"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
~~ Guillaume Apollinaire [1880-1918]
"The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hifi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment."
~~ Herbert Marcuse [1898-1979]
"When you're down, every rat is big enough to try to eat you."
~~ Western author Max Brand [1892-1944]
"Women's virtue is man's greatest invention."
~~ Cornelia Otis Skinner [1899-1979]
"Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather."
~~ punk rocker Mike Dirnt
"He who limps is still walking."
~~ Polish poet Stanislaw Lec [1909-66]
"Think for yourself and question authority."
~~ Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]
"Disney has the best casting. If he doesn’t like an actor he just tears him up.”
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]
"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education."
~~ playwright Wilson Mizner [1876-1933]
"No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess."
~~ Sir Isaac Newton [1643-1727]
"Every solution of a problem is a new problem."
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1831]
"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply."
~~ Stephen Covey [1932-2012]
“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”
~~ Henry Ford [1863-1947]
“They are able because they think they are able.”
~~ ancient Roman poet Virgil [70 BCE-19 BCE]
"Time ripens all things; no man is born wise."
~~ Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes [1547-1616]
"Motion pictures, first of all, should be impressionistic."
~~ Maurice Tourneur [1876-1961]
"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
~~ poet T.S. Eliot [1888-1965] , in the 1942 poem "Little Gidding"
"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."
~~ Elmer Davis [1890-1958]
"For those that fought for it, freedom has a flavor [that] the protected shall never know."
~~ USMC LCpl. Edwin L. 'Tim' Craft
"Freedom is not free."
~~ USAF Col. Walter Hitchcock
"Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves."
~~ writer Carol Lynn Pearson
“Life is so often not a matter of yards, but of inches.”
~~ G.E. Nordell
"To live alone one must be an animal or a god, says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both – a philosopher."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics ... are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
~~ Charlie Chaplin [1889-1977]
"When I was 14, I was the oldest [that] I ever was. I've been getting younger ever since."
~~ Shirley Temple {Black}
"To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art."
~~ François de La Rochefoucauld [1613-80]
"The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine."
~~ ancient Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos [c. 460 - c. 370 BCE]
"Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship.”
~~ Elsa Schiaparelli [1890-1973]
"Man ... lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."
~~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
"All creative people want to do the unexpected."
~~ actress & inventor Hedy Lamarr [1913-2000]
"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]
"There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."
~~ Nelson Mandela [1918-2013]
"Higher has always been the trajectory of intelligent evolution."
~~ Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]
"Religion is a primitive form of philosophy."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"Son, give 'em a good show, and always travel first class."
~~ actor Walter Huston [1883-1950]
"There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it."
~~ critic Diana Trilling [1905-96]
"Your net worth to the world is determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]
"Live in each season, as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]
"What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]
"Blanket cynicism gives the illusion of understanding."
~~ Marcia Angell, MD
"A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain."
~~ poet Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are."
~~ W. Somerset Maugham [1874-1965]
"Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]
"Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
"Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge."
~~ rock musician Don Henley
"No matter how smart you think you are, you are actually way less smart than that."
~~ author David Foster Wallace [1962-2008]
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]
"We are always the same age inside."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]
"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."
~~ American capitalist Warren Buffett
"Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat."
~~ Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-80]
"The face of a child can say it all. Especially the mouth part of the face."
~~ humorist Jack Handey
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in."
~~ old Greek proverb
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
WM Essay #106: Warren Buffett Is Now A Bad Guy
Warren E. Buffett has long been an example of a 'good guy' capitalist, because his Berkshire-Hathaway mega-corporation has made tons of money for investors without the common evils of the fascist oligarchs – think Mitt Romney and Bain Capital Ventures – such as off-shoring jobs and profits, draining employee pension funds, closing viable factories and-or towns, and ripping off investors. Nor has Buffett spent billions lobbying against clean-air standards, shrinking education, and suppressing the vote, like the Koch Brothers continue to do.
Many wondered why Buffett and Berkshire-Hathaway paid a steep price for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad in November 2009 – the stock was around $75/share, the offer was around $100/share. People figured that Buffett had some plan, that his record is such that he knows what he is doing, we all should watch closely and learn from the 'Wizard of Omaha'.
Well, recent events have provided a shape to Buffett's plan, and unless stopped, Buffett's new project will double pollution from coal on the planet in the next few years.
The Powder River Basin in Wyoming & Montana contains one of the largest deposits of coal in the world. 'PRB' coal currently supplies 40% of the fuel for electric power plants east of the Rockies, but as coal plants are replaced by natural gas, the market is rapidly shrinking. So the coal industry decided to sell coal to China, which has no pollution standards and little natural gas resources. China is bringing online a newly-completed coal-fired power plant every week.
The Union Pacific and BNSF railroad lines run north and west thru the Powder River Basin toward the old Northern Pacific transcontinental route that runs west to Seattle and Puget Sound. Hauling the coal to the Pacific Ocean for trans-shipment to China looks so simple.
Long way to go, though. And a Very Bad Idea, mostly having to do with pollution here in the U.S.A.
You have seen the recent news visuals of the pollution in China's interior cities reaching readings of ten times the level allowed by United Nations air quality standards. We can't do anything about their smog, not even when the dirt-clouds in China float across the Pacific Ocean and make the skies of California and Arizona and Washington State and British Columbia turn brown.
The first pollution problem here in the U.S.A. is already occuring during rail transport. Doubling and tripling coal traffic by rail will also double and triple the pollution along the rail lines. Coal is transported in uncovered hopper cars. According to recent BNSF testimony, each loaded rail car loses from 500 to 3,500 pounds of coal dust per trip. The two daily coal trains to Puget Sound run about 120 cars, so anywhere from 120,000 to 840,000 pounds of coal dust are deposited along the rail lines - every day. Divide by the roughly 1,200 miles of travel, and that is 70 pounds of pollution per mile - every day. The proposed Gateway Pacific coal port will add 18 train trips per day, and if the Longview facility is approved, that will add another 14 trains per day.
Warren Buffet's railroad is planning to deliver as much 12,000 pounds of toxic coal dust over each mile of rail line, each and every day for the next twenty years. That is six tons of pollution daily to every mile, including farmer's fields, school yards & playgrounds, running streams, back yard clotheslines, pristine wetlands, and sparkling white country churches.
The second pollution problem here in the U.S.A. is at the planned port facilities. The Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point near the Canadian border would be twice the size of the largest existing coal port in North America. Gateway's plans for mitigating the coal dust problem is to dampen the acre-sized million-ton piles of coal with water from the Nooksack River, without mentioning that the dirty water will flow back into the river and into Bellingham Bay, and in any case not help at all on windy days.
And all this is predicated on no accidents or environmental disasters whatsoever.
The proposed $643 million Millennium Bulk Terminals coal-export facility is at Longview, Washington - fifty miles up the Columbia River. The proposed coal-export facility at Point Morrow in Oregon is 250 miles farther up the Columbia River; ocean-going vessels cannot reach Port Morrow, so the plan is to load the coal from railcar to river barge, mosey downriver to Port St. Helens (25 miles upriver from Longview) and transfer to bulk cargo vessels bound for China.
Adding 400 boat visits per year and untold barge trips up and down the Columbia River per day is no concern of Peabody Coal, the railroads, or the terminal operators. (Pacific International Terminals is owned by Carrix, which is 49% owned by Goldman Sachs; Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns 6% of Goldman Sachs.)
But environmentalists are quite concerned, and calculate that building and operating the three proposed West Coast coal export facilities will add 200 million tons of CO2 to Earth's atmosphere each year, which is roughly equivalent to all the carbon-dioxide emissions of all the volcanoes on the planet.
Warren Buffett will soon be a world-class polluter, and his days as a capitalist 'good guy' are over.
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
Many wondered why Buffett and Berkshire-Hathaway paid a steep price for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad in November 2009 – the stock was around $75/share, the offer was around $100/share. People figured that Buffett had some plan, that his record is such that he knows what he is doing, we all should watch closely and learn from the 'Wizard of Omaha'.
Well, recent events have provided a shape to Buffett's plan, and unless stopped, Buffett's new project will double pollution from coal on the planet in the next few years.
The Powder River Basin in Wyoming & Montana contains one of the largest deposits of coal in the world. 'PRB' coal currently supplies 40% of the fuel for electric power plants east of the Rockies, but as coal plants are replaced by natural gas, the market is rapidly shrinking. So the coal industry decided to sell coal to China, which has no pollution standards and little natural gas resources. China is bringing online a newly-completed coal-fired power plant every week.
The Union Pacific and BNSF railroad lines run north and west thru the Powder River Basin toward the old Northern Pacific transcontinental route that runs west to Seattle and Puget Sound. Hauling the coal to the Pacific Ocean for trans-shipment to China looks so simple.
Long way to go, though. And a Very Bad Idea, mostly having to do with pollution here in the U.S.A.
You have seen the recent news visuals of the pollution in China's interior cities reaching readings of ten times the level allowed by United Nations air quality standards. We can't do anything about their smog, not even when the dirt-clouds in China float across the Pacific Ocean and make the skies of California and Arizona and Washington State and British Columbia turn brown.
The first pollution problem here in the U.S.A. is already occuring during rail transport. Doubling and tripling coal traffic by rail will also double and triple the pollution along the rail lines. Coal is transported in uncovered hopper cars. According to recent BNSF testimony, each loaded rail car loses from 500 to 3,500 pounds of coal dust per trip. The two daily coal trains to Puget Sound run about 120 cars, so anywhere from 120,000 to 840,000 pounds of coal dust are deposited along the rail lines - every day. Divide by the roughly 1,200 miles of travel, and that is 70 pounds of pollution per mile - every day. The proposed Gateway Pacific coal port will add 18 train trips per day, and if the Longview facility is approved, that will add another 14 trains per day.
Warren Buffet's railroad is planning to deliver as much 12,000 pounds of toxic coal dust over each mile of rail line, each and every day for the next twenty years. That is six tons of pollution daily to every mile, including farmer's fields, school yards & playgrounds, running streams, back yard clotheslines, pristine wetlands, and sparkling white country churches.
The second pollution problem here in the U.S.A. is at the planned port facilities. The Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point near the Canadian border would be twice the size of the largest existing coal port in North America. Gateway's plans for mitigating the coal dust problem is to dampen the acre-sized million-ton piles of coal with water from the Nooksack River, without mentioning that the dirty water will flow back into the river and into Bellingham Bay, and in any case not help at all on windy days.
And all this is predicated on no accidents or environmental disasters whatsoever.
The proposed $643 million Millennium Bulk Terminals coal-export facility is at Longview, Washington - fifty miles up the Columbia River. The proposed coal-export facility at Point Morrow in Oregon is 250 miles farther up the Columbia River; ocean-going vessels cannot reach Port Morrow, so the plan is to load the coal from railcar to river barge, mosey downriver to Port St. Helens (25 miles upriver from Longview) and transfer to bulk cargo vessels bound for China.
Adding 400 boat visits per year and untold barge trips up and down the Columbia River per day is no concern of Peabody Coal, the railroads, or the terminal operators. (Pacific International Terminals is owned by Carrix, which is 49% owned by Goldman Sachs; Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns 6% of Goldman Sachs.)
But environmentalists are quite concerned, and calculate that building and operating the three proposed West Coast coal export facilities will add 200 million tons of CO2 to Earth's atmosphere each year, which is roughly equivalent to all the carbon-dioxide emissions of all the volcanoes on the planet.
Warren Buffett will soon be a world-class polluter, and his days as a capitalist 'good guy' are over.
Thursday, November 07, 2013
November 2013 Quotations (62)
"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"We are destined for better things."
~~ dreamt the morning of 29 October 2013 by G.E. Nordell
"Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]
"I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it."
~~ Jonathan Winters [1925-2013]
"Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell."
~~ Edward Abbey [1927-89]
"Turn on, tune in, drop out." ~~ phrase coined in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan [1911-80] and popularized by Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]
"There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"Together, we're going to finish the job [that] we started."
~~ President Obama on the new Obamacare video [1:31], 1 October 2013
"Men argue. Nature acts."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]
"You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing."
~~ Meryl Streep
"It has been the fate of our nation not to have ideologies but to be one."
~~ historian Richard Hofstadter [1916-70]
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way [that] you want, but you only spend it once."
~~ Lillian Dickson [1901-83]
"It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]
"Pressure is something [that] you feel when you don't know what you're doing."
~~ football great Peyton Manning
"Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible."
~~ mystery author John D. MacDonald [1916-86]
"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions."
~~ Susan Sontag [1933-2004]
"You have to climb to reach a deep thought."
~~ Polish poet Stanislaw Lec [1909-66]
"If you're the smartest person in the room, find another room."
~~ Michael Dell
"The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple."
~~ Dame Rebecca West [1892-1983]
"The most profound relationship [that] we'll ever have is the one with ourselves."
~~ Shirley MacLaine
"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]
"The long-term accomodation that protects marriage and other such relationships is forgetfulness."
~~ Alice Walker
"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."
~~ D.H. Lawrence [1885-1930]
"We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality."
~~ Iris Murdoch [1919-99]
"There is no more miserable human being than one to whom nothing is habitual but indecision."
~~ William James [1842-1910]
"Crime is art for lazy people."
~~ rapper CeeLo Green
"To live a life free from sorrow, think of what is going to happen as if it had already happened."
~~ Epictetus [55?–135? C.E.]
"All the world's a stage, and most of us are desparately unrehearsed."
~~ playwright Seán O'Casey [1880-1964]
"It's easy to become a millionaire – start out as a billionaire, and then buy an airline."
~~ Richard Branson
"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]
"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."
~~ Muhammad Ali
"If the dinosaurs had had a space program, they would not be extinct."
~~ Carl Sagan [1934-96]
"What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained."
~~ Michael Crichton [1942-2008]
"Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course [that] it takes for us be called a 'happy' one?"
~~ Thomas Mann [1875-1955]
"[We] need to raise the minimum wage so that nobody who's working full time lives in poverty."
~~ economist Robert B. Reich
"Resolve to be thyself, and know that he who finds himself loses his misery."
~~ Matthew Arnold [1822-88]
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]
"There is no hope for the satisfied man."
~~ Frederick G. Bonfils [1861-1933], founder of the Denver Post newspaper
"The first condition of immortality is death."
~~ Polish poet Stanislaw Lec [1909-66]
"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]
“Life is a mirror - what you see out there, you must first see inside of you.”
~~ Wally 'Famous' Amos
“A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
~~ Carl Sagan [1934-96]
{on cinema}: “The eye licks it all up instantaneously, and the brain, agreeably titillated, settles down to watch things happening without bestirring itself to think.”
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in 1926
"Everyone's a coward about something."
~~ line from the Oscar-winning war movie "The Hurt Locker" [2008]
"I used to be self-conscious about my height, but then I thought 'F*** that, I'm Harry Potter'."
~~ Daniel Radcliffe
“True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.”
~~ E.S. Bouton
"That government is best which governs least."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62], in the first paragraph of the 1849 essay "Civil Disobedience"
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light not our Darkness, that most frightens us."
~~ Marianne Williamson in her 1992 book "A Return To Love"; quote used by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural address
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
~~ first appeared in the 1981 'Narcotics Anonymous' basic text (and often mis-attributed to Rita Mae Brown or Albert Einstein [1879-1955] )
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader."
~~ John Quincy Adams [1767-1848]
"When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him."
~~ psychiatrist Thomas Szasz [1920-2012]
"Fear, like love, is difficult to explain after it has subsided, probably because it draws away the veils of illusion as it disappears."
~~ playwright Arthur Miller [1915-2005]
"If you can speak about what you care about to a person [that] you disagree with without denigrating them or insulting them, then you may actually be heard."
~~ Amy Poehler
"Art is never finished, only abandoned."
~~ Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519]
"Man is born to live, not to prepare for life."
~~ Boris Pasternak [1890-1960]
"The music is all. People should die for it. People are dying for everything else, so why not for the music?"
~~ Lou Reed [1942-2013]
“Free speech is a danger to the neo-con fascists, which is why they suppress it. Our best weapon is to speak freely and loudly and often.”
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Life works to the extent that we keep our agreements."
~~ Werner Erhard
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"We are destined for better things."
~~ dreamt the morning of 29 October 2013 by G.E. Nordell
"Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]
"I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it."
~~ Jonathan Winters [1925-2013]
"Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell."
~~ Edward Abbey [1927-89]
"Turn on, tune in, drop out." ~~ phrase coined in the 1960s by Marshall McLuhan [1911-80] and popularized by Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]
"There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"Together, we're going to finish the job [that] we started."
~~ President Obama on the new Obamacare video [1:31], 1 October 2013
"Men argue. Nature acts."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]
"You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing."
~~ Meryl Streep
"It has been the fate of our nation not to have ideologies but to be one."
~~ historian Richard Hofstadter [1916-70]
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way [that] you want, but you only spend it once."
~~ Lillian Dickson [1901-83]
"It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]
"Pressure is something [that] you feel when you don't know what you're doing."
~~ football great Peyton Manning
"Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible."
~~ mystery author John D. MacDonald [1916-86]
"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions."
~~ Susan Sontag [1933-2004]
"You have to climb to reach a deep thought."
~~ Polish poet Stanislaw Lec [1909-66]
"If you're the smartest person in the room, find another room."
~~ Michael Dell
"The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple."
~~ Dame Rebecca West [1892-1983]
"The most profound relationship [that] we'll ever have is the one with ourselves."
~~ Shirley MacLaine
"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]
"The long-term accomodation that protects marriage and other such relationships is forgetfulness."
~~ Alice Walker
"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."
~~ D.H. Lawrence [1885-1930]
"We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality."
~~ Iris Murdoch [1919-99]
"There is no more miserable human being than one to whom nothing is habitual but indecision."
~~ William James [1842-1910]
"Crime is art for lazy people."
~~ rapper CeeLo Green
"To live a life free from sorrow, think of what is going to happen as if it had already happened."
~~ Epictetus [55?–135? C.E.]
"All the world's a stage, and most of us are desparately unrehearsed."
~~ playwright Seán O'Casey [1880-1964]
"It's easy to become a millionaire – start out as a billionaire, and then buy an airline."
~~ Richard Branson
"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]
"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."
~~ Muhammad Ali
"If the dinosaurs had had a space program, they would not be extinct."
~~ Carl Sagan [1934-96]
"What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained."
~~ Michael Crichton [1942-2008]
"Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course [that] it takes for us be called a 'happy' one?"
~~ Thomas Mann [1875-1955]
"[We] need to raise the minimum wage so that nobody who's working full time lives in poverty."
~~ economist Robert B. Reich
"Resolve to be thyself, and know that he who finds himself loses his misery."
~~ Matthew Arnold [1822-88]
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]
"There is no hope for the satisfied man."
~~ Frederick G. Bonfils [1861-1933], founder of the Denver Post newspaper
"The first condition of immortality is death."
~~ Polish poet Stanislaw Lec [1909-66]
"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]
“Life is a mirror - what you see out there, you must first see inside of you.”
~~ Wally 'Famous' Amos
“A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
~~ Carl Sagan [1934-96]
{on cinema}: “The eye licks it all up instantaneously, and the brain, agreeably titillated, settles down to watch things happening without bestirring itself to think.”
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in 1926
"Everyone's a coward about something."
~~ line from the Oscar-winning war movie "The Hurt Locker" [2008]
"I used to be self-conscious about my height, but then I thought 'F*** that, I'm Harry Potter'."
~~ Daniel Radcliffe
“True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.”
~~ E.S. Bouton
"That government is best which governs least."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62], in the first paragraph of the 1849 essay "Civil Disobedience"
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light not our Darkness, that most frightens us."
~~ Marianne Williamson in her 1992 book "A Return To Love"; quote used by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural address
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
~~ first appeared in the 1981 'Narcotics Anonymous' basic text (and often mis-attributed to Rita Mae Brown or Albert Einstein [1879-1955] )
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader."
~~ John Quincy Adams [1767-1848]
"When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him."
~~ psychiatrist Thomas Szasz [1920-2012]
"Fear, like love, is difficult to explain after it has subsided, probably because it draws away the veils of illusion as it disappears."
~~ playwright Arthur Miller [1915-2005]
"If you can speak about what you care about to a person [that] you disagree with without denigrating them or insulting them, then you may actually be heard."
~~ Amy Poehler
"Art is never finished, only abandoned."
~~ Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519]
"Man is born to live, not to prepare for life."
~~ Boris Pasternak [1890-1960]
"The music is all. People should die for it. People are dying for everything else, so why not for the music?"
~~ Lou Reed [1942-2013]
“Free speech is a danger to the neo-con fascists, which is why they suppress it. Our best weapon is to speak freely and loudly and often.”
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Life works to the extent that we keep our agreements."
~~ Werner Erhard
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Film Is Dead, Long Live Digital
The 110-year reign of 35mm film as the primary projection medium for motion pictures has come to an end.
The 35mm motion picture film format became the standard around 1903. The reason is that it is the best size for avoiding grainy visuals - smaller film sizes blown up to screen dimensions actually show the existence of the chemical crystals on the film surface, i.e. grain. Early nitrate (nitrocellulose) film stock was dangerously flammable and was replaced by fireproof acetate for X-rays in 1933 and for motion pictures in 1951. (Kodak launched production of cellulose triacetate base motion picture film in 1948.)
Sony's launch of 'electronic cinematography' in the 1980s was not a success. Better camera technology brought 'digital cinematography' into wide use starting in 1998. Editing droids, 'green screen' stages, C.G.I., and distribution hardware and software followed. The major studios decreed in 2012 that they would no longer issue new films on physical 35mm film by end of 2013, and the commercial film labs began converting to digital operations.
Physical 35mm film projectors were replaced over 2012 and 2013 with 2K digital projection capabilities, which includes digital delivery by internet or satellite; only ten percent of U.S. motion picture theaters are keeping their 35mm projector hardware for showing of archival prints. (Archives like Library of Congress, MoMA, and U.C.L.A. are expected not to give up the 35mm technology.)
So the motion picture distribution industry is in transition: the business of film exchanges now serves only the art house market, film labs are digital, projection at your local movie theater is digital, and new projectionists need not be trained in 35mm technology. The general movie patron will not notice the difference, but the observant cineaste will find that certain features like depth, clarity, and color appear degraded.
Well, too bad. Progress happens. Film Is Dead, Long Live Digital.
{For folks without the backgroundL When a king of Britain dies, the traditional announcement takes the form of 'The King is dead, long live the King', which is a transfer of allegiance by the speaker to the successor.}
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
The 35mm motion picture film format became the standard around 1903. The reason is that it is the best size for avoiding grainy visuals - smaller film sizes blown up to screen dimensions actually show the existence of the chemical crystals on the film surface, i.e. grain. Early nitrate (nitrocellulose) film stock was dangerously flammable and was replaced by fireproof acetate for X-rays in 1933 and for motion pictures in 1951. (Kodak launched production of cellulose triacetate base motion picture film in 1948.)
Sony's launch of 'electronic cinematography' in the 1980s was not a success. Better camera technology brought 'digital cinematography' into wide use starting in 1998. Editing droids, 'green screen' stages, C.G.I., and distribution hardware and software followed. The major studios decreed in 2012 that they would no longer issue new films on physical 35mm film by end of 2013, and the commercial film labs began converting to digital operations.
Physical 35mm film projectors were replaced over 2012 and 2013 with 2K digital projection capabilities, which includes digital delivery by internet or satellite; only ten percent of U.S. motion picture theaters are keeping their 35mm projector hardware for showing of archival prints. (Archives like Library of Congress, MoMA, and U.C.L.A. are expected not to give up the 35mm technology.)
So the motion picture distribution industry is in transition: the business of film exchanges now serves only the art house market, film labs are digital, projection at your local movie theater is digital, and new projectionists need not be trained in 35mm technology. The general movie patron will not notice the difference, but the observant cineaste will find that certain features like depth, clarity, and color appear degraded.
Well, too bad. Progress happens. Film Is Dead, Long Live Digital.
{For folks without the backgroundL When a king of Britain dies, the traditional announcement takes the form of 'The King is dead, long live the King', which is a transfer of allegiance by the speaker to the successor.}
Monday, October 14, 2013
October 2013 News Factoids
September: New Mexico House Speaker Ken Martinez announced a new initiative that the B.N.S.F. Railroad will soon undertake: their locomotives will start using natural gas, instead of diesel. Not only will this help the environment but it is a resource that New Mexico has an abundance of.
September: Did anyone else notice that the pumpkin harvest was three to four weeks before Halowe'en this year? Giant displays at Home Depot and on the back of trucks in vacant lots in my area showed up *before* October First.
DEPT. of LAME JOKES
How many incontinent senior citizens does it take to change a light bulb?
Well, that depends...
DEPT of CLIMATE CHANGE
The historic first-ever departure of a bulk-cargo ship from Vancouver, BC to Finland via the Arctic Sea took place on September 17th; the Nordic Orion carried 73,500 tons of coal (a 25% increase because not restricted by depth of the Panama Canal). Meanwhile, both the Russian and Canadian governments are beefing up ports and coastal police & rescue units in the Northwest Passage due to expectations of increased traffic – one of the few positive benefits of Global Warming/Climate Change.
JOBS WATCH
Economic Policy Institute introduced a new monthly economic indicator in October that more accurately gauges the weakness of the labor market; the new 'missing worker' tool accounts for potential workers who are neither employed nor actively seeking work – workers that are therefore not included in the official unemployment rate. If these nearly 5 million missing workers had been seeking work and thus counted as unemployed, the unemployment rate in August would have been a staggering 10.1 percent instead of 7.3 percent.
THE CLASS WAR
"The world’s richest one percent have $52.8 trillion [in assets] — about 40 percent of the world’s wealth." ~~ Joel S. Hirschhorn
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
September: Did anyone else notice that the pumpkin harvest was three to four weeks before Halowe'en this year? Giant displays at Home Depot and on the back of trucks in vacant lots in my area showed up *before* October First.
DEPT. of LAME JOKES
How many incontinent senior citizens does it take to change a light bulb?
Well, that depends...
DEPT of CLIMATE CHANGE
The historic first-ever departure of a bulk-cargo ship from Vancouver, BC to Finland via the Arctic Sea took place on September 17th; the Nordic Orion carried 73,500 tons of coal (a 25% increase because not restricted by depth of the Panama Canal). Meanwhile, both the Russian and Canadian governments are beefing up ports and coastal police & rescue units in the Northwest Passage due to expectations of increased traffic – one of the few positive benefits of Global Warming/Climate Change.
JOBS WATCH
Economic Policy Institute introduced a new monthly economic indicator in October that more accurately gauges the weakness of the labor market; the new 'missing worker' tool accounts for potential workers who are neither employed nor actively seeking work – workers that are therefore not included in the official unemployment rate. If these nearly 5 million missing workers had been seeking work and thus counted as unemployed, the unemployment rate in August would have been a staggering 10.1 percent instead of 7.3 percent.
THE CLASS WAR
"The world’s richest one percent have $52.8 trillion [in assets] — about 40 percent of the world’s wealth." ~~ Joel S. Hirschhorn
Monday, September 30, 2013
September 2013 Quotations (60)
"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."
~~ Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]
"Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90], in 1722
"First man take drink, then drink take drink, then drink take man."
~~ old Chinese saying
"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
[re: parenthood] "You get a lot of tension, you get a lot of headaches. I do what it says on the aspirin bottle: Take two and keep away from children."
~~ Roseanne Barr
"Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
“The class warfare that is being waged by the great rich against the greater majority is not just a slogan. It is as heartless as terrorism, as real as death, and expanding in scope day by day.”
~~ Owen Williamson
“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”
~~ E.L. Doctorow
"The truth is so top secret / It only stands to reason / That anyone exposing it / Is culpable of treason."
~~ lyric by Yip Harburg [1896-1981]
"Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave but not our hearts."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. [1809-94]
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."
~~ Robert Wilensky
"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]
"The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]
"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."
~~ Adlai E. Stevenson II [1900-65]
"We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs."
~~ Carl Sagan [1934-96]
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
~~ Richard Dawkins
"To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man."
~~ Michael Servetus [1509?-1553], burned at the stake as a heretic
"Democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy cannot take root."
~~ Thomas L. Friedman
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic."
~~ Thomas Henry Huxley [1825-95]
"There is no absurdity so obvious that it cannot be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to impose it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity."
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860]
"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."
~~ President Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble."
~~ the character Alexis Zorba
"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet."
~~ Orson Welles [1915-85]
"The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman, and have a French boyfriend."
~~ Katharine Hepburn [1907-2003]
"In any war there are heroes on both sides . . ."
~~ title card at beginning of "Jet Li's Hero" feature film [2002]
"Imagination is but another name for super intelligence."
~~ Edgar Rice Burroughs [1875-1950]
"Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid."
~~ John Wayne [1907-79]
"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."
~~ A.A. Milne [1882-1956], in "Winnie The Pooh", 1926
"Notoriety is often mistaken for fame."
~~ Aesop [620–564 B.C.E.]
"But all the magic I have known, I've had to make myself."
~~ Shel Silverstein [1930-99], in "Where The Sidewalk Ends", 1974
"After all, what's life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985], in "Charlotte's Web", 1952
"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So . . . Get on your way!"
~~ Dr. Seuss, in "Oh, The Places You'll Go", 1990
"Anyone who participates in the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an enemy of the United States of America. Any American who participates in the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a traitor."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Like a boil that must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed to the light of human conscience before it can be cured."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it."
~~ cartoonist Hank Ketcham [1920-2001]
"People striving for approval from others become phony."
~~ baseball player Ichiro Suzuki
"Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet and some sort of dignity."
~~ Willa Cather [1873-1947]
"There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"A right is a responsibility in reverse."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]
"An empty man is full of himself."
~~ Edward Abbey [1927-89]
"Stupidity is the same as evil, if you judge by the results."
~~ Margaret Atwood
"It takes twenty years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it."
~~ capitalist Warren Buffett
"The most futile thing in this world is any attempt at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions."
~~ Theodore Dreiser [1871-1945]
"The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of one's self."
~~ activist Jane Addams [1860-1935]
"A goal is a dream with a deadline."
~~ Napoleon Hill [1883-1970]
"Your life does not get better by chance. It gets better by change."
~~ motivational speaker Jim Rohn [1930-2009]
"I am a sort of preacher. I like to talk to people and get them to change their views when I think their views are wrong. Why else would anyone write a book?"
~~ sci-fi author Frederik Pohl [1919-2013]
"The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains."
~~ Abul Ala Al-Ma’arri [973-1057]
{last words} “Get out of here and leave me alone. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough already.”
~~ Karl Marx [1818-83]
"Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming [that] the audience is any less intelligent than you are."
~~ Rod Serling [1924-75]
"Imagination is the highest kite [that] one can fly."
~~ Lauren Bacall
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]
"Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world."
~~ Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi, known as Rumi [1207-73]
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”
~~ Jim Henson ]1936-90]
"It's not your abilities that show who you are, it's your choices."
~~ character Professor Dumbeldore, in ""Harry Potter" and The Chamber of Secrets", 1998
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]
"Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90], in 1722
"First man take drink, then drink take drink, then drink take man."
~~ old Chinese saying
"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
[re: parenthood] "You get a lot of tension, you get a lot of headaches. I do what it says on the aspirin bottle: Take two and keep away from children."
~~ Roseanne Barr
"Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
“The class warfare that is being waged by the great rich against the greater majority is not just a slogan. It is as heartless as terrorism, as real as death, and expanding in scope day by day.”
~~ Owen Williamson
“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”
~~ E.L. Doctorow
"The truth is so top secret / It only stands to reason / That anyone exposing it / Is culpable of treason."
~~ lyric by Yip Harburg [1896-1981]
"Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave but not our hearts."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. [1809-94]
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."
~~ Robert Wilensky
"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]
"The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]
"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."
~~ Adlai E. Stevenson II [1900-65]
"We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs."
~~ Carl Sagan [1934-96]
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
~~ Richard Dawkins
"To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man."
~~ Michael Servetus [1509?-1553], burned at the stake as a heretic
"Democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy cannot take root."
~~ Thomas L. Friedman
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic."
~~ Thomas Henry Huxley [1825-95]
"There is no absurdity so obvious that it cannot be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to impose it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity."
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860]
"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."
~~ President Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble."
~~ the character Alexis Zorba
"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet."
~~ Orson Welles [1915-85]
"The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman, and have a French boyfriend."
~~ Katharine Hepburn [1907-2003]
"In any war there are heroes on both sides . . ."
~~ title card at beginning of "Jet Li's Hero" feature film [2002]
"Imagination is but another name for super intelligence."
~~ Edgar Rice Burroughs [1875-1950]
"Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid."
~~ John Wayne [1907-79]
"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."
~~ A.A. Milne [1882-1956], in "Winnie The Pooh", 1926
"Notoriety is often mistaken for fame."
~~ Aesop [620–564 B.C.E.]
"But all the magic I have known, I've had to make myself."
~~ Shel Silverstein [1930-99], in "Where The Sidewalk Ends", 1974
"After all, what's life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985], in "Charlotte's Web", 1952
"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So . . . Get on your way!"
~~ Dr. Seuss, in "Oh, The Places You'll Go", 1990
"Anyone who participates in the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an enemy of the United States of America. Any American who participates in the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a traitor."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Like a boil that must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed to the light of human conscience before it can be cured."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it."
~~ cartoonist Hank Ketcham [1920-2001]
"People striving for approval from others become phony."
~~ baseball player Ichiro Suzuki
"Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet and some sort of dignity."
~~ Willa Cather [1873-1947]
"There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"A right is a responsibility in reverse."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]
"An empty man is full of himself."
~~ Edward Abbey [1927-89]
"Stupidity is the same as evil, if you judge by the results."
~~ Margaret Atwood
"It takes twenty years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it."
~~ capitalist Warren Buffett
"The most futile thing in this world is any attempt at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions."
~~ Theodore Dreiser [1871-1945]
"The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of one's self."
~~ activist Jane Addams [1860-1935]
"A goal is a dream with a deadline."
~~ Napoleon Hill [1883-1970]
"Your life does not get better by chance. It gets better by change."
~~ motivational speaker Jim Rohn [1930-2009]
"I am a sort of preacher. I like to talk to people and get them to change their views when I think their views are wrong. Why else would anyone write a book?"
~~ sci-fi author Frederik Pohl [1919-2013]
"The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains."
~~ Abul Ala Al-Ma’arri [973-1057]
{last words} “Get out of here and leave me alone. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough already.”
~~ Karl Marx [1818-83]
"Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming [that] the audience is any less intelligent than you are."
~~ Rod Serling [1924-75]
"Imagination is the highest kite [that] one can fly."
~~ Lauren Bacall
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]
"Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world."
~~ Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi, known as Rumi [1207-73]
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”
~~ Jim Henson ]1936-90]
"It's not your abilities that show who you are, it's your choices."
~~ character Professor Dumbeldore, in ""Harry Potter" and The Chamber of Secrets", 1998
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Movie Review: "Inequality For All"
Economist Robert Reich's documentary film "Inequality For All" is opening in the U.S.A. on September 27th.
MY REVIEW: "A 'must see' film. Go see it because I said so."
"Inequality For All" [Radius-TWC Sept 2013]
"A Passionate Argument On Behalf of The Middle Class" Partly funded at KickStarter; former U.S. Labor Secretary {1993-97) and now Berkley University professor Robert Reich is committed to raising awareness of the sorry economic state in America, where the huge disparity in incomes and a tax system that rewards 'job creators' who create jobs overseas has decimated the Middle Class. Directed by Jacob Kornbluth; starring Robert Reich; director won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival
full credits at IMDb • official movie site
watch 8/2013 official trailer [1:48] at YouTube
Sunday, September 15, 2013
August-September 2013 News Factoids
Verizon's device recycling program ($1 each to Hopeline anti-abuse charity)
As-of mid 2013, Netflix became the dominant streaming platform, accounting for one-third of all U.S. video streaming - double the activity on YouTube.
Iodized salt was introduced in the U.S. in 1924. A study in 2013 found that this one change in diet raised the country's collective I.Q.
MONOPOLY NEWSFOUR airlines control 69 percent of domestic air travel
Amazon sells 27 percent of consumer books in USA, and B&N sells 16 percent
WalMart sells 57 percent of all groceries in USA
Universal Music Group controls 38 percent of the global recorded music market
AnheuserBusch-InBev sells 39 percent of all beer in the USA, Miller-Coors sells 26 percent
CLIMATE NEWS
"The last fourteen years are the driest in a century of record keeping [in the Colorado River Basin] and among the driest such periods in a thousand years of tree rings records." == U.S. Department of Interior report, August 2013
An international team published a three-year study in the journal "Nature Climate Change" that shows marine species moving away from the tropics and toward the poles at an average of 45 miles per decade, compared to only 4 miles per decade for species on land.
== per Earth Environmental Service, August 2013
VEGETARIAN ALERT
In a study of the effects of pesticides used in the U.S., the F.D.A says that arsenic levels in brown rice are higher than in other forms, with lowest levels in instant rice, The F.D.A. study report also says that levels of arsenic found in rice are probably not a health problem, but that consumers should 'vary their diet' just in case.
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
As-of mid 2013, Netflix became the dominant streaming platform, accounting for one-third of all U.S. video streaming - double the activity on YouTube.
Iodized salt was introduced in the U.S. in 1924. A study in 2013 found that this one change in diet raised the country's collective I.Q.
MONOPOLY NEWS
CLIMATE NEWS
"The last fourteen years are the driest in a century of record keeping [in the Colorado River Basin] and among the driest such periods in a thousand years of tree rings records." == U.S. Department of Interior report, August 2013
An international team published a three-year study in the journal "Nature Climate Change" that shows marine species moving away from the tropics and toward the poles at an average of 45 miles per decade, compared to only 4 miles per decade for species on land.
== per Earth Environmental Service, August 2013
VEGETARIAN ALERT
In a study of the effects of pesticides used in the U.S., the F.D.A says that arsenic levels in brown rice are higher than in other forms, with lowest levels in instant rice, The F.D.A. study report also says that levels of arsenic found in rice are probably not a health problem, but that consumers should 'vary their diet' just in case.
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Root Cause of the War in Syria
This got cleared up for me today on the Randi Rhodes Radio Show.
Syria and other parts of the Middle East have experienced a severe drought for the last five years. In Syria, 85 percent of the livestock died, and 75 percent of the crops failed. So the hungry citizens migrated to the cities, hoping for work or food or some way to survive, which they did not find.
Despotic President Bashar al-Assad noticed that the shortage in wheat had raised the price sky-high, so he appropriated the harvest and sold 1.5 million metric tons to other countries and then pocketed the money (most likely to secret off-shore accounts). The people are starving, there is no bread and little water, so the masses have been ripe for revolutionary propaganda from Muslim fanatical groups such as al-Qaeda and the taliban.
The Syrian Civil War has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians since the official beginning in the Spring of 2011. There is no 'good' side here. The rebels are anti-democratic, Assad is anti-democratic. Russia is siding with Assad's government (for access to the oil fields), and the United Nations and the U.S.A have sided with the rebels, hoping that their eventual win will provide access to the oil fields.
One of the serious solutions which has been kept from discussion is food-drops to the people of Syria. Problematic from the get-go since the rebels could hoard it for themselves, but air-dropping pallets of rice or wheat away from rebel strongholds and away from government strongholds could take the pressure off.
Meanwhile, President Obama is carefully planning air strikes against a foreign country and hoping that the war-mongers and the Xian promoters of Armageddon do not get their wish for World War III.
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
Syria and other parts of the Middle East have experienced a severe drought for the last five years. In Syria, 85 percent of the livestock died, and 75 percent of the crops failed. So the hungry citizens migrated to the cities, hoping for work or food or some way to survive, which they did not find.
Despotic President Bashar al-Assad noticed that the shortage in wheat had raised the price sky-high, so he appropriated the harvest and sold 1.5 million metric tons to other countries and then pocketed the money (most likely to secret off-shore accounts). The people are starving, there is no bread and little water, so the masses have been ripe for revolutionary propaganda from Muslim fanatical groups such as al-Qaeda and the taliban.
The Syrian Civil War has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians since the official beginning in the Spring of 2011. There is no 'good' side here. The rebels are anti-democratic, Assad is anti-democratic. Russia is siding with Assad's government (for access to the oil fields), and the United Nations and the U.S.A have sided with the rebels, hoping that their eventual win will provide access to the oil fields.
One of the serious solutions which has been kept from discussion is food-drops to the people of Syria. Problematic from the get-go since the rebels could hoard it for themselves, but air-dropping pallets of rice or wheat away from rebel strongholds and away from government strongholds could take the pressure off.
Meanwhile, President Obama is carefully planning air strikes against a foreign country and hoping that the war-mongers and the Xian promoters of Armageddon do not get their wish for World War III.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
August 2013 Quotations (60)
"Philosophy is the goal toward which religion was only a helplessly blind groping."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."
~~ Plutarch [46?–127 C.E.]
"Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears."
~~ motivational speaker Leslie C. 'Les' Brown
"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."
~~ James M. Barrie [1860-1937]
"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
~~ U.C.L.A. coach John R. Wooden [1910-2010]
"Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs."
~~ Farrah Gray
"I would rather die of passion than of boredom."
~~ Vincent van Gogh [1853-90]
"The federal budget deficit isn't the nation's major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn't be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both."
~~ Robert Reich, in 2013
"There has never been an American tragedy. There have only been great failures."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], in 1927
"There is no such thing as 'away'. When we throw anything away, it must go somewhere."
~~ Annie Leonard
"Courage is contagious."
~~ Julian Assange
"Men go faster these days, but I do not believe [that] they go anywhere better."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]
"The [N.S.A.] invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far ... America has no functioning democracy at this moment."
~~ former President Jimmy Carter, in July 2013
"These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
“Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”
~~ Woody Allen
“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”
~~ Woody Allen
"Rights only exist when they apply to everyone. When only some people are accorded a so-called 'right', then it is privilege and subjugation."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don't mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all."
~~ Neal Gabler, in 2004
"I'm hoping for a return to at least partial sanity someday, but I'm not optimistic."
~~ writer & dog rescuer David Rosenfelt
"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (Le Lys Rouge)
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924]
"Sooner or later we all quote our mothers."
~~ Bern Williams
"When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing: they believe in anything."
~~ often attributed to G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."
~~ Sophia Loren
"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."
~~ Joyce Carol Oates
"Industry pays debts, despair increases them."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper."
~~ biologist E.O. Wilson
"The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying 'The trouble with this country is ...'."
~~ Sinclair Lewis [1885-1951]
"Tolerance is the virtue of a man without conviction."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
"We all have our time machines. Those that take us back are memories. Ans those that carry us forward are dreams."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]
"Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant – it tends to get worse."
~~ journalist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]
"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line."
~~ Lucille Ball [1911-89]
"Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to ignore risks that threaten their livelihood, as though this will make them go away."
~~ statistician Nate Silver
"A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises."
~~ author Rex Stout [1886-1975]
"The greater the obstacle, the more glory [in] overcoming it."
~~ Molière [1622-73]
"It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course."
~~ Hank Aaron
"If you attack the establishment long enough, they will make you a member of it."
~~ Art Buchwald [1925-2007]
"There must be some narrowness of the soul that compels one to keep secrets."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"When you lavish praise on people, they flourish; criticize and they shrivel up."
~~ Richard Branson
"Had I abided by good advice I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes."
~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]
"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"If you think [that] going to the moon is hard, try staying at home."
~~ astronaut wife Barbara White Cernan
"Every time [that] I think I know where it's at, it's usually somewhere else."
~~ Blake Edwards [1922-2010]
"A book is a gift [that] you can open again and again."
~~ Garrison Keillor
"You don't have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great."
~~ Zig Ziglar [1926-2012]
"The most effective way to manage change successfully is to create it."
~~ Peter F. Drucker [1909-2005]
"If you have to ask the cost of owning a yacht, you can't afford it."
~~ banker J.P. Morgan [1837-1913]
"Of the many imprisonments possible in this world, one of the worst must be to be inarticulate – to be unable to tell another person what you really feel."
~~ Roger Ebert [1942-2013]
"Rules cannot take the place of character."
~~ Alan Greenspan
"Be the first to not do what nobody has ever thought of not doing before."
~~ Brian Eno
"With knowledge comes more doubt."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]
"No matter what side of an argument you're on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side."
~~ violinist Jascha Heifetz [1901-87]
"The nearest thing to eternal life [that] we will ever see on this earth is a government program."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."
~~ George R.R. Martin
"You've got to work like it's your first day on the job every day."
~~ Nicki Minaj
"We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission, and the babysitter were worth it."
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]
"The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."
~~ Plutarch [46?–127 C.E.]
"Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears."
~~ motivational speaker Leslie C. 'Les' Brown
"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."
~~ James M. Barrie [1860-1937]
"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
~~ U.C.L.A. coach John R. Wooden [1910-2010]
"Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs."
~~ Farrah Gray
"I would rather die of passion than of boredom."
~~ Vincent van Gogh [1853-90]
"The federal budget deficit isn't the nation's major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn't be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both."
~~ Robert Reich, in 2013
"There has never been an American tragedy. There have only been great failures."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], in 1927
"There is no such thing as 'away'. When we throw anything away, it must go somewhere."
~~ Annie Leonard
"Courage is contagious."
~~ Julian Assange
"Men go faster these days, but I do not believe [that] they go anywhere better."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]
"The [N.S.A.] invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far ... America has no functioning democracy at this moment."
~~ former President Jimmy Carter, in July 2013
"These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
“Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”
~~ Woody Allen
“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”
~~ Woody Allen
"Rights only exist when they apply to everyone. When only some people are accorded a so-called 'right', then it is privilege and subjugation."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don't mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all."
~~ Neal Gabler, in 2004
"I'm hoping for a return to at least partial sanity someday, but I'm not optimistic."
~~ writer & dog rescuer David Rosenfelt
"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (Le Lys Rouge)
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924]
"Sooner or later we all quote our mothers."
~~ Bern Williams
"When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing: they believe in anything."
~~ often attributed to G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."
~~ Sophia Loren
"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."
~~ Joyce Carol Oates
"Industry pays debts, despair increases them."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper."
~~ biologist E.O. Wilson
"The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying 'The trouble with this country is ...'."
~~ Sinclair Lewis [1885-1951]
"Tolerance is the virtue of a man without conviction."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
"We all have our time machines. Those that take us back are memories. Ans those that carry us forward are dreams."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]
"Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant – it tends to get worse."
~~ journalist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]
"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line."
~~ Lucille Ball [1911-89]
"Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to ignore risks that threaten their livelihood, as though this will make them go away."
~~ statistician Nate Silver
"A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises."
~~ author Rex Stout [1886-1975]
"The greater the obstacle, the more glory [in] overcoming it."
~~ Molière [1622-73]
"It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course."
~~ Hank Aaron
"If you attack the establishment long enough, they will make you a member of it."
~~ Art Buchwald [1925-2007]
"There must be some narrowness of the soul that compels one to keep secrets."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"When you lavish praise on people, they flourish; criticize and they shrivel up."
~~ Richard Branson
"Had I abided by good advice I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes."
~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]
"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"If you think [that] going to the moon is hard, try staying at home."
~~ astronaut wife Barbara White Cernan
"Every time [that] I think I know where it's at, it's usually somewhere else."
~~ Blake Edwards [1922-2010]
"A book is a gift [that] you can open again and again."
~~ Garrison Keillor
"You don't have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great."
~~ Zig Ziglar [1926-2012]
"The most effective way to manage change successfully is to create it."
~~ Peter F. Drucker [1909-2005]
"If you have to ask the cost of owning a yacht, you can't afford it."
~~ banker J.P. Morgan [1837-1913]
"Of the many imprisonments possible in this world, one of the worst must be to be inarticulate – to be unable to tell another person what you really feel."
~~ Roger Ebert [1942-2013]
"Rules cannot take the place of character."
~~ Alan Greenspan
"Be the first to not do what nobody has ever thought of not doing before."
~~ Brian Eno
"With knowledge comes more doubt."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]
"No matter what side of an argument you're on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side."
~~ violinist Jascha Heifetz [1901-87]
"The nearest thing to eternal life [that] we will ever see on this earth is a government program."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."
~~ George R.R. Martin
"You've got to work like it's your first day on the job every day."
~~ Nicki Minaj
"We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission, and the babysitter were worth it."
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]
"The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Essay #105: No Justice in Florida
The whole system down in Florida is designed to prevent justice.
The trial of Trayvon Martin for his own death was a travesty. The prosecutors failed to do their job, leaving out important evidence and witnesses, and did not object even once to the lies and media manipulation of the defense team. The judge stacked the deck. The all-white cracker jury let the vigilante attacker of 17-year-old Trayvon off 'scott free', because in Florida, vigilante lynchings of Afro-Americans are okay.
Vigilante cop-wannabe George Zimmerman did everything wrong. He shot an unarmed teenager, and then lied about the entire event. Zimmerman was told to stay in the patrol car; there were no bushes for Trayvon to hide in; that was Trayvon screaming for help on the cell phone; Zimmerman hit first by whacking the cell phone out of Trayvon's hand; Zimmerman not only knew about Stand Your Ground, he got an A grade in the class; and Zimmerman lied under oath about the money in the bank.
Well, Trayvon is dead now, and Zimmerman becomes a hero to rednecks and racists in Florida and elsewhere.
(And the Afro-American Florida woman who fired a warning shot into the air to scare off her menacing husband got twenty years in prison.)
The trial of Trayvon is over, and he was found guilty in absentia.
Not much you can do, they say. True. Except to live by the premises “Battling ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full-time job” and “The Revolution is never over, the Class War is perpetual”.
So I got creative, in my small way. Part of my websites include Travel & Business Links, by state, which began during my five cross-country trips for Landmark Education's year-long T.M.L.P course and the nine trips to move myself from California to New Mexico, back in 2004-2005.
Yesterday I changed the Florida Travel Page to the State of Florida Page of Shame, and will probably leave it there for a long time - who knows, progressive activists & politicians might eventually restore justice in Florida. It could happen. Maybe. Someday.
What the white crackers of Florida misunderstand is the universal principle that everyone has the same rights, that the crackers only have precisely the same rights as racial minorities and women and immigrants and old people and children do.
Nothing is a right unless it applies to everyone.
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
The trial of Trayvon Martin for his own death was a travesty. The prosecutors failed to do their job, leaving out important evidence and witnesses, and did not object even once to the lies and media manipulation of the defense team. The judge stacked the deck. The all-white cracker jury let the vigilante attacker of 17-year-old Trayvon off 'scott free', because in Florida, vigilante lynchings of Afro-Americans are okay.
Vigilante cop-wannabe George Zimmerman did everything wrong. He shot an unarmed teenager, and then lied about the entire event. Zimmerman was told to stay in the patrol car; there were no bushes for Trayvon to hide in; that was Trayvon screaming for help on the cell phone; Zimmerman hit first by whacking the cell phone out of Trayvon's hand; Zimmerman not only knew about Stand Your Ground, he got an A grade in the class; and Zimmerman lied under oath about the money in the bank.
Well, Trayvon is dead now, and Zimmerman becomes a hero to rednecks and racists in Florida and elsewhere.
(And the Afro-American Florida woman who fired a warning shot into the air to scare off her menacing husband got twenty years in prison.)
The trial of Trayvon is over, and he was found guilty in absentia.
Not much you can do, they say. True. Except to live by the premises “Battling ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full-time job” and “The Revolution is never over, the Class War is perpetual”.
So I got creative, in my small way. Part of my websites include Travel & Business Links, by state, which began during my five cross-country trips for Landmark Education's year-long T.M.L.P course and the nine trips to move myself from California to New Mexico, back in 2004-2005.
Yesterday I changed the Florida Travel Page to the State of Florida Page of Shame, and will probably leave it there for a long time - who knows, progressive activists & politicians might eventually restore justice in Florida. It could happen. Maybe. Someday.
What the white crackers of Florida misunderstand is the universal principle that everyone has the same rights, that the crackers only have precisely the same rights as racial minorities and women and immigrants and old people and children do.
Nothing is a right unless it applies to everyone.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
July 2013 News factoids
Browser Statistics for May 2013
I had occasion to check out current browser popularity, and found that: Google's Chrome has 52.9% of the market (up from 48.4% in January); Firefox is second with 27.7% (down from 30.2% in January); Microsoft's Internet Explorer is third with 12.6% (down from 14.3% in January); with Safari at 4.0% and Opera at 1.6%.
"Climate change and extreme weather already are causing disruptions in the U.S. energy supply that are likely to worsen as more intense storms, higher temperatures, and more frequent droughts occur." Scientists also say that water is the key factor: not enough during a drought and too much during flooding.
~~ per Department of Energy Special Report released in July 2013 and Associated Press
"Do you really believe that Americans are living lives of leisure on $134 a month, the average S.N.A.P. [food stamp] benefit?”
~~ Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist
U.S. worker compensation posted its biggest drop since 1947 during the first quarter of 2013. (The year 1947 is when the Labor Department began tracking the statistic.) The Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing a 3.8 percent drop in the recent first quarter.
===============================
HA! NOT REPORTED IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PRESS
"America has no functioning democracy at this moment." ~~ verbatim quote from former President Jimmy Carter, at the Atlantic Bridge {Atlantik Bruecke} meeting on Tuesday 16 July 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia
He noted in an earlier interview with C.N.N. that the recent N.S.A. leaks were a warning that "the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far".Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
I had occasion to check out current browser popularity, and found that: Google's Chrome has 52.9% of the market (up from 48.4% in January); Firefox is second with 27.7% (down from 30.2% in January); Microsoft's Internet Explorer is third with 12.6% (down from 14.3% in January); with Safari at 4.0% and Opera at 1.6%.
"Climate change and extreme weather already are causing disruptions in the U.S. energy supply that are likely to worsen as more intense storms, higher temperatures, and more frequent droughts occur." Scientists also say that water is the key factor: not enough during a drought and too much during flooding.
~~ per Department of Energy Special Report released in July 2013 and Associated Press
"Do you really believe that Americans are living lives of leisure on $134 a month, the average S.N.A.P. [food stamp] benefit?”
~~ Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist
U.S. worker compensation posted its biggest drop since 1947 during the first quarter of 2013. (The year 1947 is when the Labor Department began tracking the statistic.) The Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing a 3.8 percent drop in the recent first quarter.
===============================
HA! NOT REPORTED IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PRESS
"America has no functioning democracy at this moment." ~~ verbatim quote from former President Jimmy Carter, at the Atlantic Bridge {Atlantik Bruecke} meeting on Tuesday 16 July 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia
He noted in an earlier interview with C.N.N. that the recent N.S.A. leaks were a warning that "the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far".
Monday, July 15, 2013
July 2013 Quotations (60)
"The purpose of mortality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"For many Americans, the end of the world is already here."
~~ Aaron Thier, in 2013
"Some succeed because they are destined to; most succeed because they are determined to."
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924]
"Words, like bread, are sacred."
~~ Rudolfo Anaya
"Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine." {Often quoted as the shorter "Action from principle ... is essentially revolutionary."}
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"Theology is simply the part of religion that requires brains."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
"How many people does it take to change a searchlight bulb?"
~~ comedian Steven Wright
"Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence."
~~ rock star Jim Morrison [1943-71]
"We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay."
~~ cartoonist Lynda Barry
"When the oppressed take up arms in the name of justice, they take a step toward injustice."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]
"Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters."
~~ theologian Nathaniel Emmons [1745-1840]
"Self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it."
~~ Gloria Steinem
"Happiness and confidence are the greatest things [that] you can wear."
~~ Taylor Swift
"Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business."
~~ Dave Barry
"Be alone – that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born."
~~ Nikola Tesla [1856-1943]
"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
~~ athlete Michael Jordan
"There are no right answers to wrong questions."
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin
"It is the weakness and danger of republics that the vices as well as virtues of the people are represented in their legislation."
~~ author Helen Hunt Jackson [1830-85]
"Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]
"Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"Conservatives are those who worship dead radicals."
~~ William Rehnquist [1924-2005], U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"Often things [that] you think are just beginning are coming to an end."
~~ John Dos Passos [1896-1970]
"We live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Some tunnels just happen to be longer than others."
~~ author Ada Adams
"What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do during our leisure hours determines what we are."
~~ George Eastman [1854-1932], founder of Eastman Kodak Co.
"The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]
"We are all born mad. Some remain so."
~~ Samuel Beckett [1906-89]
"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito."
~~ Bette Reese
“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those that spring from any other cause.”
~~ George Washington [1732-99]
"When a religion is good, I conceive [that] it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"Character is simply habit long continued."
~~ Plutarch [46?–127 C.E.]
"If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day."
~~ physicist John A. Wheeler [1911-2008]
"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition."
~~ Jacques Barzun [1907-2012]
"The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"The truth stalks us like bad credit."
~~ Ta-nehisi Coates
"Concealing an illness is like keeping a beach ball underwater."
~~ Karen Duffy
"The penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you."
~~ Viscountess Nancy Astor [1879-1964]
"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"What do you call an economist with a prediction? Wrong."
~~ journalist Robert Kuttner
"When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride."
~~ food show host Anthony Bourdain
"A humanitarian is always a hypocrite."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"A loser says that's the way [that] it's always been done. A winner says [that] there ought to be a better way."
~~ columnist Sydney J. Harris [1917-86]
"The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'check enclosed'."
~~ Dorothy Parker [1893-1967]
"A good half of the art of living is resilience."
~~ Alain de Botton of Switzerland
"A friend to all is a friend to none."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing."
~~ writer Sylvia Plath [1932-63]
"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as a good burglar."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"The definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac."
~~ David Mamet
"The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"The size of a planet doesn't strike until you start looking for something."
~~ David Sedaris
"If a woman never lets herself go, how will she know how far she might have got?"
~~ Germaine Greer
"Action is the antidote to despair."
~~ singer-songwriter Joan Baez
"As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"We do not know what to do with this short life, but we want another which will be eternal."
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"For many Americans, the end of the world is already here."
~~ Aaron Thier, in 2013
"Some succeed because they are destined to; most succeed because they are determined to."
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924]
"Words, like bread, are sacred."
~~ Rudolfo Anaya
"Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine." {Often quoted as the shorter "Action from principle ... is essentially revolutionary."}
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"Theology is simply the part of religion that requires brains."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
"How many people does it take to change a searchlight bulb?"
~~ comedian Steven Wright
"Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence."
~~ rock star Jim Morrison [1943-71]
"We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay."
~~ cartoonist Lynda Barry
"When the oppressed take up arms in the name of justice, they take a step toward injustice."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]
"Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters."
~~ theologian Nathaniel Emmons [1745-1840]
"Self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it."
~~ Gloria Steinem
"Happiness and confidence are the greatest things [that] you can wear."
~~ Taylor Swift
"Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business."
~~ Dave Barry
"Be alone – that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born."
~~ Nikola Tesla [1856-1943]
"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
~~ athlete Michael Jordan
"There are no right answers to wrong questions."
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin
"It is the weakness and danger of republics that the vices as well as virtues of the people are represented in their legislation."
~~ author Helen Hunt Jackson [1830-85]
"Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]
"Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"Conservatives are those who worship dead radicals."
~~ William Rehnquist [1924-2005], U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"Often things [that] you think are just beginning are coming to an end."
~~ John Dos Passos [1896-1970]
"We live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
"There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Some tunnels just happen to be longer than others."
~~ author Ada Adams
"What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do during our leisure hours determines what we are."
~~ George Eastman [1854-1932], founder of Eastman Kodak Co.
"The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]
"We are all born mad. Some remain so."
~~ Samuel Beckett [1906-89]
"If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito."
~~ Bette Reese
“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those that spring from any other cause.”
~~ George Washington [1732-99]
"When a religion is good, I conceive [that] it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"Character is simply habit long continued."
~~ Plutarch [46?–127 C.E.]
"If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day."
~~ physicist John A. Wheeler [1911-2008]
"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition."
~~ Jacques Barzun [1907-2012]
"The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"The truth stalks us like bad credit."
~~ Ta-nehisi Coates
"Concealing an illness is like keeping a beach ball underwater."
~~ Karen Duffy
"The penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you."
~~ Viscountess Nancy Astor [1879-1964]
"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"What do you call an economist with a prediction? Wrong."
~~ journalist Robert Kuttner
"When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride."
~~ food show host Anthony Bourdain
"A humanitarian is always a hypocrite."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"A loser says that's the way [that] it's always been done. A winner says [that] there ought to be a better way."
~~ columnist Sydney J. Harris [1917-86]
"The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'check enclosed'."
~~ Dorothy Parker [1893-1967]
"A good half of the art of living is resilience."
~~ Alain de Botton of Switzerland
"A friend to all is a friend to none."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing."
~~ writer Sylvia Plath [1932-63]
"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as a good burglar."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"The definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac."
~~ David Mamet
"The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"The size of a planet doesn't strike until you start looking for something."
~~ David Sedaris
"If a woman never lets herself go, how will she know how far she might have got?"
~~ Germaine Greer
"Action is the antidote to despair."
~~ singer-songwriter Joan Baez
"As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"We do not know what to do with this short life, but we want another which will be eternal."
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Friday, June 28, 2013
May-June 2013 News Factoids
Broadcast television 'up front' ad sales for 2013 are expected to hold steady at $9.75 billion, while cable network ad sales are expected to surpass broadcast TV with $10 billion in sales. == per AdWeek, April 2013
check out the Ultimate Top Ten (mostly funny) Lists website.
Employer-offered healthcare coverage has dropped steadily since 2000; the data for 2011 shows only 52 percent of employees covered. In the same time frame, the average premium for an average employee doubled.
== per Bloomberg
Lots of workers and consumers are behind the "Boycott Wal-Mart!!" movement; second option is to use the phrase "Boycott WongMart!!".
The word 'drone' is now a verb.
Inventors Rossi & Focardi are letting other scientists perform tightly-controlled testing of an Energy Catalyzer that produces energy by COLD FUSION: click here
A key paragraph of Google's rules & regs page was changed on May 27th
== per Search Engine Land
OLD TEXT: "In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages."
NEW TEXT: "In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share.
This really changes the way your website shows up in search results!
HORRORS!: Of the 400 top-selling books of 2012, E.L. James ('Fifty Shades of Grey') and Suzanne Collins ('Hunger Games') accounted for 25% of all sales.
== per Forbes
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
check out the Ultimate Top Ten (mostly funny) Lists website.
Employer-offered healthcare coverage has dropped steadily since 2000; the data for 2011 shows only 52 percent of employees covered. In the same time frame, the average premium for an average employee doubled.
== per Bloomberg
Lots of workers and consumers are behind the "Boycott Wal-Mart!!" movement; second option is to use the phrase "Boycott WongMart!!".
The word 'drone' is now a verb.
Inventors Rossi & Focardi are letting other scientists perform tightly-controlled testing of an Energy Catalyzer that produces energy by COLD FUSION: click here
A key paragraph of Google's rules & regs page was changed on May 27th
== per Search Engine Land
OLD TEXT: "In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages."
NEW TEXT: "In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share.
This really changes the way your website shows up in search results!
HORRORS!: Of the 400 top-selling books of 2012, E.L. James ('Fifty Shades of Grey') and Suzanne Collins ('Hunger Games') accounted for 25% of all sales.
== per Forbes
Friday, May 31, 2013
May 2013 Quotations
“People always say things like, Oh, well, he was suffering so much that he was better off dying. But that’s not true. You’re always better off living.”
~~ Dashiell Hammett [1894-1961]
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever."
~~ Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe [1930-2013]
“There are moments when a man’s imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.”
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]
“If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live.”
~~ wrongly attributed to Albert Einstein [1879-1955] {appeared in the 1990s}
"He who fears [that] he shall suffer already suffers what he fears."
~~ Montaigne [1533-92]
"The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"Some things are just too coincidental to be a coincidence."
~~ Yogi Berra
"Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention."
~~ Amy Tan
"What experience & history teach us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."
~~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [1770-1831]
"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."
~~ Baruch Spinoza [1632-77]
"The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure [that] anyone has, is his personal dignity."
~~ baseball great Jackie Robinson [1919-72]
"Until conservatives admit [that] their deepest beliefs regarding taxes and deregulation were, at minimum, severely challenged by the failures of the [George W.] Bush presidency, they are going to have a hard time convincing anyone that they know how to run a country."
~~ freelance columnist Bill Scher
"Man will become better when we have shown him to himself as he is."
~~ Anton Checkov [1860-1904]
“To paraphrase the Christian Bible (Matthew 16): For what is a man profited if he shall make beaucoup bucks while transforming the planet into a cesspool.”
~~ G.E. Nordell
“Socializing with alcohol is fun and we should not pretend otherwise.”
~~ blogger Suzy Dean
"Profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster."
~~ Elizabeth Murdoch {Freud}
"It's the Twentieth Century . . . no more miracles."
~~ Clifford Odets [1906-63], in stageplay "Golden Boy" 1937
"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet."
~~ Roger Miller [1936-92]
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]
"It should be our care not so much to live a long life as a satisfactory one."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]
"Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together."
~~ Marilyn Monroe [1926-62]
"The best things in life aren't 'things' at all."
~~ Jim Owen
"All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time."
~~ Edward Albee
"You can tell how smart people are by what they laugh at."
~~ Tina Fey
"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
“If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, both are useless.”
~~ Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck [1902-79]
“I always find that when I do something I like, from the heart, then it works.”
~~ Harvey Weinstein
"In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty."
~~ President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address 2013
“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are mova+ble, and those that move.”
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"No one wants advice – only corroboration."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]
"Sometimes integrity is the subtlest and most effective strategy of all."
~~ Supreme Court Justice John Marshall [1755-1835]
"The earth has music for those who listen."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]
"Oratory [is] the art of making deep noises from the chest sound like important messages from the brain."
~~ composer H.I. Phillips
"One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats."
~~ Iris Murdoch [1919-99]
"There will come a time when you believe [that] everything is finished. That will be the beginning." ~~ Louis L'Amour [1908-88]
"You can't lead from the crowd."
~~ Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013]
"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."
~~ John Lennon [1940-80]
"It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all."
~~ Cormac McCarthy
"Silence is argument carried on by other means."
~~ Ernesto 'Che' Guevara [1928-67]
"The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off."
~~ coach Abe Lemons [1922-2002]
"The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie."
~~ choreographer Agnes de Mille [1905-93]
"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."
~~ Charlton Heston [1923-2008]
"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written."
~~ Henry Miller [1891-1980]
"The only lies for which we are truly punished are those [that] we tell ourselves."
~~ V.S. Naipaul
"There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]
"We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story."
~~ Mary McCarthy [1912-89]
"Sophistication is upscale conformity."
~~ poet James Richardson
"What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you."
~~ Nora Ephron [1941-2012]
"Taking on a pet is a contract with sorrow."
~~ Carol Anshaw
"Civilizations die from suicide, not murder."
~~ historian Arnold J. Toynbee [1889-1975]
"The two most important days in your life are the day [that] you are born and the day [that] you find out why."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
"Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea."
~~ journalist Walter Bagehot [1826-77]
"Friendship is born at the moment [that] one person says to another: What? You too? I thought I was the only one."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]
"Psychiatry is the art of teaching people how to stand on their own feet while reclining on couches."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"Too often man handles life as he does the bad weather. He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop."
~~ journalist Alfred Polgar [1873-1955]
"It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves."
~~ Zelda Fitzgerald [1900-48]
"Obstacles are those frightful things [that] you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
~~ Henry Ford [1863-1947]
"The media's job is to interest the public in the public interest."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Dashiell Hammett [1894-1961]
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever."
~~ Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe [1930-2013]
“There are moments when a man’s imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.”
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]
“If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live.”
~~ wrongly attributed to Albert Einstein [1879-1955] {appeared in the 1990s}
"He who fears [that] he shall suffer already suffers what he fears."
~~ Montaigne [1533-92]
"The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"Some things are just too coincidental to be a coincidence."
~~ Yogi Berra
"Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention."
~~ Amy Tan
"What experience & history teach us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."
~~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [1770-1831]
"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."
~~ Baruch Spinoza [1632-77]
"The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure [that] anyone has, is his personal dignity."
~~ baseball great Jackie Robinson [1919-72]
"Until conservatives admit [that] their deepest beliefs regarding taxes and deregulation were, at minimum, severely challenged by the failures of the [George W.] Bush presidency, they are going to have a hard time convincing anyone that they know how to run a country."
~~ freelance columnist Bill Scher
"Man will become better when we have shown him to himself as he is."
~~ Anton Checkov [1860-1904]
“To paraphrase the Christian Bible (Matthew 16): For what is a man profited if he shall make beaucoup bucks while transforming the planet into a cesspool.”
~~ G.E. Nordell
“Socializing with alcohol is fun and we should not pretend otherwise.”
~~ blogger Suzy Dean
"Profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster."
~~ Elizabeth Murdoch {Freud}
"It's the Twentieth Century . . . no more miracles."
~~ Clifford Odets [1906-63], in stageplay "Golden Boy" 1937
"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet."
~~ Roger Miller [1936-92]
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]
"It should be our care not so much to live a long life as a satisfactory one."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]
"Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together."
~~ Marilyn Monroe [1926-62]
"The best things in life aren't 'things' at all."
~~ Jim Owen
"All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time."
~~ Edward Albee
"You can tell how smart people are by what they laugh at."
~~ Tina Fey
"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
“If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, both are useless.”
~~ Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck [1902-79]
“I always find that when I do something I like, from the heart, then it works.”
~~ Harvey Weinstein
"In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty."
~~ President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address 2013
“All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are mova+ble, and those that move.”
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"No one wants advice – only corroboration."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]
"Sometimes integrity is the subtlest and most effective strategy of all."
~~ Supreme Court Justice John Marshall [1755-1835]
"The earth has music for those who listen."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]
"Oratory [is] the art of making deep noises from the chest sound like important messages from the brain."
~~ composer H.I. Phillips
"One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats."
~~ Iris Murdoch [1919-99]
"There will come a time when you believe [that] everything is finished. That will be the beginning." ~~ Louis L'Amour [1908-88]
"You can't lead from the crowd."
~~ Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013]
"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."
~~ John Lennon [1940-80]
"It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all."
~~ Cormac McCarthy
"Silence is argument carried on by other means."
~~ Ernesto 'Che' Guevara [1928-67]
"The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off."
~~ coach Abe Lemons [1922-2002]
"The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie."
~~ choreographer Agnes de Mille [1905-93]
"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."
~~ Charlton Heston [1923-2008]
"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written."
~~ Henry Miller [1891-1980]
"The only lies for which we are truly punished are those [that] we tell ourselves."
~~ V.S. Naipaul
"There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]
"We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story."
~~ Mary McCarthy [1912-89]
"Sophistication is upscale conformity."
~~ poet James Richardson
"What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you."
~~ Nora Ephron [1941-2012]
"Taking on a pet is a contract with sorrow."
~~ Carol Anshaw
"Civilizations die from suicide, not murder."
~~ historian Arnold J. Toynbee [1889-1975]
"The two most important days in your life are the day [that] you are born and the day [that] you find out why."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
"Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea."
~~ journalist Walter Bagehot [1826-77]
"Friendship is born at the moment [that] one person says to another: What? You too? I thought I was the only one."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]
"Psychiatry is the art of teaching people how to stand on their own feet while reclining on couches."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"Too often man handles life as he does the bad weather. He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop."
~~ journalist Alfred Polgar [1873-1955]
"It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves."
~~ Zelda Fitzgerald [1900-48]
"Obstacles are those frightful things [that] you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
~~ Henry Ford [1863-1947]
"The media's job is to interest the public in the public interest."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Essay #104: No Water For You
The battle to halt global warming, aka ‘climate change’, is over.
We lost.
The Republitard fascists and the One Percent (the Oligarchy) have and continue to work hard to ensure that the trajectory of civilization is pointed toward the extinction of homo sapiens in thirty years or so. This is essentially species suicide thru intentional inaction.
* * * * * * * * Eco-journalist Bill McKibben learned from climate scientists that there was a ‘tipping point’, a point of no return, that a level of carbon dioxide (CO2) at 350 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere was the maximum safe level; above that the ‘greenhouse effect’ would afterward operate on autopilot, the planet and the biosphere would from there simply get warmer all on its own. The number back in 2007 was 385 ppm of carbon dioxide. So McKibben founded 350.org to build grassroots awareness of the problem; the group held major marches and demonstrations in 2009 and 2010 and 2012, but the average citizen heard little news about those efforts. The fascists spent millions on propaganda in recent elections, Oklahoma Sen. Inhofe calls climate change a hoax, and the Kyoto Agreement remains unsigned by the United States.
The wheels of government spin merrily while the planet heats up.
Think not? News this month from Hawai’i is that atmospheric scientists at the Mauna Loa Observatory have been recording levels of 400 ppm of carbon dioxide. The 11,000 foot elevation and the distance from both Honolulu and Hilo (and everywhere else) makes measurements taken there ‘clean’. The first measurements taken there were around 316 ppm in 1958; readings rose to 385 in 2007, an increase (ballpark) of 70 points in 30 years or 2.3 points average; the increase since 2007 is 15 points, which is 3.0 points per year. Seems like not much, but the rate of increase has gone up by 25 percent. If your paycheck went up 25 percent, that would be good news; such a rate of increase for this factor of climate change is very bad news.
Greenhouse gases are increasing ever faster and are unlikely to be reversed. Warmer. Then warmer.
* * * * * * * * In other news, New Mexico is experiencing ‘severe’ drought in 90% of the state, ‘extreme’ drought in 50%, and ‘exceptional’ drought in 4.3%, which is the eighth worst. The Great Drought is obvious everywhere in the state. Elephant Butte Reservoir is at its lowest level since the dam was completed in 1916. The site is built to hold 2 million acre feet of water; the content at present is 223,000 acre feet – or 11 percent of capacity.
So no water is leaving Elephant Butte southward.
The farmers in Hatch Valley realize the situation, and most are planning to plant NO ‘famous Hatch chili’ crop this year. (Well, maybe a few with deep wells will give it a try.) And I heard that farmers in Valencia County will plant only two alfalfa crops this year, instead of three.
The available water in the Rio Grande River is far below New Mexico’s long-ago negotiated allotment, so no water is leaving New Mexico across the state line to Texas, either. Texas has already filed suit with the U.S. Supreme Court, but that is simple lawyerly due diligence (“We tried!”) – if they win the case, where is any water coming from?
* * * * * * * * I was in the U.S. Air Force in the late 1960s, based in Las Vegas, Nevada with temporary assignments to VietNam, and Thailand, and other places. The people of Thailand, especially those ‘up country’ (north of Bangkok) are quite friendly to Europeans, and I took the opportunity to ‘go native’ and paid the weekly rent for a girl there named Vilai and spent nights and weekends off the airbase when I could get away from teaching computer analysis to master sergeants. I was there six weeks or so and truly experienced elements of the local lifestyle, which goes back hundreds of years.
The bungalow where I stayed was on eight-foot log stilts; there were two rows of housing on a berm between and above the rice paddies, with a foot and bicycle path down the middle. We slept inside mosquito netting, and Vilai cooked or we went out. There was electricity but no television; I read a lot. The back porch (facing the paddy) was fenced to about three feet high, with one section for the kitchen and the other for the bath. The stilts were strong enough to support a large ceramic water cistern, about four feet in diameter and maybe three feet high. The way that things worked there, each resident had to be home between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to turn the faucet on to replenish the cistern, and to turn it off when full. Some days no water came out. There were severe penalties for anybody who turned the faucet on and then left the place unattended.
I learned to take a bath ‘native style’, by first soaping up (bent low because the fence was designed for shorter people) and then using a tin bowl to rinse the soap off. Not a bad experience in a tropical country (Thailand’s latitude matches that of Central America), but I really do appreciate and prefer a hot shower.
* * * * * * * What is going to happen here in New Mexico?
First, Albuquerque and other towns and cities will outlaw watering of gardens and lawns and filling of swimming pools, even wading pools. I am surprised that restaurants have not already stopped serving water except by request; it will eventually happen, and they may even begin charging for water like any other beverage.
Next will probably be shutdown of car washes.
As water becomes scarcer, prices will go up, either at the grocery or c-store or on your monthly water bill. And you better have a large bag of quarters on hand if you wash clothes at the laundromat (or apartment building equivalent).
Water is a finite resource and a commodity, and the price of each form of water could very well double in the next two years.
One hopes that the bureaucrats in each New Mexico city or water district are smart enough to set delivery hours of rationed water to match the American lifestyle – how about 6 to 9 in the morning and 5 to 9 in the evening?
Good idea to start shopping for that in-home water cistern. Ceramic ones can be found at floral nurseries, the plastic barrel kind at nurseries and at construction and industrial supply stores. Get yours before the price goes up.
Need a job? Ask a Republican why they do nothing about the situation.
Well gone dry? Ask a Republican why they continue to prevent every solution to overcome climate change.
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
We lost.
The Republitard fascists and the One Percent (the Oligarchy) have and continue to work hard to ensure that the trajectory of civilization is pointed toward the extinction of homo sapiens in thirty years or so. This is essentially species suicide thru intentional inaction.
The wheels of government spin merrily while the planet heats up.
Think not? News this month from Hawai’i is that atmospheric scientists at the Mauna Loa Observatory have been recording levels of 400 ppm of carbon dioxide. The 11,000 foot elevation and the distance from both Honolulu and Hilo (and everywhere else) makes measurements taken there ‘clean’. The first measurements taken there were around 316 ppm in 1958; readings rose to 385 in 2007, an increase (ballpark) of 70 points in 30 years or 2.3 points average; the increase since 2007 is 15 points, which is 3.0 points per year. Seems like not much, but the rate of increase has gone up by 25 percent. If your paycheck went up 25 percent, that would be good news; such a rate of increase for this factor of climate change is very bad news.
Greenhouse gases are increasing ever faster and are unlikely to be reversed. Warmer. Then warmer.
So no water is leaving Elephant Butte southward.
The farmers in Hatch Valley realize the situation, and most are planning to plant NO ‘famous Hatch chili’ crop this year. (Well, maybe a few with deep wells will give it a try.) And I heard that farmers in Valencia County will plant only two alfalfa crops this year, instead of three.
The available water in the Rio Grande River is far below New Mexico’s long-ago negotiated allotment, so no water is leaving New Mexico across the state line to Texas, either. Texas has already filed suit with the U.S. Supreme Court, but that is simple lawyerly due diligence (“We tried!”) – if they win the case, where is any water coming from?
The bungalow where I stayed was on eight-foot log stilts; there were two rows of housing on a berm between and above the rice paddies, with a foot and bicycle path down the middle. We slept inside mosquito netting, and Vilai cooked or we went out. There was electricity but no television; I read a lot. The back porch (facing the paddy) was fenced to about three feet high, with one section for the kitchen and the other for the bath. The stilts were strong enough to support a large ceramic water cistern, about four feet in diameter and maybe three feet high. The way that things worked there, each resident had to be home between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to turn the faucet on to replenish the cistern, and to turn it off when full. Some days no water came out. There were severe penalties for anybody who turned the faucet on and then left the place unattended.
I learned to take a bath ‘native style’, by first soaping up (bent low because the fence was designed for shorter people) and then using a tin bowl to rinse the soap off. Not a bad experience in a tropical country (Thailand’s latitude matches that of Central America), but I really do appreciate and prefer a hot shower.
First, Albuquerque and other towns and cities will outlaw watering of gardens and lawns and filling of swimming pools, even wading pools. I am surprised that restaurants have not already stopped serving water except by request; it will eventually happen, and they may even begin charging for water like any other beverage.
Next will probably be shutdown of car washes.
As water becomes scarcer, prices will go up, either at the grocery or c-store or on your monthly water bill. And you better have a large bag of quarters on hand if you wash clothes at the laundromat (or apartment building equivalent).
Water is a finite resource and a commodity, and the price of each form of water could very well double in the next two years.
One hopes that the bureaucrats in each New Mexico city or water district are smart enough to set delivery hours of rationed water to match the American lifestyle – how about 6 to 9 in the morning and 5 to 9 in the evening?
Good idea to start shopping for that in-home water cistern. Ceramic ones can be found at floral nurseries, the plastic barrel kind at nurseries and at construction and industrial supply stores. Get yours before the price goes up.
Need a job? Ask a Republican why they do nothing about the situation.
Well gone dry? Ask a Republican why they continue to prevent every solution to overcome climate change.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Five REAL Scandals
Journalist Bill Scher has described 'Five Real Scandals Republicans Might Want To Address' over at the Campaign For America's Future Blog, which are:
1. Carbon dioxide atmospheric levels hovering around 400 parts per million.
2. America's crumbling infrastructure needs $3.6 trillion just to reach a 'state of good repair'.
3. The top 1 percent in America holds 35 percent of the nation’s wealth (although the New York Times has long used the figure 65%).
4. More than 4 million Americans have been jobless for more than half a year.
5. Forty percent of America’s children aged between 3 and 5 are not enrolled in any sort of preschool.
To which I would add the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (caused by Republican cancellation of free condom programs), pollution by fracking, banging on the war drums for intervention in Syria, the sequester charade, and coming food shortages from the national drought.
The Republicans present no solution for any of these problems, which is the larger scandal. Troglodyte Republicans continue to propose 'free market' healthcare (their 'get well or die!' policy), eliminating the minimum wage (a return to feudalism), privatization of everything, including Social Security and education (abject fascism), and 'austerity for workers (only), unregulated extortionist monopolies, and a tax free aristocracy' replacing capitalism – any objective observer can see that these solve nothing.
Again, I say: “If the fascist Republican Party had anything of value to offer the American voter they would not have to lie and cheat and steal to win elections.”
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
1. Carbon dioxide atmospheric levels hovering around 400 parts per million.
2. America's crumbling infrastructure needs $3.6 trillion just to reach a 'state of good repair'.
3. The top 1 percent in America holds 35 percent of the nation’s wealth (although the New York Times has long used the figure 65%).
4. More than 4 million Americans have been jobless for more than half a year.
5. Forty percent of America’s children aged between 3 and 5 are not enrolled in any sort of preschool.
To which I would add the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (caused by Republican cancellation of free condom programs), pollution by fracking, banging on the war drums for intervention in Syria, the sequester charade, and coming food shortages from the national drought.
The Republicans present no solution for any of these problems, which is the larger scandal. Troglodyte Republicans continue to propose 'free market' healthcare (their 'get well or die!' policy), eliminating the minimum wage (a return to feudalism), privatization of everything, including Social Security and education (abject fascism), and 'austerity for workers (only), unregulated extortionist monopolies, and a tax free aristocracy' replacing capitalism – any objective observer can see that these solve nothing.
Again, I say: “If the fascist Republican Party had anything of value to offer the American voter they would not have to lie and cheat and steal to win elections.”
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Recipe of the Month: Cornbread Dressing
Step 1: Prepare a package of store brand cornbread dressing mix per instructions on box: Boil water in saucepan, add butter, add dry mix from package. Stir. Turn off flame and cover; let sit for five minutes.
The store-brand packages display 'six servings per container', but this is a decent cheap meal for two, or 'serve half now and cover remainder for tomorrow'.
Well, many of you are probably wondering 'Recipe? What the hell?'.
So here is the special recipe function:
OPTION 1: Drain and add 5-ounce can of turkey or chicken meat, after the dry mix.
OPTION 2: Add a package of Buddig™ (or equivalent) turkey deli meat (chopped), also after the dry mix.
OPTION 3: Add half a package (Mariani™ brand is 5 ounces) of sweetened dried cranberries, as the third ingredient, before the dry mix.
For more, similar (past and future) recipes visit The Working Minds Cookbook
Copyright 2013 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
The store-brand packages display 'six servings per container', but this is a decent cheap meal for two, or 'serve half now and cover remainder for tomorrow'.
Well, many of you are probably wondering 'Recipe? What the hell?'.
So here is the special recipe function:
OPTION 1: Drain and add 5-ounce can of turkey or chicken meat, after the dry mix.
OPTION 2: Add a package of Buddig™ (or equivalent) turkey deli meat (chopped), also after the dry mix.
OPTION 3: Add half a package (Mariani™ brand is 5 ounces) of sweetened dried cranberries, as the third ingredient, before the dry mix.
For more, similar (past and future) recipes visit The Working Minds Cookbook
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
April 2013 Quotations
"If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
~~ Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and [to] hide it at the same time."
~~ Thornton Wilder [1897-1975]
"Why can't I say 'What needs doing?' and then go do it?"
~~ filmmaker Sara Lamm
"I may be dumb but I'm not stupid."
~~ wrongly attributed to football player & announcer Terry Bradshaw, but predates him by fifty-odd years
"Ninety percent of [baseball] is half mental."
~~ Jim Wohlford
"Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something [that] you don't believe is right."
~~ Dame Jane Goodall
"If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule of beauty, which is: Who cares?"
~~ Tina Fey
"Intellectual labor tears a man out of society. A craft, on the other hand, leads him toward men."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"If you don't have confidence, you'll alway find a way not to win."
~~ Olympic champion Carl Lewis
"Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but to see quickly how to make them good."
~~ Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956]
"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is."
~~ writer Maxim Gorky [1868-1936]
“Peace is something that you only get by war or the threat of war, however tacit the threat.”
~~ Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"Everything comes to those who wait . . . except a cat."
~~ racecar driver Mario Andretti
"Travel offers the opportunity to find out who else one is."
~~ author Rebecca Solnit
"The function of man is to live, not to exist."
~~ Jack London [1876-1916]
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
~~ author William Arthur Ward [1921-94]
"Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket."
~~ French author Victor Hugo [1802-85]
"If you want the present and the future to be different from the past, Spinoza tells us, study the past. Find out the causes that made it what it was and bring different causes to bear."
~~ Will and Ariel Durant
"Tempus sure does fugit."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
“A child of five could understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]
"Class is very simple in America. You're in the upper class if your name is on the building; you're in the middle class if your name is on your desk; and you're in the working class if your name is on your shirt."
~~ syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton
"Public virtue is a kind of ghost town into which anyone can move and declare himself sheriff."
~~ Saul Bellow [1915-2005]
"If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else."
~~ Douglas Adams [1952-2001]
"Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you won't do anything."
~~ author M. Scott Peck [1936-2005]
"Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us."
~~ historian Van Wyck Brooks [1886-1963]
"Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness."
~~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky [1821-81]
"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy [that] justice can have."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]
"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking [that] they can't lose."
~~ Bill Gates
"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook."
~~ Julia Child [1912-2004]
"Any compulsion tries to justify itself."
~~ Joan Didion
"Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to waste or lose."
~~ Thomas Alva Edison [1847-1931]
"Never marry a man [that] you wouldn't want to be divorced from."
~~ Nora Ephron [1941-2012]
`
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
"He who is too eager to preserve his originality is already losing it."
~~ German composer Robert Schumann [1810-56]
"Tragedy is when I get a paper cut on my finger. Comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die."
~~ Mel Brooks
"Stories happen to those who tell them."
~~ Greek historian Thucydides [c.460–c.395 BCE]
"Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible."
~~ Colin Powell
"Morality is a form of acting and not a particular repertoire of choices."
~~ Susan Sontag [1933-2004]
"For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence."
~~ Philip Roth
"If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them."
~~ Italian satirist Pietro Aretino [1492-1556]
"We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds."
~~ Roger Ebert [1942-2013]
"If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and you would achieve nothing."
~~ Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013]
"Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."
~~ Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]
"Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
"For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower from the cliffs of despair."
~~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh [1906-2001]
"Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it."
~~ Anthony Trollope [1815-82]
“The trouble with fiction . . . is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.”
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
“For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”
~~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [1918-2008]
“All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.”
~~ Anthony Burgess [1917-93]
“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”
~~ Truman Capote [1924-84]
"Every great film should seem new every time [that] you see it."
~~ Roger Ebert [1942-2013]
“Life calls the tune, we dance.”
~~ John Galsworthy [1867-1933]
"Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have."
~~ Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-80]
"Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood."
~~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]
“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
~~ Joseph Heller [1923-99]
“I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.”
~~ Jack Kerouac [1922-69]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
~~ Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and [to] hide it at the same time."
~~ Thornton Wilder [1897-1975]
"Why can't I say 'What needs doing?' and then go do it?"
~~ filmmaker Sara Lamm
"I may be dumb but I'm not stupid."
~~ wrongly attributed to football player & announcer Terry Bradshaw, but predates him by fifty-odd years
"Ninety percent of [baseball] is half mental."
~~ Jim Wohlford
"Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something [that] you don't believe is right."
~~ Dame Jane Goodall
"If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule of beauty, which is: Who cares?"
~~ Tina Fey
"Intellectual labor tears a man out of society. A craft, on the other hand, leads him toward men."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"If you don't have confidence, you'll alway find a way not to win."
~~ Olympic champion Carl Lewis
"Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but to see quickly how to make them good."
~~ Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956]
"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is."
~~ writer Maxim Gorky [1868-1936]
“Peace is something that you only get by war or the threat of war, however tacit the threat.”
~~ Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"Everything comes to those who wait . . . except a cat."
~~ racecar driver Mario Andretti
"Travel offers the opportunity to find out who else one is."
~~ author Rebecca Solnit
"The function of man is to live, not to exist."
~~ Jack London [1876-1916]
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
~~ author William Arthur Ward [1921-94]
"Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket."
~~ French author Victor Hugo [1802-85]
"If you want the present and the future to be different from the past, Spinoza tells us, study the past. Find out the causes that made it what it was and bring different causes to bear."
~~ Will and Ariel Durant
"Tempus sure does fugit."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
“A child of five could understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]
"Class is very simple in America. You're in the upper class if your name is on the building; you're in the middle class if your name is on your desk; and you're in the working class if your name is on your shirt."
~~ syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton
"Public virtue is a kind of ghost town into which anyone can move and declare himself sheriff."
~~ Saul Bellow [1915-2005]
"If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else."
~~ Douglas Adams [1952-2001]
"Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you won't do anything."
~~ author M. Scott Peck [1936-2005]
"Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us."
~~ historian Van Wyck Brooks [1886-1963]
"Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness."
~~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky [1821-81]
"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy [that] justice can have."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]
"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking [that] they can't lose."
~~ Bill Gates
"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook."
~~ Julia Child [1912-2004]
"Any compulsion tries to justify itself."
~~ Joan Didion
"Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to waste or lose."
~~ Thomas Alva Edison [1847-1931]
"Never marry a man [that] you wouldn't want to be divorced from."
~~ Nora Ephron [1941-2012]
`
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
"He who is too eager to preserve his originality is already losing it."
~~ German composer Robert Schumann [1810-56]
"Tragedy is when I get a paper cut on my finger. Comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die."
~~ Mel Brooks
"Stories happen to those who tell them."
~~ Greek historian Thucydides [c.460–c.395 BCE]
"Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible."
~~ Colin Powell
"Morality is a form of acting and not a particular repertoire of choices."
~~ Susan Sontag [1933-2004]
"For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence."
~~ Philip Roth
"If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them."
~~ Italian satirist Pietro Aretino [1492-1556]
"We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds."
~~ Roger Ebert [1942-2013]
"If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and you would achieve nothing."
~~ Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013]
"Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."
~~ Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]
"Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
"For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower from the cliffs of despair."
~~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh [1906-2001]
"Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it."
~~ Anthony Trollope [1815-82]
“The trouble with fiction . . . is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.”
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
“For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”
~~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [1918-2008]
“All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.”
~~ Anthony Burgess [1917-93]
“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”
~~ Truman Capote [1924-84]
"Every great film should seem new every time [that] you see it."
~~ Roger Ebert [1942-2013]
“Life calls the tune, we dance.”
~~ John Galsworthy [1867-1933]
"Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have."
~~ Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-80]
"Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood."
~~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]
“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
~~ Joseph Heller [1923-99]
“I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.”
~~ Jack Kerouac [1922-69]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
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