.S. beer market

Molson Coors places second:
#3 Coors Light – 10.2% market share
#9 Keystone Light – 2.6% market share
— for a total of 12.8 percent share of the U.S. beer market

SAB-Miller places third:
#4 Miller Lite – 9.1% market share
#8 Miller High Life – 2.7% market share
— for a total of 11.8 percent share of the U.S. beer market

... which adds up to three corporations controlling at least 80 percent of the U.S. beer market.

Copyright 2011 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

A Walter T. Foster Story

Walter T. Foster published a series of large-format books about art, such as "How To Draw Horses". The books were priced at a dollar each in the 1940s and 1950s, were displayed on racks at hobby and stationary stores, and were so popular that he became very wealthy. His daughter Margaret was my mother's best friend, and Margaret and her son Lyle lived only a few miles away from us in Culver City. (Lyle was the age of my two younger brothers, so he and I never connected.)

Walter Foster was a character. He made his fortune and allowed himself to indulge himself in fun ways. He had a Christmas list, and my mother was on that list. I remember one year Walter sent out a limited edition phonograph record of him singing Christmas carols, backed by something like a 25-piece orchestra. The platter itself had to be 78rpm and was about ten inches across and made of clear red plastic, sorta like ruby glass. (I do not remember any impression of Walter's singing.)

Another year he sent out limited edition prints of a watercolor by one of the artists presented in his art books, mailed in a tube. My father was a cabinet maker and he liked the print, so he framed it under glass and the picture hung in my parents' hallway for many years.

The painted portion is on ecru? paper; measures twenty-one inches wide and 14 inches high; and the signature is in red in the bottom right corner. The subject is a road in India, the trees look like California sycamores, and three oxcarts are moving along the sun-dappled road. Dad scotch-taped a label from 'Walter Foster Art Services' on the back, with the handwritten date 1962.

When I was in the Air Force, my permanent station was Las Vegas, Nevada (with visits to Thailand and Vietnam), and when I was discharged, I got a job as the systems programmer for Howard Hughes (the I.B.M. 360 was brand new then). At some point during that two years, the artist of my parents's watercolor print had a one-man showing in Las Vegas, and I went one afternoon. I do not remember where that event was, but I can see the house and the driveway, it was a commercial gallery that appeared to be adobe and was in a residential neighborhood. The artist was there, a medium-size man from India; he was surrounded by art people and I was not very comfortable in that setting, so I did not speak to him. His other paintings on display were very good. That would have been in 1969 or 1970.

Around 1980, Margaret and Walter died close together in time and Lyle inherited the company and hated being an executive, so eventually he sold it to a corporation and moved to Northern California and became a taxidermist.

Fast forward. Mom was changing the decor at the house, one of her hobbies, and she asked me if I wanted the Foster watercolor, and I agreed and that print has been in my possession ever since. After I moved to New Mexico, I hung the framed picture in my hallway; I began to wonder what it is that I have, but cannot decipher the signature, which seems to contain the initial letters G and something and A and R. I began wondering what the picture might be worth during one of my visits to Santa Fe, which is infested with art galleries of all types. (I figure that identifying the artist will shorten the door-to-door hunt up Canyon Road, etc.)

I tried emailing the present company, but got no reply. The official website boasts of their 88-year history, and they are keeping up to date with such products as an iPad app about drawing with digital software. I might also be able to identify the artist by slogging thru the books about watercolor, but I do not have access, nor is the website anywhere near complete in presenting old issues.

I plan to take a photo of the framed painting and a close-up of the signature, and when I do that, there will be two blue-colored hotlinks in this sentence.

Copyright 2011 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

September 2011 Quotations

"Spouting Tea Party propaganda does not make you a patriot, the same as getting athlete's foot does not make you an athlete."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Privatization is fascism, period."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"There are no rules in filmmaking, only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness."
~~ Frank Capra [1897-1991]

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Man is the only animal that plays poker."
~~ Don Herold [1889-1966]

"Politicians are people who, when they see the light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy more tunnel."
~~ London banker Sir John Quinton

"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts."
~~ John Locke [1632-1704]

"All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear."
~~ beat writer Ambrose Redmoon {real name James Neil Hollingworth} [1933–96]

"The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm."
~~ Thomas J. Watson [1874-1956], founder of I.B.M.

"In Art, as in love, instinct is enough."
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924]

"I thought drama was when the actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries."
~~ Frank Capra [1897-1991]

"Thunder is impressive, but it is the lightning that does all the work."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Didn't we settle the question of Divine Right in 1776?"
~~ Susan S. Pastin of Chicago, Illinois (in a Letter to Time Magazine, August 2011)

"Cynicism ... follows whenever malefactors of great wealth escape the consequences of their deeds."
~~ Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor & publisher of The Nation Magazine

"Know the true value of time; snatch, sieze, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no delay, no procrastination; never put off until tomorrow what you can do today."
~~ Philip Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield [1694-1773]

"Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly."
~~ playwright Edward Albee, in "Zoo Story", 1958

"I will keep working until every [American] who wants to work has a job."
~~ Congressman Martin Heinrich [Dem-NM01], Labor Day 2011

"When writing a novel, a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
~~ Jack London [1876-1916]

“At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.”
~~ Raymond Chandler [1888-1959]

"Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"There is no labor [that] a person does that is undignified, if they do it right."
~~ Bill Cosby

"Confidence is what you have until you understand the problem."
~~ Woody Allen

"What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do."
~~ John Ruskin [1819-1900]

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88] (in 1965)

"I intend to live forever - so far, so good."
~~ comedian Steven Wright

"It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends."
~~ J.K. Rowling

"If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]

"All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner."
~~ Red Skelton [1913-97]

"Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful."
~~ novelist Kathleen Winsor [1919-2003]

"History is not merely what happened. It is what happened in the context of what might have happened."
~~ historian Hugh Trevor-Roper [1914-2003]

"If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime."
~~ Jack Kerouac [1922-69]

"What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending."
~~ William Dean Howells [1837-1920]

"The drought in New Mexico is so bad that the big-ticket show at the arena in Albuquerque last month was 'Disney On Dirt'."
~~ G.E. Nordell

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}