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Friday, January 31, 2014

December 2013-January 2014 News Factoids

The financial ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said Wednesday that the 16-Day TEA Party Shutdown “to date has taken $24 billion out of the economy,” equaling $1.5 billion dollars a day and “shaved at least 0.6 percent off annualized fourth-quarter 2013 G.D.P. growth". — ABC News, 10/17/2013

While the TEA Party was extremely vocal in blaming Obamacare for their tantrum, saying that Obamacare will cost Americans $35 billion over ten years (not true, but repeated without shame), the 16-Day TEA Party Shutdown sucked $24 billion out of the economy in just 2½ weeks (as reported by ABC News and by Standard & Poors). Be sure to thank a Republican!

On Thursday December 5th fast food workers struck for a living wage in 110 cities, with protestors supporting in another 100 – the movement is growing exponentially.

According to data from NASA'a G.R.A.C.E. satellite (which measures shifts in gravity) the magnetic North Pole has jumped four feet eastward since 2005, and the data correlates with the ice that has melted away at the top and bottom of the planet. (per weekly column of www.earthweek.com)

New U.S.P.S. first class postage rate of 49 cents (up 3¢) started on 25 January 2014.

Then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson told U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen [GOP-IL] in a recorded conversation in November 1968 that President Nixon committed treason when his campaign people asked South VietNam to delay the Paris Peace Talks until after the election, promising that he would negotiate a better deal than L.B.J. once elected. That tape was not released to the public until December 2008, so the matter is moot. Except for the part where Republicans glorify Nixon as a patriot without being laughed at.

Phillip Morris has bought a lot of advertising airtime for Superbowl XLIX in January 2015. They are currently negotiating with major networks and publishers to market 'Marlboro M' on air and in print; the marijuana cigarette ads would be broadcast only in Colorado & Washington, while generic Marlboro ads will broadcast elsewhere.
Copyright 2014 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Monday, January 20, 2014

January 2014 Quotations (62) featuring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."
~~ Joseph Conrad

“California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.”
~~ Don DeLillo, in the novel "White Noise" [1985]

"Substance separates film from movies."
~~ John Huston [1906-87]

"Ignorance is its own reward."
~~ common saying

“Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.”
~~ Gordon Graham

"I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books."
~~ Jorge Luis Borges [1899-1986]

"Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering."
~~ Donald E. Westlake [1933-2008]

“I came to the conclusion long ago that all life is six to five against.”
~~ Damon Runyon [1884-1946]

"I used to tell lies. But I gave it up. The field is overrun with amateurs."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"When you are done changing, you are done."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again."
~~ Nelson Mandela [1918-2013]

"Immanuel Kant is the real evil of our age, the villain of European history."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”
~~ Alfred Hitchcock

"The universe is an intelligence test."
~~ Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed [person]."
~~ Walt Kelly [1913-73] as his comic strip character Pogo

"We has met the enemy, and it is us."
~~ Walt Kelly [1913-73] as his comic strip character Pogo

"The difference between government bonds and men is that government bonds mature."
~~ Debbie Perry

"I considered atheism but there weren't enough holidays."
~~ Anonymous

"Don't you just hate rhetorical questions?"
~~ Anonymous

"Your primary power is your character and your integrity."
~~ Sam Haskell, TV department head at William Morris Agency

"This song is copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
~~ Woody Guthrie [1912-67] about his 1944 song 'This Land Is Your Land'

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes . . . the ones who see things differently – they're not fond of rules . . . You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things . . . they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the [people] who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011]

"Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine."
~~ George Gordon, Lord Byron [1788-1824]

"Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn."
~~ American humorist Garrison Keillor

"The voice of protest...is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum...is bidding all men...obey in silence the tyrannous word of command.
~~ Charles Eliot Norton [1827-1908]

“You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.”
~~ Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus [535?-475? BCE]

"The real choice we have to make is between peace and nationalism."
~~ Orhan Parmuk, Turkish novelist

"Man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses."
~~ mystery author Rex Stout [1886-1975]

"I am disgusted by what a thoroughly dishonest nation of money-hungry fools we Americans have become."
~~ Suzanne Murphy, Southampton NY [Time Magazine Letters July 2005]

"I am in the world only for the purpose of composing."
~~ Franz Peter Schubert [1797-1828]

"If my poetry is aimed at achieving anything it is to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel."
~~ rock music legend Jim Morrison [1943-71]

"Above all else to thine own self be true."
~~ Wm. Shakespeare [1564-1616]

"In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman."
~~ Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013]

"Knowledge without integrity is dreadful."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]

"There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment."
~~ gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]

"Whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings – that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide."
~~ attributed to Gautama Buddha [5th Century BCE]

"Wherever one is not, that is where the heart is."
~~ French proverb

"What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. And what I do, I understand."
~~ Chinese proverb

"In waking a tiger, use a long stick."
~~ Chairman Mao Tse-tung [1893-1976]

"Writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"The illiterate of the XXIst Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
~~ Alvin Toffler

"You can't cheat an honest man. He has to have larceny in his heart in the first place."
~~ Claude William Dukenfield [1880-1946], better known as W.C. Fields

Moore's Law: The number of transistors on a chip will double about once every two years."
~~ Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel (1965)

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.
~~ Andrew Jackson [1767-1845]

"We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another."
~~ Luciano De Crescenzo

"If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you. I came to live out loud."
~~ Émile Zola [1840-1902]

"How have I loved liberty? With the enthusiasm of religion, with the rapture of love, with the conviction of geometry. That is how I have always loved liberty."
~~ Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette [1757-1834]

"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game."
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832]

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Selected Quotations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

"The time is always ripe to do right."

"All life is inter-related. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."
— in "Letter From Birmingham Jail", 16 April 1963

"Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals."
— in "Letter From Birmingham Jail", 16 April 1963

"An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal."
— in "Letter From Birmingham Jail", 16 April 1963

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."
— in "Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence" speech, April 1967

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
— in "Where Do We Go From Here?" speech, August 1967

"We must develop a federal program of public works, retraining, and jobs for all – so that none, white or black, will have cause to feel threatened . . . There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum and livable income for every American family."
— in "Where Do We Go From Here?" speech, August 1967

"The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that encourages men to be
I-centered rather than thou-centered."
— in "Where Do We Go From Here?" speech, August 1967

"Congress appropriates military funds with alacrity and generosity. It appropriates poverty funds with miserliness and grudging reluctance. The government is emotionally committed to the war. It is emotionally hostile to the needs of the poor."
— 'Domestic Impact of The War In America' speech November 1967

"I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of my organization or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion. Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."
— 'Domestic Impact of The War In America' speech November 1967

"When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
— in posthumously published essay "A Testament of Hope"

"There is also the violence of [Afro-Americans] having to live in a community and pay higher consumer prices for goods or higher rents for equivalent housing than are charged in white parts of the city."
— in posthumously published essay "A Testament of Hope"

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

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Year-End Website Statistics for 2013

Hey, got'er done on the First!

The basic numbers from the year of 2013 are that I coded 114 new pages and 1,809 new covers (linked to Amazon); I now have 427 connections on LinkedIn (up 106) and 31 new postings here on my blog {all-time total now 285}.

Anyone who wants to see the detail can go to http://www.genordell.com/webstats.htm.
Copyright 2014 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved