"[Orlando] is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States, and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets."
~~ Hillary Clinton
"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."
~~ 4th Doctor Who
"Behind every cloud . . . is another cloud."
~~ Judy Garland [1922-69]
"The capacity to be puzzled is indeed the premise of all creation, be it in art or science."
~~ Erich Fromm [1900-80]
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."
~~ data scientist Jeff Hammerbacher
"It's pretty clear [that] I'll never have greatness thrust upon me . . . but it's comforting to know [that] mediocrity remains within my reach."
~~ Ziggy cartoon panel drawn by Tom Wilson & Tom II
"The man that's out to do something has to keep in high gear all the time."
~~ Douglas Fairbanks [1883-1939]
"The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
"A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure [that] he can carry it thru, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"If you don't think, then you shouldn't talk."
~~ March Hare, as written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]
"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
“I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now.”
~~ Louisa May Alcott [1832-88]
"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in the novel 'Night and Day' (1919)
"An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you."
~~ dancer Isadora Duncan [1877-1927]
“The truth is at the bottom of a bottomless well.”
~~ playwright Tennessee Williams [1911-83], in 'Suddenly Last Summer' (1959)
“Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others … Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”
~~ Katherine Mansfield [1888-1923], in 'Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927), journal entry for 14 October 1922
"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist."
~~ Nancy Springer
"Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."
~~ composer Leonard Bernstein [1918-90]
"Remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free someone else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower someone else."
~~ author Toni Morrison
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous'. And God granted it."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]
"All pro athletes are bilingual. They know English and profanity."
~~ hockey great Gordie Howe [1928-2016]
"The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has to do is get up every morning and say 'How is the President?'."
~~ American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]
"All of life is a dispute over taste."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"A man who has made no enemies is probably not a very good man."
~~ Antonin Scalia [1936-2016]
"I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes."
~~ historian Edward Gibbon [1737-94]
"Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of the pieces."
~~ children's author Judith Viorst
"The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one."
~~ TV comic Sid Caesar [1922-2014]
"Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert."
~~ Adolf Hitler [1889-1945]
"The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: What good is it?."
~~ Aldo Leopold [1887-1948]
"Luck is not something [that] you can mention in the presence of self-made men."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]
"It's the things [that] we forget about that tell us who we are."
~~ writer Don DeLillo
"All good writing is swimming underwater holding your breath."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]
"I wish [that] people would love everybody else the way [that] they love me. It would be a better world."
~~ Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]
"You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose."
~~ Mario Cuomo [1932-2015]
"Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way."
~~ Allan W. Watts [1915-73]
"The detective novel asks the central question of philosophy: Whodunit?"
~~ Umberto Eco [1932-2016]
"Capitalism has proven itself far superior to socialism in creating wealth and alleviating poverty, but it has a weakness: The amorality of its most successful practitioners."
~~ Jean-Pierre Lehmann
"Monitor your own narcisism."
~~ J. Reid Meloy
"Chase your dreams. But always know the road that leads you home."
~~ country music singer Kenny Chesney
"And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your having been here."
~~ author Neil Gaiman
"Artists do their best work when they're old or young. Middle age is the enemy of art."
~~ cinema auteur Orson Welles [1915-85]
"A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader, is a rereader."
~~ author Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977]
"Prohibition is OVER!" ~~ slogan at Wise Pies Pizza
"Just because you're offended doesn't mean [that] you're right."
~~ comedian Ricky Gervais
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Friday, July 01, 2016
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
News Factoids for Second Quarter 2016
According to the Washington Post, over 40 percent of the money raised by 'dark money' political groups by the end of February came from just fifty mega-donors and their relatives.
In April, Microsoft released a machine-learning chatbot named Tay, which took less that 24 hours to mirror prejudice and xenophobia and racism from online trolls who gleefully abused Tay's A.I. programming; Microsoft yanked Tay offline 'for adjustments'.
The Ku Klux Klan has between 5,000 and 8,000 members in at least 160 chapters in 41 states. — per Southern Poverty Law Center
More than 90% of Americans spend 15-18 hours per month on Facebook (i.e. two full work days). Americans spend more time on Facebook than on every other social network combined.
THE ECONOMY
Only four airline giants control 80% of domestic seats: American, Delta, Southwest, and United. The airline industry hauled off $33 BILLION in profits in 2015, nearly 90% over the prior year.
The national Sports Authority chain is closing all 460 stores. Locally, my brand-new town of Rio Communities has no large businesses, unless you count Dollar General and the three gas stations. Neighbor city Belen has many vacant lots and vacant stores on Main Street, it would be a ghost town if not for the railroad. Just north is supposedly-thriving Los Lunas, except the big Staples store closed in February with no sign of a new tenant, and the big Hastings Entertainment store put up banners in May that the store is closing - the employees are in shock. As I told them, 'welcome to the Republican economy'.
Wealthy individuals and corrupt politicians have stashed an estimated $76 TRILLION dollars in offshore tax havens, which is about 8% of the world's wealth. — per economist Gabriel Zucman
{That figure is just a bit larger than one year's nominal Gross Domestic Product for the entire world.)
Just five corporations earned 70% of the $300B in revenue generated by all internet companies over the past year. Amazon and Alphabet (Google) took in a combined 57%; the others are Facebook, eBay, and Q.V.C. owner Liberty Interactive. — per U.S.A. Today (Nov 2015)
PETROLEUM & FRACKING FACTOIDS
2014 statistics for consumption of crude oil in the U.S.A.: 47% for gasoline; 22% for fuel oil (diesel, heating, ships); 13% for liquified petroleum gases (chemicals); 8% for jet fuel; 4% for still gas; 2% for asphalt and road oil; 1% for naphtha (rubber, plastics); and 3% other (lubricants, solvents, kerosene, waxes).
Between 1882 and 2012, Oklahoma experienced 230 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher (level at which noticeable by humans); in first quarter 2016 alone, Oklahoma experienced 287 such earthquakes. — from U.S.G.S. report in April 2016
CLIMATE CHANGE DEPT.
May was the 13th straight month of record-breaking heat. The month's global average of 60.17°F was 1.57 degrees above the XXth Century average. — Popular Science Magazine
The prior coral-bleaching event in 1997-98 wiped out 16% of the world's coral reefs; the present coral-bleaching event is likely to be worse, based on the current record-setting El Nino.
SECOND AMENDMENT DEPT.
Every day 89 Americans die from gun-related violence. New Mexico, with some of the most lax gun safety laws in the country, has a gun death rate 40% higher than the national average.
Last year, mass shootings accounted for just two percent of American gun deaths. — New Yorker Magazine
244 people on the Terrorist Watch List applied to buy firearms in 2015; after a background check, 91% of them were approved.
Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
In April, Microsoft released a machine-learning chatbot named Tay, which took less that 24 hours to mirror prejudice and xenophobia and racism from online trolls who gleefully abused Tay's A.I. programming; Microsoft yanked Tay offline 'for adjustments'.
The Ku Klux Klan has between 5,000 and 8,000 members in at least 160 chapters in 41 states. — per Southern Poverty Law Center
More than 90% of Americans spend 15-18 hours per month on Facebook (i.e. two full work days). Americans spend more time on Facebook than on every other social network combined.
THE ECONOMY
Only four airline giants control 80% of domestic seats: American, Delta, Southwest, and United. The airline industry hauled off $33 BILLION in profits in 2015, nearly 90% over the prior year.
The national Sports Authority chain is closing all 460 stores. Locally, my brand-new town of Rio Communities has no large businesses, unless you count Dollar General and the three gas stations. Neighbor city Belen has many vacant lots and vacant stores on Main Street, it would be a ghost town if not for the railroad. Just north is supposedly-thriving Los Lunas, except the big Staples store closed in February with no sign of a new tenant, and the big Hastings Entertainment store put up banners in May that the store is closing - the employees are in shock. As I told them, 'welcome to the Republican economy'.
Wealthy individuals and corrupt politicians have stashed an estimated $76 TRILLION dollars in offshore tax havens, which is about 8% of the world's wealth. — per economist Gabriel Zucman
{That figure is just a bit larger than one year's nominal Gross Domestic Product for the entire world.)
Just five corporations earned 70% of the $300B in revenue generated by all internet companies over the past year. Amazon and Alphabet (Google) took in a combined 57%; the others are Facebook, eBay, and Q.V.C. owner Liberty Interactive. — per U.S.A. Today (Nov 2015)
PETROLEUM & FRACKING FACTOIDS
2014 statistics for consumption of crude oil in the U.S.A.: 47% for gasoline; 22% for fuel oil (diesel, heating, ships); 13% for liquified petroleum gases (chemicals); 8% for jet fuel; 4% for still gas; 2% for asphalt and road oil; 1% for naphtha (rubber, plastics); and 3% other (lubricants, solvents, kerosene, waxes).
Between 1882 and 2012, Oklahoma experienced 230 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher (level at which noticeable by humans); in first quarter 2016 alone, Oklahoma experienced 287 such earthquakes. — from U.S.G.S. report in April 2016
CLIMATE CHANGE DEPT.
May was the 13th straight month of record-breaking heat. The month's global average of 60.17°F was 1.57 degrees above the XXth Century average. — Popular Science Magazine
The prior coral-bleaching event in 1997-98 wiped out 16% of the world's coral reefs; the present coral-bleaching event is likely to be worse, based on the current record-setting El Nino.
SECOND AMENDMENT DEPT.
Every day 89 Americans die from gun-related violence. New Mexico, with some of the most lax gun safety laws in the country, has a gun death rate 40% higher than the national average.
Last year, mass shootings accounted for just two percent of American gun deaths. — New Yorker Magazine
244 people on the Terrorist Watch List applied to buy firearms in 2015; after a background check, 91% of them were approved.
Friday, May 27, 2016
new Bernie Sanders TV ads (today)
A poll taken May 13-22 by the Public Policy Institute of California has Hillary Clinton at 46% and Bernie Sanders at 44%, which is a statistical tie.
30-second 'Bernie vs. Wall Street' TV ads released on Friday 27 May 2016
watch online at YouTube: English-language version [0:30] • Spanish-language version [0:30]
Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
30-second 'Bernie vs. Wall Street' TV ads released on Friday 27 May 2016
watch online at YouTube: English-language version [0:30] • Spanish-language version [0:30]
Thursday, May 26, 2016
May 2016 Quotations (60)
“The challenges facing our planet are not mainly technological or even financial, because as a world we are rich enough to increase our investments in skills, infrastructure, and technological know-how to meet our needs and to protect the planet. Our challenge is mostly a moral one, to redirect our efforts and vision to the common good.”
~~ Bernie Sanders speech on income inequality and the environment, at Vatican City on 15 April 2016
“What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”
~~ George Eliot [1819-80]
"Life is a comedy, written by a sadistic comedy writer."
~~ Woody Allen, in his new movie "Café Society", 2016
"All our civilization is based on invention; before invention, men lived on fruits and nuts and pine cones and slept in caves."
~~ Reginald Fessenden [1866-1932]
"[Ted Cruz is] Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
~~ John Boehner, at Stanford University in April 2016
"There is a saying that life is uncertain, so you should eat dessert first. For the same reason, you should also take advantage of early voting."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Drink up; you're half the man my mother was."
~~ slogan for Rock & Reilly's Irish Pub
"I wanted to live in a world where a woman could choose her own role in life."
~~ Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962]
"I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
"I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"If everybody minded their own business the world would go around a great deal faster than it does."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98] in "Alice In Wonderland"
"Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in caves . . . if we weren't already extinct."
~~ William C. Samples
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"Look, all administrations, all governments lie, all officials lie and nothing they say is to be believed. That's a pretty good rule."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
“Actually, this seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis – a good hot cup of coffee.”
~~ Alexander King [1899-1965]
"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nurture and education."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in "A Room of One’s Own", 1929
"Indeed it is possible to stand with one foot on the inevitable 'banana peel' of life with both eyes peering into the Great Beyond, and still be happy, comfortable, and serene – if we will even so much as smile."
~~ Douglas Fairbanks [1883-1939]
"Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."
~~ Malala Yousafzai
"We are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it."
~~ President Barack Obama
"People assume that Time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff."
~~ TV character "Doctor Who"
"It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"Creativity is just connecting things."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]
"The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day. After all, a movement is only people moving."
~~ Gloria Steinem
"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]
"When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."
~~ Dmitri Shostakovich [1906-75]
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
~~ biologist Thomas Huxley [1825-95]
"Every man or woman who is sane, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman."
~~ psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott [1896-1971]
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
~~ British proverb, circa 1720
"Virtue would not go far without vanity to escort her."
~~ François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt [1747-1827]
"Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal."
~~ William Hazlitt [1778-1830]
"Without data you are another person with an opinion."
~~ management expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming [1900-93]
"Life's ultimate statistic is the same for all people. One out of one dies."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. [It's] like a muscle, you can build it up."
~~ Facebook, Inc. exec Sheryl Sandberg
"Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people."
~~ broadcast pioneer David Sarnoff [1891-1971]
"Elegance is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered."
~~ Giorgio Armani
"If it wasn't for procrastination, I'd never get around to not getting around to anything."
~~ Ziggy cartoon panel drawn by Tom Wilson & Tom II
"The business of corporate America is no longer business – it is finance."
~~ Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, 2016
"Love isn't something that you find. Love is something that finds you."
~~ Loretta Young [1913-2000]
"George Washington is my favorite president because he's the only one who didn't blame all his problems on the previous administration."
~~ syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton
"If I read a book and it makes my body so cold [that] no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."
~~ poet Emily Dickinson [1830-86]
"We have to change truth a little to remember it."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]
"It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there."
~~ Don DeLillo
"The purpose of a business is to create a customer."
~~ Peter F. Drucker [1909-2005]
"Too much freedom seems to change into nothing but slavery."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil, and still more the man who is indifferent to everything."
~~ Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater [1741-1801]
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust [that] I never shall."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]
"People fascinate me – they're amazing. Life fascinates me. And I'm no more fascinated by my own life than by anyone else's."
~~ rock legend Prince [1958-2016]
"The noblest art is that of making others happy."
~~ P.T. Barnum [1810-91]
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"Son, they can't do what you do. Just go out there and do what you do."
~~ Charlie Daniels
"It is impossible to live at peace with those [that] we regard as damned."
~~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]
"Behind every fortune is a crime."
~~ French author Honoré de Balzac [1799-1850]
"The sins of Citizens United are many, but the first is that the [cited basic] facts are bonkers."
~~ Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island
"Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders, during the first Democratic Party debate, October 2015
"History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second as show business."
~~ Stuart Klawans, film critic at The Nation Magazine
"Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun."
~~ book critic George Scialabba
"We don't have a world government. Fortunately, we don't have that many world problems – most problems can be solved locally – but this one [climate change] is a world problem."
~~ Bill Gates
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Bernie Sanders speech on income inequality and the environment, at Vatican City on 15 April 2016
“What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”
~~ George Eliot [1819-80]
"Life is a comedy, written by a sadistic comedy writer."
~~ Woody Allen, in his new movie "Café Society", 2016
"All our civilization is based on invention; before invention, men lived on fruits and nuts and pine cones and slept in caves."
~~ Reginald Fessenden [1866-1932]
"[Ted Cruz is] Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
~~ John Boehner, at Stanford University in April 2016
"There is a saying that life is uncertain, so you should eat dessert first. For the same reason, you should also take advantage of early voting."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Drink up; you're half the man my mother was."
~~ slogan for Rock & Reilly's Irish Pub
"I wanted to live in a world where a woman could choose her own role in life."
~~ Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962]
"I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
"I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"If everybody minded their own business the world would go around a great deal faster than it does."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98] in "Alice In Wonderland"
"Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in caves . . . if we weren't already extinct."
~~ William C. Samples
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"Look, all administrations, all governments lie, all officials lie and nothing they say is to be believed. That's a pretty good rule."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
“Actually, this seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis – a good hot cup of coffee.”
~~ Alexander King [1899-1965]
"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nurture and education."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in "A Room of One’s Own", 1929
"Indeed it is possible to stand with one foot on the inevitable 'banana peel' of life with both eyes peering into the Great Beyond, and still be happy, comfortable, and serene – if we will even so much as smile."
~~ Douglas Fairbanks [1883-1939]
"Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."
~~ Malala Yousafzai
"We are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it."
~~ President Barack Obama
"People assume that Time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff."
~~ TV character "Doctor Who"
"It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"Creativity is just connecting things."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]
"The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day. After all, a movement is only people moving."
~~ Gloria Steinem
"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]
"When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."
~~ Dmitri Shostakovich [1906-75]
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
~~ biologist Thomas Huxley [1825-95]
"Every man or woman who is sane, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman."
~~ psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott [1896-1971]
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
~~ British proverb, circa 1720
"Virtue would not go far without vanity to escort her."
~~ François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt [1747-1827]
"Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal."
~~ William Hazlitt [1778-1830]
"Without data you are another person with an opinion."
~~ management expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming [1900-93]
"Life's ultimate statistic is the same for all people. One out of one dies."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. [It's] like a muscle, you can build it up."
~~ Facebook, Inc. exec Sheryl Sandberg
"Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people."
~~ broadcast pioneer David Sarnoff [1891-1971]
"Elegance is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered."
~~ Giorgio Armani
"If it wasn't for procrastination, I'd never get around to not getting around to anything."
~~ Ziggy cartoon panel drawn by Tom Wilson & Tom II
"The business of corporate America is no longer business – it is finance."
~~ Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, 2016
"Love isn't something that you find. Love is something that finds you."
~~ Loretta Young [1913-2000]
"George Washington is my favorite president because he's the only one who didn't blame all his problems on the previous administration."
~~ syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton
"If I read a book and it makes my body so cold [that] no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."
~~ poet Emily Dickinson [1830-86]
"We have to change truth a little to remember it."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]
"It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there."
~~ Don DeLillo
"The purpose of a business is to create a customer."
~~ Peter F. Drucker [1909-2005]
"Too much freedom seems to change into nothing but slavery."
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil, and still more the man who is indifferent to everything."
~~ Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater [1741-1801]
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust [that] I never shall."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]
"People fascinate me – they're amazing. Life fascinates me. And I'm no more fascinated by my own life than by anyone else's."
~~ rock legend Prince [1958-2016]
"The noblest art is that of making others happy."
~~ P.T. Barnum [1810-91]
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"Son, they can't do what you do. Just go out there and do what you do."
~~ Charlie Daniels
"It is impossible to live at peace with those [that] we regard as damned."
~~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]
"Behind every fortune is a crime."
~~ French author Honoré de Balzac [1799-1850]
"The sins of Citizens United are many, but the first is that the [cited basic] facts are bonkers."
~~ Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island
"Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders, during the first Democratic Party debate, October 2015
"History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second as show business."
~~ Stuart Klawans, film critic at The Nation Magazine
"Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun."
~~ book critic George Scialabba
"We don't have a world government. Fortunately, we don't have that many world problems – most problems can be solved locally – but this one [climate change] is a world problem."
~~ Bill Gates
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
April 2016 Quotations (55)
"What is needed is more, more, and always more consciousness, both in art and in life."
~~ Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962]
“The true journey implies a complete change of nutrition, a digesting of the visited country – its fauna and flora and its culture (not only the different culinary practices and condiments but the different implements used to grind the flour or stir the pot).”
~~ Italo Calvino [1923-85]
"I believe that every writer needs a guide, because writing is an exploration and the exploration is not only for me, it's for the reader."
~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya
"Books are the mirror in which we see ourselves."
~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
~~ photographer Dorothea Lange [1895-1965]
"It's true that nothing is certain except death and taxes. Sometimes I wish that they came in that order."
~~ TV comedian Sam Levenson [1911-80]
"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf."
~~ American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]
"The way taxes are, you might as well marry for love."
~~ comedian Joe E. Lewis [1902-71]
"I wouldn't mind paying taxes . . . if I knew [that] they were going to a friendly country."
~~ comedian-activist Dick Gregory
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
~~ philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky
"Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care that can be inflicted on sick or well."
~~ Florence Nightingale [1820-1910]
"Money, like vodka, turns a man into an eccentric."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"Power worship blurs political judgment. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"Human beings can get used to virtually anything, given plenty of time and no choice in the matter whatsoever."
~~ British novelist Tom Holt
"After a time, all losses are the same. One more thing lost is one thing less to lose; and we go stripped at last the way [that] we came."
~~ poet Catherine Breese Davis [1924-2002]
"The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably."
~~ novelist Julian Barnes
"Music is God's little reminder that there's something besides us in the universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars."
~~ comedian-actor Robin Williams [1951-2014]
"There are always people who think [that] they have a hilarious height joke [that] you haven't heard before."
~~ basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
"The value of things is not the time [that] they last, but the intensity with which they occur."
~~ Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]
"A character is defined by the kinds of challenges [that] he cannot walk away from. And by those [that] he has walked away from that cause him remorse."
~~ Arthur Miller [1915-2005]
"Life is like a suitcase, you can squeeze a lot in."
~~ Yoko Ono
"Sometimes your best investments are the ones [that] you don't make."
~~ Donald J. Trump
"Who discovered [that] we could get milk from cows, and what did he think that he was doing at the time?"
~~ Scottish comedian Billy Connelly
"Poor is the man whose pleasure depends on the permission of another."
~~ singer Madonna
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
“Life must go on / I forget just why.”
~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]
"Democracy has never been and can never be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
~~ Pres. John Adams [1735-1826]
"The most dangerous world view is the world view of those who have not viewed the world."
~~ naturalist Alexander von Humboldt [1769-1859]
"Most critics are educated beyond their intelligence."
~~ critic Kenneth Tynan
"Storytelling is the best way [that] we have of coming up with new ideas."
~~ Richard Branson
“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.”
~~ Jenny Han, in "The Summer I Turned Pretty", 2009
“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
~~ Henry James [1843-1916] , quoted in Edith Wharton's "A Backward Glance", 1934
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], in "The Great Gatsby", 1925
"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60], in "The Stranger", 1942
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
~~ Theodore Isaac Rubin
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical [world]."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"Maybe stories are just data with a soul."
~~ author Brené Brown
"The longest way is the most efficient way."
~~ American poet John Ashbery
"When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don't get to decide that you didn't."
~~ comedian Louie C.K.
"Reality is hard. It's no walk in the park, this thing called life."
~~ actress Patty Duke [1946-2016]
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"Create a concept, and reality leaves the room."
~~ philosopher José Ortega y Gassett [1883-1955]
"Artists are the elite of the servant class."
~~ painter Jasper Johns
"Everyone is so obsessed with themselves nowadays that they have no time for me."
~~ author Louise Rennison [1951-2016]
"[The German] educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past. But looking forward, things are barely discernible."
~~ astrophysicist Hermann Oberth [1894-1989]
"Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegatating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
"Evil is unspectacular and always human."
~~ W.H. Auden [1907-1973]
"Marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years, you don't need a husband."
~~ Helen Gurley Brown [1922-2012]
"As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]
"There is only one thing certain. That is one's own inadequacy. One must start from that."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"Joy, it must be remembered, is nothing like happiness, its milquetoast cousin. It is instead a vivid and extreme state of being, often arrived at in the aftermath of great pain."
~~ novelist Ayana Mathis
"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962]
“The true journey implies a complete change of nutrition, a digesting of the visited country – its fauna and flora and its culture (not only the different culinary practices and condiments but the different implements used to grind the flour or stir the pot).”
~~ Italo Calvino [1923-85]
"I believe that every writer needs a guide, because writing is an exploration and the exploration is not only for me, it's for the reader."
~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya
"Books are the mirror in which we see ourselves."
~~ New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
~~ photographer Dorothea Lange [1895-1965]
"It's true that nothing is certain except death and taxes. Sometimes I wish that they came in that order."
~~ TV comedian Sam Levenson [1911-80]
"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf."
~~ American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]
"The way taxes are, you might as well marry for love."
~~ comedian Joe E. Lewis [1902-71]
"I wouldn't mind paying taxes . . . if I knew [that] they were going to a friendly country."
~~ comedian-activist Dick Gregory
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
~~ philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky
"Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care that can be inflicted on sick or well."
~~ Florence Nightingale [1820-1910]
"Money, like vodka, turns a man into an eccentric."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"Power worship blurs political judgment. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"Human beings can get used to virtually anything, given plenty of time and no choice in the matter whatsoever."
~~ British novelist Tom Holt
"After a time, all losses are the same. One more thing lost is one thing less to lose; and we go stripped at last the way [that] we came."
~~ poet Catherine Breese Davis [1924-2002]
"The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably."
~~ novelist Julian Barnes
"Music is God's little reminder that there's something besides us in the universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars."
~~ comedian-actor Robin Williams [1951-2014]
"There are always people who think [that] they have a hilarious height joke [that] you haven't heard before."
~~ basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
"The value of things is not the time [that] they last, but the intensity with which they occur."
~~ Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]
"A character is defined by the kinds of challenges [that] he cannot walk away from. And by those [that] he has walked away from that cause him remorse."
~~ Arthur Miller [1915-2005]
"Life is like a suitcase, you can squeeze a lot in."
~~ Yoko Ono
"Sometimes your best investments are the ones [that] you don't make."
~~ Donald J. Trump
"Who discovered [that] we could get milk from cows, and what did he think that he was doing at the time?"
~~ Scottish comedian Billy Connelly
"Poor is the man whose pleasure depends on the permission of another."
~~ singer Madonna
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
“Life must go on / I forget just why.”
~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]
"Democracy has never been and can never be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
~~ Pres. John Adams [1735-1826]
"The most dangerous world view is the world view of those who have not viewed the world."
~~ naturalist Alexander von Humboldt [1769-1859]
"Most critics are educated beyond their intelligence."
~~ critic Kenneth Tynan
"Storytelling is the best way [that] we have of coming up with new ideas."
~~ Richard Branson
“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.”
~~ Jenny Han, in "The Summer I Turned Pretty", 2009
“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
~~ Henry James [1843-1916] , quoted in Edith Wharton's "A Backward Glance", 1934
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], in "The Great Gatsby", 1925
"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60], in "The Stranger", 1942
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
~~ Theodore Isaac Rubin
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical [world]."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]
"Maybe stories are just data with a soul."
~~ author Brené Brown
"The longest way is the most efficient way."
~~ American poet John Ashbery
"When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don't get to decide that you didn't."
~~ comedian Louie C.K.
"Reality is hard. It's no walk in the park, this thing called life."
~~ actress Patty Duke [1946-2016]
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"Create a concept, and reality leaves the room."
~~ philosopher José Ortega y Gassett [1883-1955]
"Artists are the elite of the servant class."
~~ painter Jasper Johns
"Everyone is so obsessed with themselves nowadays that they have no time for me."
~~ author Louise Rennison [1951-2016]
"[The German] educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past. But looking forward, things are barely discernible."
~~ astrophysicist Hermann Oberth [1894-1989]
"Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegatating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
"Evil is unspectacular and always human."
~~ W.H. Auden [1907-1973]
"Marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years, you don't need a husband."
~~ Helen Gurley Brown [1922-2012]
"As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it."
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]
"There is only one thing certain. That is one's own inadequacy. One must start from that."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"Joy, it must be remembered, is nothing like happiness, its milquetoast cousin. It is instead a vivid and extreme state of being, often arrived at in the aftermath of great pain."
~~ novelist Ayana Mathis
"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Methane Factoids
By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.
Trace gases together traditionally compose about 0.038% of the atmosphere (or 0.043% with CO2 at the increased 2014 concentration).
0.0400% carbon dioxide / CO2
0.001818% neon/Ne
0.000524% helium/He
0.00018% methane/CH4 - the main component of natural gas
0.000114% krypton/Kr
0.000055% hydrogen/H2
The Earth's atmospheric methane concentration has increased by about 150% since 1750, from approximately 0.00007.2% by volume. The current rapid methane increase that is already started from melting of ocean-bottom methane crystals could begin killing forest biomass and food crops in as little as five or ten years.
Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
Trace gases together traditionally compose about 0.038% of the atmosphere (or 0.043% with CO2 at the increased 2014 concentration).
0.0400% carbon dioxide / CO2
0.001818% neon/Ne
0.000524% helium/He
0.00018% methane/CH4 - the main component of natural gas
0.000114% krypton/Kr
0.000055% hydrogen/H2
The Earth's atmospheric methane concentration has increased by about 150% since 1750, from approximately 0.00007.2% by volume. The current rapid methane increase that is already started from melting of ocean-bottom methane crystals could begin killing forest biomass and food crops in as little as five or ten years.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
March 2016 Quotations (60)
“Time management is dead; in our day the true struggle is focus management.”
~~ Dave Crenshaw
"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
"Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, then stop."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]
"What they didn't realize is that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time."
~~ Doris Lessing [1919-2013]
"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it."
~~ Frank Herbert [1920-86]
"Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"I agree that there are things that should be kept secret."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
“Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven.”
~~ Jessi Lane Adams
“To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"The true solace for all private troubles is to lose yourself in your work."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
“Nothing has really happened until it has been described.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]
"What the billionaire class has yet to realize is that in this election, their obscene wealth is their weakness."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders
"American police officers are in need of mental health therapy and the entire law enforcement system is in need of reevaluation."
~~ Leslie Salzillo
"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press."
~~ journalist Ida B. Wells [1862-1931]
"Never go to a doctor whose office plants are dead."
~~ Erma Bombeck [1927-96]
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
~~ Edward Irving 'Ed' Koch [1924-2013], quoting John F. Kennedy
"When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking."
~~ Gail Sheehy
"The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."
~~ Lenny Bruce [1925-66]
"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]
"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance."
~~ Eckhart Tolle
"The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated."
~~ William James [1842-1910]
"Religion is a primitive form of philosophy, [an] attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]
"I am proud that the gentleman who is head of Goldman Sachs ... said I was dangerous. And he is right, I am dangerous for Wall Street."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders, at the 9 March 2016 debate
”To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every cubic inch of space is a miracle.”
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]
"Confidence is 10 percent hard work and 90 percent delusion."
~~ comic actress Tina Fey
"Life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose in older people, the love of youth in others."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]
"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
"To love without knowing how to love wounds the person [that] we love."
~~ Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh
"A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe [that] the image is herself. An ugly woman knows [that] it is not."
~~ Simone Weil [1909-43]
"It is the curse of the competent not to be called upon."
~~ poet-songwriter Robert Priest
"Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability."
~~ U.C.L.A. coach John R. Wooden [1910-2010]
"To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift."
~~ Steve Prefontaine [1951-75]
"No matter how involved you are in what you do, no matter how many hours a week you devote to your career pursuits, you must always remember that your family is your primary team."
~~ 'Coach K' {Michael William Krzyzewski}
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
~~ Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]
"You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical science-fiction cowboy detective novel."
~~ Alan Moore
"Making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions."
~~ Pico Iyer, in "The Art of Stillness", 2014
"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667–1745]
"Don't judge each day by the harvest [that] you reap, but by the seeds [that] you plant."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]
“An empty coffee cup is full of hope. Now there’s something worth voting for.”
~~ Jarod Kintz
"I often find writer's block a sign that you're actually writing the wrong story."
~~ Mark Millar
"God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion."
~~ Pliny the Elder {Gaius Plinius Secundus [c. AD 23 – AD 79]}
"Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting."
~~ Larry Page, co-founder of Google, Inc.
"If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot."
~~ Irish playwright Samuel Beckett [1906-89]
"Time and silence are the most luxurious things today."
~~ Tom Ford
"There's no 'right' way to write a book. I simply write to find out what I have to write."
~~ Cheryl Strayed
"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money."
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
"Books fall open, you fall in."
~~ David McCord [1897-1997]
"All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen."
~~ playwright Arthur Miller [1915-2005]
"What are games but life reduced to symbolic rituals."
~~ mystery author D.R. Meredith
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]
"A lover of books is always in good company."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"No brains, no headaches."
~~ Steve Roach
"I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"Your life works to the degree [that] you keep your agreements."
~~ Werner Erhard
"I write for the same reason that I breathe – because if I did not I would die."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Dave Crenshaw
"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
"Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end, then stop."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]
"What they didn't realize is that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time."
~~ Doris Lessing [1919-2013]
"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it."
~~ Frank Herbert [1920-86]
"Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"I agree that there are things that should be kept secret."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
“Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven.”
~~ Jessi Lane Adams
“To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"The true solace for all private troubles is to lose yourself in your work."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
“Nothing has really happened until it has been described.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]
"What the billionaire class has yet to realize is that in this election, their obscene wealth is their weakness."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders
"American police officers are in need of mental health therapy and the entire law enforcement system is in need of reevaluation."
~~ Leslie Salzillo
"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press."
~~ journalist Ida B. Wells [1862-1931]
"Never go to a doctor whose office plants are dead."
~~ Erma Bombeck [1927-96]
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
~~ Edward Irving 'Ed' Koch [1924-2013], quoting John F. Kennedy
"When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking."
~~ Gail Sheehy
"The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."
~~ Lenny Bruce [1925-66]
"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]
"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance."
~~ Eckhart Tolle
"The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated."
~~ William James [1842-1910]
"Religion is a primitive form of philosophy, [an] attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]
"I am proud that the gentleman who is head of Goldman Sachs ... said I was dangerous. And he is right, I am dangerous for Wall Street."
~~ Sen. Bernie Sanders, at the 9 March 2016 debate
”To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every cubic inch of space is a miracle.”
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]
"Confidence is 10 percent hard work and 90 percent delusion."
~~ comic actress Tina Fey
"Life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose in older people, the love of youth in others."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]
"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
"To love without knowing how to love wounds the person [that] we love."
~~ Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh
"A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe [that] the image is herself. An ugly woman knows [that] it is not."
~~ Simone Weil [1909-43]
"It is the curse of the competent not to be called upon."
~~ poet-songwriter Robert Priest
"Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability."
~~ U.C.L.A. coach John R. Wooden [1910-2010]
"To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift."
~~ Steve Prefontaine [1951-75]
"No matter how involved you are in what you do, no matter how many hours a week you devote to your career pursuits, you must always remember that your family is your primary team."
~~ 'Coach K' {Michael William Krzyzewski}
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
~~ Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]
"You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical science-fiction cowboy detective novel."
~~ Alan Moore
"Making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions."
~~ Pico Iyer, in "The Art of Stillness", 2014
"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667–1745]
"Don't judge each day by the harvest [that] you reap, but by the seeds [that] you plant."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]
“An empty coffee cup is full of hope. Now there’s something worth voting for.”
~~ Jarod Kintz
"I often find writer's block a sign that you're actually writing the wrong story."
~~ Mark Millar
"God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion."
~~ Pliny the Elder {Gaius Plinius Secundus [c. AD 23 – AD 79]}
"Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting."
~~ Larry Page, co-founder of Google, Inc.
"If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot."
~~ Irish playwright Samuel Beckett [1906-89]
"Time and silence are the most luxurious things today."
~~ Tom Ford
"There's no 'right' way to write a book. I simply write to find out what I have to write."
~~ Cheryl Strayed
"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money."
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
"Books fall open, you fall in."
~~ David McCord [1897-1997]
"All we are is a lot of talking nitrogen."
~~ playwright Arthur Miller [1915-2005]
"What are games but life reduced to symbolic rituals."
~~ mystery author D.R. Meredith
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]
"A lover of books is always in good company."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"No brains, no headaches."
~~ Steve Roach
"I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"Your life works to the degree [that] you keep your agreements."
~~ Werner Erhard
"I write for the same reason that I breathe – because if I did not I would die."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
News Factoids for First Quarter 2016
Georgia ranks as the number one most ‘at risk’ state for corruption in the country, garnering a letter grade of “F”, per a study by The Government Integrity Institute
MARKETING IN AMERICA: The local Walgreens Drug Store has stopped selling light bulbs, period. None on the shelves. The clerk told me that they "weren't selling enough of them".
In 2014, the pharmaceutical industry spent over $250 million on lobbying and campaign contributions – far more than any other industry in America.
"The business of recycling represents nearly $106B in annual economic activity, is responsible for 471,587 direct and indirect jobs, and generates more than $4.3B in state and local revenue and another $6.76B in federal taxes." — Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in 2015
Two oddities showed up while I was in the hospital (for 46 days): 1) After thirty days, the aspirin that I had taken at home to relieve arthritis pain in my hands wore off, and my hands began to hurt. 2) I have taken excess vitamin C to prevent colds for many years (per Dr. Linus Pauling); by the time I was released home, the C also wore off and I caught my first cold in ten years. (So Im taking 3,000 units of C three times a day for a while to rebuild my immunity.)
N.A.S.A. report released in March 2016 concludes that the Middle East is suffering its worst drought in 900 years, and that human-created climate change is a contributor.
Later in 2016, Pfizer – the country’s largest pharmaceutical company, with nearly $1 billion in annual government contracts – plans to renounce its U.S. citizenship by merging with Allergan, an Irish-based company. This would allow Pfizer to dodge the $35 billion tax bill it owes on its stash of untaxed offshore profits.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is winning delegates in the Western U.S. nowadays, so the prediction here is Sanders vs. Trump in November.
Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
MARKETING IN AMERICA: The local Walgreens Drug Store has stopped selling light bulbs, period. None on the shelves. The clerk told me that they "weren't selling enough of them".
In 2014, the pharmaceutical industry spent over $250 million on lobbying and campaign contributions – far more than any other industry in America.
"The business of recycling represents nearly $106B in annual economic activity, is responsible for 471,587 direct and indirect jobs, and generates more than $4.3B in state and local revenue and another $6.76B in federal taxes." — Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in 2015
Two oddities showed up while I was in the hospital (for 46 days): 1) After thirty days, the aspirin that I had taken at home to relieve arthritis pain in my hands wore off, and my hands began to hurt. 2) I have taken excess vitamin C to prevent colds for many years (per Dr. Linus Pauling); by the time I was released home, the C also wore off and I caught my first cold in ten years. (So Im taking 3,000 units of C three times a day for a while to rebuild my immunity.)
N.A.S.A. report released in March 2016 concludes that the Middle East is suffering its worst drought in 900 years, and that human-created climate change is a contributor.
Later in 2016, Pfizer – the country’s largest pharmaceutical company, with nearly $1 billion in annual government contracts – plans to renounce its U.S. citizenship by merging with Allergan, an Irish-based company. This would allow Pfizer to dodge the $35 billion tax bill it owes on its stash of untaxed offshore profits.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is winning delegates in the Western U.S. nowadays, so the prediction here is Sanders vs. Trump in November.
Monday, February 29, 2016
February 2016 Quotations (60)
"[Bernie's] message has such power that Clinton has chosen to recycle parts of it."
~~ Robert Borosage
"People don't write music. It's given to them."
~~ Hank Williams [1923-53]
"The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"I figured out my main health issue: premature aging. I'm too young to be this old."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty."
~~ Frank Herbert [1920-86], in "Dune" [1965 novel]
"No Gains Without Pains" :: title of circa 1870s book by Helen Cross Knight [1814-1906]
"Out beyond right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]
"What the imagination can't conjure, reality delivers with a shrug."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief: it has advanced human happiness and it has prospered."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."
~~ Cheshire Cat, as written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]
"It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable."
~~ Rod Serling [1924-75]
“Is there anything better than coffee? Chocolate, maybe, and sex ranks very close I suppose.”
~~ A.R. Miller
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
"The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become."
~~ Harold Taylor
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"Refuse to be average. Let your heart soar as high as it will."
~~ Aiden Wilson Tozer [1897-1963]
"Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."
~~ Alexander Graham Bell [1847-1922]
"A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”
~~ James A. Madison [1751-1836]
“Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands.”
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]
“Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history.”
~~ Karl Marx [1818-83], in "The Communist Manifesto" [1848]
“Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.”
~~ Count Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910]
"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."
~~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin [1755-1826]
"Remember, if you don’t like it, you’re wrong."
~~ Amos Vernon
"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."
~~ artist George Lois
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated thru you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique."
~~ dancer Martha Graham [1894-1991]
"Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."
~~ Vince Lombardi [1913-70]
"There is nothing higher-class than real craftmanship, diversity, originality, and the service of skilled human hands."
~~ Bryant McGill
"I ran and ran and ran every day, and I acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never give up, no matter what else happened."
~~ Olympic athlete Wilma Rudolph [1940-94]
"Desire is the key to motiviation, but it is determination and commitment to an unrelenting goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success [that] you seek."
~~ racecar driver Mario Andretti
"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude."
~~ Gen. Colin Powell
"Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper."
~~ golfer Gary Player
"We don't want equal injustice for all."
~~ Kevin Alexander Gray
"Make no mistake, the Paris Agreement establishes the framework [that] the world needs to solve the climate crisis."
~~ President Barack Obama
“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in her diary (entry dated 17 February 1922)
"Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry."
~~ suffragist Susan B. Anthony [1820-1906]
"Work is not a curse. It is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization."
~~ Calvin Coolidge [1872-1933]
"What I've told Speaker Boehner directly is: If you're really concerned about my taking too many executive actions, why don't you try getting something done thru Congress?"
~~ President Barack Obama, in 2014
"There's nothing like real love. Nothing."
~~ Shirley Temple {Black} [1928-2014]
"I'm not going to apologize for trying to do something while [Congress is] doing nothing."
~~ President Barack Obama, in 2015
"When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all."
~~ Coco Chanel [1883-1971]
"Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"Cutting libraries in a recession is like cutting hospitals during a plague."
~~ Eleanor Crumblehulme
Coffee: Starter fluid for the morning impaired. :: recent poster
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something [that is] completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
~~ Douglas Adams [1952-2001]
"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"Love is not affectionate feeling but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]
"An actor has to burn inside with an outer ease."
~~ Michael Chekhov [1891-1955]
"I understand the concept of optimism, but I think [that] with me what you get is a lack of cynicism."
~~ actor Tom Hanks
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
~~ diarist Anne Frank [1929-45]
"San Francisco has only one drawback –'tis hard to leave."
~~ Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
"You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"I found [that] I was repeating myself. It is the beginning of the end when you discover [that] you have style."
~~ Dashiell Hammett [1894-1961]
"Let yourself be drawn by the strange pull of what you love. It will not lead you astray."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]
"Frame thy mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms, and lengthens life."
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616]
"Always be a little kinder than necessary."
~~ playwright J.M. Barrie [1860-1937]
"Learning is a gift. Even when pain is your teacher."
~~ Maya Watson
"Everyone's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers."
~~ Hans Christian Anderson [1805-75]
"Talk is cheap. . . It is the way [that] we organize and use our lives every day that tells what we believe in."
~~ César E. Chávez [1927-93]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Robert Borosage
"People don't write music. It's given to them."
~~ Hank Williams [1923-53]
"The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"I figured out my main health issue: premature aging. I'm too young to be this old."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty."
~~ Frank Herbert [1920-86], in "Dune" [1965 novel]
"No Gains Without Pains" :: title of circa 1870s book by Helen Cross Knight [1814-1906]
"Out beyond right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]
"What the imagination can't conjure, reality delivers with a shrug."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief: it has advanced human happiness and it has prospered."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."
~~ Cheshire Cat, as written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]
"It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable."
~~ Rod Serling [1924-75]
“Is there anything better than coffee? Chocolate, maybe, and sex ranks very close I suppose.”
~~ A.R. Miller
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
"The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become."
~~ Harold Taylor
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
"Refuse to be average. Let your heart soar as high as it will."
~~ Aiden Wilson Tozer [1897-1963]
"Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."
~~ Alexander Graham Bell [1847-1922]
"A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”
~~ James A. Madison [1751-1836]
“Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands.”
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]
“Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history.”
~~ Karl Marx [1818-83], in "The Communist Manifesto" [1848]
“Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.”
~~ Count Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910]
"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."
~~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin [1755-1826]
"Remember, if you don’t like it, you’re wrong."
~~ Amos Vernon
"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."
~~ artist George Lois
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated thru you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique."
~~ dancer Martha Graham [1894-1991]
"Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."
~~ Vince Lombardi [1913-70]
"There is nothing higher-class than real craftmanship, diversity, originality, and the service of skilled human hands."
~~ Bryant McGill
"I ran and ran and ran every day, and I acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never give up, no matter what else happened."
~~ Olympic athlete Wilma Rudolph [1940-94]
"Desire is the key to motiviation, but it is determination and commitment to an unrelenting goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success [that] you seek."
~~ racecar driver Mario Andretti
"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude."
~~ Gen. Colin Powell
"Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper."
~~ golfer Gary Player
"We don't want equal injustice for all."
~~ Kevin Alexander Gray
"Make no mistake, the Paris Agreement establishes the framework [that] the world needs to solve the climate crisis."
~~ President Barack Obama
“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in her diary (entry dated 17 February 1922)
"Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry."
~~ suffragist Susan B. Anthony [1820-1906]
"Work is not a curse. It is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization."
~~ Calvin Coolidge [1872-1933]
"What I've told Speaker Boehner directly is: If you're really concerned about my taking too many executive actions, why don't you try getting something done thru Congress?"
~~ President Barack Obama, in 2014
"There's nothing like real love. Nothing."
~~ Shirley Temple {Black} [1928-2014]
"I'm not going to apologize for trying to do something while [Congress is] doing nothing."
~~ President Barack Obama, in 2015
"When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all."
~~ Coco Chanel [1883-1971]
"Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too."
~~ Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
"Cutting libraries in a recession is like cutting hospitals during a plague."
~~ Eleanor Crumblehulme
Coffee: Starter fluid for the morning impaired. :: recent poster
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something [that is] completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
~~ Douglas Adams [1952-2001]
"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"Love is not affectionate feeling but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]
"An actor has to burn inside with an outer ease."
~~ Michael Chekhov [1891-1955]
"I understand the concept of optimism, but I think [that] with me what you get is a lack of cynicism."
~~ actor Tom Hanks
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
~~ diarist Anne Frank [1929-45]
"San Francisco has only one drawback –'tis hard to leave."
~~ Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
"You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"I found [that] I was repeating myself. It is the beginning of the end when you discover [that] you have style."
~~ Dashiell Hammett [1894-1961]
"Let yourself be drawn by the strange pull of what you love. It will not lead you astray."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]
"Frame thy mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms, and lengthens life."
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616]
"Always be a little kinder than necessary."
~~ playwright J.M. Barrie [1860-1937]
"Learning is a gift. Even when pain is your teacher."
~~ Maya Watson
"Everyone's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers."
~~ Hans Christian Anderson [1805-75]
"Talk is cheap. . . It is the way [that] we organize and use our lives every day that tells what we believe in."
~~ César E. Chávez [1927-93]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Year-End Website Statistics for 2015
Last year I proudly posted year-end web stats on January First, but 46 days in hospital (see blog post just below) delayed this year's posting until weeks later.
The basic numbers from the year of 2015 are that I coded 200 new pages - for an all-site total of 1,509 - and 2,004 new covers (linked to Amazon); I now have 548 connections on LinkedIn, 151 friends (up 40) on my two Facebook accounts, and 21 new postings here on my blog {all-time total now 328}.
Anyone who wants to see the detail can go to http://www.genordell.com/webstats.htm.
The basic numbers from the year of 2015 are that I coded 200 new pages - for an all-site total of 1,509 - and 2,004 new covers (linked to Amazon); I now have 548 connections on LinkedIn, 151 friends (up 40) on my two Facebook accounts, and 21 new postings here on my blog {all-time total now 328}.
Anyone who wants to see the detail can go to http://www.genordell.com/webstats.htm.
Friday, February 12, 2016
Back From 46 Days in Hospital
At 10:40 am on 28 December last, I slipped on ice on my driveway on the way to the mailbox across the street. Broke both arms and hit my forehead on the driveway curb.
A ten-year-old named Andrew heard the ruckus and came over; I told him to call 911, and he ran to get his sister.
Making the long story short-ish, ambulance took me 40 miles to the E.R. at the V.A. in Albuquerque (Valencia County has NO hospital for its 75,000 residents). Transferred to V.A. third floor for 3 days for observation, then on New Years Eve to the OnPointe Medical Resort for rehab. 42 days there on morphine (mostly) ended yesterday at Noon. Medicare pays for 20 days in total, the other 22 days are costing me co-pay of $161 per day. (Well, at least it is not the retail price, and I am told that Medicaid may reimburse.)
So I am now home and dealing with withdrawal from pain pills, remaining pain, inability to reach above my head, lousy balance, and changes to my domicile by a former friend.
I estimated that I would find 2,000 new emails upon my return and I was damn close: 1962, plus a couple dozen since.
I expect to retrieve 10 to 25 pounds of paper mail from the local P.O. tomorrow, which will include bills that I need to catch up on. (I managed some simple BillPay online banking while at rehab.) ADDED 2/13: Actual weight of snail mail was 12.2 pounds.
Car battery was completely dead, AAA started it, then I drove on the freeway for two hours to recharge it. So I expect that I will be able to drive myself to MRI and other appointments at the V.A., to the dentist, and to start working out on the old people machines at the local senior center gym.
Because the narcotics did not really reduce the pain, I lost all appetite, and some days ate almost nothing; the result is that I now weigh 26 pounds less than when I fell. (What's that saying? "Thorns have roses.") And I am clearer about not needing to eat on any special schedule to prevent diabetes. If I allow myself to Count Carbohydrates, I can reduce my weight even more. (Eating only 50 carbs per day is guaranteed to reduce weight by 10 pounds per month; I did this in the Summer of '76 and dropped 50 pounds, becoming a long-haired hunk for a short time.)
I plan to be in action again soon, this could be America's last federal election (if the idiot voters elect more Republicans), so there is much work ahead.
"The battle against ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full time job."
~~ G.E. Nordell
A ten-year-old named Andrew heard the ruckus and came over; I told him to call 911, and he ran to get his sister.
Making the long story short-ish, ambulance took me 40 miles to the E.R. at the V.A. in Albuquerque (Valencia County has NO hospital for its 75,000 residents). Transferred to V.A. third floor for 3 days for observation, then on New Years Eve to the OnPointe Medical Resort for rehab. 42 days there on morphine (mostly) ended yesterday at Noon. Medicare pays for 20 days in total, the other 22 days are costing me co-pay of $161 per day. (Well, at least it is not the retail price, and I am told that Medicaid may reimburse.)
So I am now home and dealing with withdrawal from pain pills, remaining pain, inability to reach above my head, lousy balance, and changes to my domicile by a former friend.
I estimated that I would find 2,000 new emails upon my return and I was damn close: 1962, plus a couple dozen since.
I expect to retrieve 10 to 25 pounds of paper mail from the local P.O. tomorrow, which will include bills that I need to catch up on. (I managed some simple BillPay online banking while at rehab.) ADDED 2/13: Actual weight of snail mail was 12.2 pounds.
Car battery was completely dead, AAA started it, then I drove on the freeway for two hours to recharge it. So I expect that I will be able to drive myself to MRI and other appointments at the V.A., to the dentist, and to start working out on the old people machines at the local senior center gym.
Because the narcotics did not really reduce the pain, I lost all appetite, and some days ate almost nothing; the result is that I now weigh 26 pounds less than when I fell. (What's that saying? "Thorns have roses.") And I am clearer about not needing to eat on any special schedule to prevent diabetes. If I allow myself to Count Carbohydrates, I can reduce my weight even more. (Eating only 50 carbs per day is guaranteed to reduce weight by 10 pounds per month; I did this in the Summer of '76 and dropped 50 pounds, becoming a long-haired hunk for a short time.)
I plan to be in action again soon, this could be America's last federal election (if the idiot voters elect more Republicans), so there is much work ahead.
"The battle against ignorance and apathy and magical thinking is a full time job."
~~ G.E. Nordell
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
December 2015 Quotations (56)
"When we talk about alternative energy, there’s solar, and there’s wind. And there’s Bernie Sanders."
~~ eco-journalist Bill McKibben
"Your movies are like babies who need love. You have to carry them and take care of them for at least one year after their birth. Being a director is like being a dad."
~~ filmmaker Gaspar Noé
"Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility."
~~ Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"With Donald Trump as President, every day would be Bad Hair Day."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Criticism is easier to take when you realize that the only people who aren't criticized are those who don't take risks."
~~ Donald J. Trump
"We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are."
~~ by J.K. Rowling, in "Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix"
"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."
~~ poet Carl Sandburg [1878-1967]
“God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer."
~~ Anne Sexton [1928-74]
Mad Hatter: "Have I gone mad?" Alice: "I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
"The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief . . . that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart."
~~ Walter Lippmann [1889-1974]
"Politicians should read science fiction, not Westerns and detective stories."
~~ Arthur C. Clarke [1917-2008]
"I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it."
~~ movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn [1879-1974]
"Morality is only evidence of low blood pressure."
~~ Jack London [1876-1916]
"The thing you have to remember about integrity is [that] it’s a mountain with no top."
~~ philosopher Werner Erhard
“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70], in "A Christmas Carol", 1843
“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."
~~ Khalil Gibran [1883-1931], in "The Prophet", 1923
“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900], in the 1893 stageplay "A Woman of No Importance"
"There is no mistaking a real book when one meets one. It is like falling in love."
~~ Christopher Morley [1890-1957]
"Of all lies, art is the least untrue."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80], in a letter dated 1846
"Ignorance is the necessary condition of life itself. If we knew everything, we could not endure existence for a single hour."
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924], in "The Garden of Epicurus", 1894
"The best decoration in the world is a roomful of books."
~~ decorator Billy Baldwin [1903-83]
"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts."
~~ Raymond Chandler; 1888-1959], in "The Big Sleep", 1939
"A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing."
~~ Andrew Lang [1844-1912] of Scotland, in 1881
"If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself, you should say: 'He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned.'"
~~ Stoic philosopher Epictetus [55?–135? C.E.]
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012], in 1994
"I think one remains the same person throughout, merely passing, as it were, in these lapses of time from one room to another, but all in the same house."
~~ J.M. Barrie [1860-1937]
"All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education."
~~ Ivanhoe character, as written by Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832]
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
~~ Robert F. Kennedy [1925-68]
"The object of art is to give life shape."
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616]
"Rejection is inevitable. Let it hit you hard for a moment, feel the hurt, and then move on."
~~ NYC artist Molly Crabapple
"Fear has never been a good advisor, neither in our personal lives nor in our society."
~~ Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
"Santa Claus has the right idea: Visit people only once a year."
~~ entertainer Victor Borge [1909-2000]
"Do the best [that] you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
~~ Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"All of us, we're links in a chain. And if we do our job right, there will be many, many links to come."
~~ folksinger Pete Seeger [1919-2014]
"No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions: he had money as well."
~~ Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013]
"Saving is a fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"People talk loud and long, in order to say as little as possible. The really true and interesting things are the intrigues in the background, about which not a word is mentioned."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten."
~~ Bill Gates
"Nothing cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you."
~~ Ohio football coach Wayne Woodrow 'Woody' Hayes [1913-87]
"For a politician to complain about the press is like a ship's captain complaining about the sea."
~~ British MP Enoch Powell [1912-98]
"To make men love their country, their country ought to be lovable."
~~ Edmund Burke [1729-97]
"Normal is just a cycle on the washing machine."
~~ entertainer Whoopi Goldberg
"Ambition is a dream with a V-8 engine."
~~ Elvis Presley [1935-77]
"If you can accept losing, you can't win."
~~ Vince Lombardi [1913-70]
"The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]
"Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little."
~~ Warren G. Harding [1865-1923]
"Practice any art, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow."
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]
"Good things happen slowly, bad things happen fast."
~~ memoirist Abigail Thomas
"Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level."
~~ Dr. Joyce Brothers [1927-2013], pioneer TV psychologist
"I don't know that there are any shortcuts to doing a good job."
~~ Sandra Day O'Connor, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
"Peasant lives matter."
~~ G.E. Nordell
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ eco-journalist Bill McKibben
"Your movies are like babies who need love. You have to carry them and take care of them for at least one year after their birth. Being a director is like being a dad."
~~ filmmaker Gaspar Noé
"Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility."
~~ Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"With Donald Trump as President, every day would be Bad Hair Day."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Criticism is easier to take when you realize that the only people who aren't criticized are those who don't take risks."
~~ Donald J. Trump
"We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are."
~~ by J.K. Rowling, in "Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix"
"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."
~~ poet Carl Sandburg [1878-1967]
“God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer."
~~ Anne Sexton [1928-74]
Mad Hatter: "Have I gone mad?" Alice: "I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are."
~~ Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
"The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief . . . that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart."
~~ Walter Lippmann [1889-1974]
"Politicians should read science fiction, not Westerns and detective stories."
~~ Arthur C. Clarke [1917-2008]
"I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it."
~~ movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn [1879-1974]
"Morality is only evidence of low blood pressure."
~~ Jack London [1876-1916]
"The thing you have to remember about integrity is [that] it’s a mountain with no top."
~~ philosopher Werner Erhard
“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70], in "A Christmas Carol", 1843
“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."
~~ Khalil Gibran [1883-1931], in "The Prophet", 1923
“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900], in the 1893 stageplay "A Woman of No Importance"
"There is no mistaking a real book when one meets one. It is like falling in love."
~~ Christopher Morley [1890-1957]
"Of all lies, art is the least untrue."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80], in a letter dated 1846
"Ignorance is the necessary condition of life itself. If we knew everything, we could not endure existence for a single hour."
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924], in "The Garden of Epicurus", 1894
"The best decoration in the world is a roomful of books."
~~ decorator Billy Baldwin [1903-83]
"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts."
~~ Raymond Chandler; 1888-1959], in "The Big Sleep", 1939
"A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing."
~~ Andrew Lang [1844-1912] of Scotland, in 1881
"If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself, you should say: 'He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned.'"
~~ Stoic philosopher Epictetus [55?–135? C.E.]
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012], in 1994
"I think one remains the same person throughout, merely passing, as it were, in these lapses of time from one room to another, but all in the same house."
~~ J.M. Barrie [1860-1937]
"All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education."
~~ Ivanhoe character, as written by Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832]
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
~~ Robert F. Kennedy [1925-68]
"The object of art is to give life shape."
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616]
"Rejection is inevitable. Let it hit you hard for a moment, feel the hurt, and then move on."
~~ NYC artist Molly Crabapple
"Fear has never been a good advisor, neither in our personal lives nor in our society."
~~ Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
"Santa Claus has the right idea: Visit people only once a year."
~~ entertainer Victor Borge [1909-2000]
"Do the best [that] you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
~~ Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]
"All of us, we're links in a chain. And if we do our job right, there will be many, many links to come."
~~ folksinger Pete Seeger [1919-2014]
"No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions: he had money as well."
~~ Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013]
"Saving is a fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"People talk loud and long, in order to say as little as possible. The really true and interesting things are the intrigues in the background, about which not a word is mentioned."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten."
~~ Bill Gates
"Nothing cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you."
~~ Ohio football coach Wayne Woodrow 'Woody' Hayes [1913-87]
"For a politician to complain about the press is like a ship's captain complaining about the sea."
~~ British MP Enoch Powell [1912-98]
"To make men love their country, their country ought to be lovable."
~~ Edmund Burke [1729-97]
"Normal is just a cycle on the washing machine."
~~ entertainer Whoopi Goldberg
"Ambition is a dream with a V-8 engine."
~~ Elvis Presley [1935-77]
"If you can accept losing, you can't win."
~~ Vince Lombardi [1913-70]
"The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today."
~~ Seneca the Younger [4? B.C.E. - 65 A.D.]
"Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little."
~~ Warren G. Harding [1865-1923]
"Practice any art, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow."
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]
"Good things happen slowly, bad things happen fast."
~~ memoirist Abigail Thomas
"Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level."
~~ Dr. Joyce Brothers [1927-2013], pioneer TV psychologist
"I don't know that there are any shortcuts to doing a good job."
~~ Sandra Day O'Connor, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all."
~~ Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
"Peasant lives matter."
~~ G.E. Nordell
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
November 2015 Quotations (58)
“If the Republican Party had anything of value to offer the American voter they would not have to lie and cheat and steal to win elections.”
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
~~ Raold Dahl [1916-90]
"Never argue with an idiot, because bystanders don't know who the idiot is."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
”To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”
~~ George Washington [1732-99]
”When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
~~ Franklin D. Roosevelt [1882-1945]
”Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
”Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.”
~~ Roy Goodman
”In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.”
~~ Sid Caesar [1922-2014]
“The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.”
~~ author-aviator Richard Bach
“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard’, I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
~~ columnist Sydney J. Harris [1917-86]
“Don’t go through life, grow through life.”
~~ Eric Butterworth
“Positive anything is better than negative thinking.”
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
“I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.”
~~ Oprah Winfrey
“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
~~ U.C.L.A. coach John R. Wooden [1910-2010]
"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
~~ Edward Everett Hale [1822-1909]
“Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.”
~~ Joe Clark
“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
~~ Ray Kroc [1902-84], who expanded McDonald's to a worldwide behemoth
“The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.”
~~ Hasidic proverb
"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves."
~~ suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton [1815-1902]
"Evil is easy, and has infinite forms."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]
"Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all: the apathy of human beings."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]
"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."
~~ Robert Kennedy [1925-68]
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
“Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.”
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny little matters compared to what lies within us.”
~~ Henry S. Haskins [1875–1957], NOT Emerson or Thoreau
"Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity."
~~ inventor Edwin H. Land [1909-91]
"Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there."
~~ essayist [Ms] Sloane Crosley
"A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's too late."
~~ Frank Sinatra [1915-98]
"The reason [that] people become funny is to overcome pain."
~~ actress-comedian Sarah Silverman
"Most people go thru life without ever discovering the existence of that whole field of endeavor which we describe as second wind."
~~ publisher Katherine Graham [1917-2001]
"Better to be busy than to be busy worrying."
~~ actress Angela Lansbury
"Sanity is overrated."
~~ G.E. Nordell {and others}
"We cannot ignore this corruption anymore. We need a governmernt that works ... We cannot afford a world with no sensible reform."
~~ Lawrence Lessig, TED Talk in 2013
"Americans owe Donald Trump a great debt for taking politics and raising it to the level of professional wrestling."
~~ comedian Argus Hamilton
"The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."
~~ British computer genius Alan Turing [1912-54]
"Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something on which to pride yourself – but poverty itself is romanticized by fools."
~~ J.K. Rowling
"I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner."
~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
“A cup of coffee – real coffee – home-browned, home ground, homemade, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.”
~~ Henry Ward Beecher [1813-87]
“We do not learn, and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Democracy means that the people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship any God in any way [that] they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
“Never do for money what you wouldn’t do for free . . . Work is for slaves.”
~~ Luis Buñuel [1900-83]
"Drink alcohol when needed, but don't get drunk. If you can't prevent yourself from doing drugs, at least share them."
~~ filmmaker Gaspar Noé
"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
~~ Robert Kennedy [1925-68]
"It's not about the money – It's about the game."
~~ character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps" [2010]
“Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.”
~~ historian Arnold J. Toynbee [1889-1975]
Donald Trump is proof that you don't have to be poor to be white trash
~~ popular CafePress poster
"Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukulele."
~~ journalist Ben H. Bagdikian [b. 1920]
"The Martini: The only American invention as perfect as the sonnet."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing [that] we're talking about when we use the word 'identity' has reached an end."
~~ Don DeLillo
"As a country, as a state, and as communities, we need to work hard to make sure [that] our veterans get the care [that] they deserve, and a path open to them toward a brighter future ... and I pledge to continue to fight for them and their families – not just today, but every day."
~~ Russ Feingold, 2016 candidate for U.S. Senate from Wisconsin
"If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."
~~ Caliph Umar bin al-Khat'tab [583?-644]
"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new."
~~ Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
“Our taxes are too high. Our wages are too high. We have to compete with other countries.”
~~ Donald Trump, in November 2015
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
~~ Raold Dahl [1916-90]
"Never argue with an idiot, because bystanders don't know who the idiot is."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
”To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”
~~ George Washington [1732-99]
”When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
~~ Franklin D. Roosevelt [1882-1945]
”Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
”Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.”
~~ Roy Goodman
”In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.”
~~ Sid Caesar [1922-2014]
“The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.”
~~ author-aviator Richard Bach
“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard’, I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
~~ columnist Sydney J. Harris [1917-86]
“Don’t go through life, grow through life.”
~~ Eric Butterworth
“Positive anything is better than negative thinking.”
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
“I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.”
~~ Oprah Winfrey
“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
~~ U.C.L.A. coach John R. Wooden [1910-2010]
"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
~~ Edward Everett Hale [1822-1909]
“Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.”
~~ Joe Clark
“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
~~ Ray Kroc [1902-84], who expanded McDonald's to a worldwide behemoth
“The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.”
~~ Hasidic proverb
"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves."
~~ suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton [1815-1902]
"Evil is easy, and has infinite forms."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]
"Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all: the apathy of human beings."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]
"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."
~~ Robert Kennedy [1925-68]
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
“Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.”
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny little matters compared to what lies within us.”
~~ Henry S. Haskins [1875–1957], NOT Emerson or Thoreau
"Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity."
~~ inventor Edwin H. Land [1909-91]
"Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there."
~~ essayist [Ms] Sloane Crosley
"A man doesn't know what happiness is until he's married. By then it's too late."
~~ Frank Sinatra [1915-98]
"The reason [that] people become funny is to overcome pain."
~~ actress-comedian Sarah Silverman
"Most people go thru life without ever discovering the existence of that whole field of endeavor which we describe as second wind."
~~ publisher Katherine Graham [1917-2001]
"Better to be busy than to be busy worrying."
~~ actress Angela Lansbury
"Sanity is overrated."
~~ G.E. Nordell {and others}
"We cannot ignore this corruption anymore. We need a governmernt that works ... We cannot afford a world with no sensible reform."
~~ Lawrence Lessig, TED Talk in 2013
"Americans owe Donald Trump a great debt for taking politics and raising it to the level of professional wrestling."
~~ comedian Argus Hamilton
"The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."
~~ British computer genius Alan Turing [1912-54]
"Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something on which to pride yourself – but poverty itself is romanticized by fools."
~~ J.K. Rowling
"I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner."
~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
“A cup of coffee – real coffee – home-browned, home ground, homemade, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.”
~~ Henry Ward Beecher [1813-87]
“We do not learn, and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Democracy means that the people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship any God in any way [that] they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well."
~~ screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
“Never do for money what you wouldn’t do for free . . . Work is for slaves.”
~~ Luis Buñuel [1900-83]
"Drink alcohol when needed, but don't get drunk. If you can't prevent yourself from doing drugs, at least share them."
~~ filmmaker Gaspar Noé
"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
~~ Robert Kennedy [1925-68]
"It's not about the money – It's about the game."
~~ character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps" [2010]
“Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.”
~~ historian Arnold J. Toynbee [1889-1975]
Donald Trump is proof that you don't have to be poor to be white trash
~~ popular CafePress poster
"Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukulele."
~~ journalist Ben H. Bagdikian [b. 1920]
"The Martini: The only American invention as perfect as the sonnet."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing [that] we're talking about when we use the word 'identity' has reached an end."
~~ Don DeLillo
"As a country, as a state, and as communities, we need to work hard to make sure [that] our veterans get the care [that] they deserve, and a path open to them toward a brighter future ... and I pledge to continue to fight for them and their families – not just today, but every day."
~~ Russ Feingold, 2016 candidate for U.S. Senate from Wisconsin
"If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."
~~ Caliph Umar bin al-Khat'tab [583?-644]
"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new."
~~ Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
“Our taxes are too high. Our wages are too high. We have to compete with other countries.”
~~ Donald Trump, in November 2015
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Tuesday, November 03, 2015
U.S. Navy Makes Gasoline From Seawater
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (N.R.L.) announced in April 2014 that they have manufactured long-chain hydrocarbons – that is essentially gasoline – entirely from seawater, and used the fuel to power a flying model aircraft.
Using a patented electrochemical process, they have simultaneously extracted dissolved CO2 ions and created hydrogen gas from seawater. The resulting mixture of gases is then reformed into long-chain hydrocarbons in a chemical reaction.
The key to the process is the realization that a liter of seawater contains 140 times as much CO2 as a liter of air. In seawater, nearly all of the CO2 is actually in the form of bicarbonate ions, which should make extraction from water fairly straightforward because of the electrical charge [that] they carry.
Since it is entirely feasible to use non-fossil energy sources to power the process, the fuel created could be essentially fossil-free (carbon neutral) gasoline. The oceans and atmosphere exchange CO2 readily in massive quantities, so taking it from one place is functionally the same as taking it from the other.
The N.R.L. press release puts the cost of their new process at between $3 and $6 per gallon.
Using a patented electrochemical process, they have simultaneously extracted dissolved CO2 ions and created hydrogen gas from seawater. The resulting mixture of gases is then reformed into long-chain hydrocarbons in a chemical reaction.
The key to the process is the realization that a liter of seawater contains 140 times as much CO2 as a liter of air. In seawater, nearly all of the CO2 is actually in the form of bicarbonate ions, which should make extraction from water fairly straightforward because of the electrical charge [that] they carry.
Since it is entirely feasible to use non-fossil energy sources to power the process, the fuel created could be essentially fossil-free (carbon neutral) gasoline. The oceans and atmosphere exchange CO2 readily in massive quantities, so taking it from one place is functionally the same as taking it from the other.
The N.R.L. press release puts the cost of their new process at between $3 and $6 per gallon.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
October 2015 Quotations (60)
"The first Democratic Presidential Debate had adults on the stage."
~~ Dave Johnson
"Donald Trump is not the worst-case scenario for the upcoming election. There will be a comedy film called 'Bodies For It' about a zombie who runs for President."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
“This other war, the war upon destruction of natural assets is one that will never be finished. Our weakness in this vast war is largely ignorance, that most of our citizens do not realize what is going on under their very feet.”
~~ Louis Bromfield [1896-1956]
"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards, to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."
~~ James Earl 'Jimmy' Carter Jr., during Oprah Winfrey tv interview 9/2015
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]
"What you see and hear depends a great deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," spoken by Zara in Act III, Scene VIII.[2] (This is usually paraphrased as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.")
~~ English playwright Sir Wm. Congreve [1670-1729]
"Sometimes it's the people [that] no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."
~~ British computer genius Alan Turing [1912-54]
"There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
[re coffee:] “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”
~~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand [1754-1838]
“I believe humans get a lot done, not because we're smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee.”
~~ New York City artist Flash Rosenberg
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates."
~~ J.K. Rowling
"For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination."
~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]
"The love [that] you liberate in your work is the only love [that] you keep."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
"Comedy is British, wit is French, humor is American."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
“The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.”
~~ Haruki Murakami
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]
"Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the center of the city."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures."
~~ Elizabeth Gilbert
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain."
~~ Vivian Greene
"The path [that] we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place."
~~ Barack Obama, in his acceptance speech at the 2012 Democratic Party Convention
"The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something [that] you believe is worthwhile."
~~ Julia Child [1912-2004]
"If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
~~ Roald Dahl [1916-90]
"The biggest adventure [that] you can take is to live the life of your dreams."
~~ Oprah Winfrey
"How about we treat every man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion?"
~~ Boston Pete, blogger on DailyKos
"The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
"Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."
~~ William E. Gladstone [1809-98], in 1866
"If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"So far, the trend seems to be toward ... most people ending up miserably poor [as] the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution ... with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
~~ paraphrase of Stephen W. Hawking
“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
~~ labor activist Lucy Parsons [1853-1942]
"A person's a person, no matter how small."
~~ Dr. Seuss {Theodor Geisel 1904-91}, in "Horton Hears A Who"
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me. . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
~~ cartoonist & poet Shel Silverstein [1930-99]
"In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and the job's a game."
~~ Mary Poppins character, as written by P.L. Travers [1899-1996]
"It's no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then."
~~ Lewis Carroll [1832-98], in "Alice"
"Behind his mask, the writer is always watching; he cannot help it. He observes, analyzes, takes mental notes, stores nuggets of the talk and behavior around him for later use."
~~ English author Frederick Forsyth
"Rosa sat, so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running, so our children can fly."
~~ viral email on election night 2008
"There was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages."
~~ wordmeister Richard Lederer
"The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness - which means: man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions."
~~ Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]
"A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it."
~~ Jerry Seinfeld
"Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on."
~~ Henry Rollins
"In Buenos Aires, mothers say to me, 'My son is 34 and he's not getting married; I don't know what to do'. So I tell them, 'Don't iron their shirts anymore'."
~~ Pope Francis
"One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the gulf between how serious we [poets] take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else."
~~ Billy Collins
"The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]
"The basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people."
~~ author Marilynne Robinson
"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is, What are we busy about?"
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it."
~~ French actress Brigitte Bardot
"What an elder sees sitting, the young can't see standing."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]
"No one has ever become poor by giving."
~~ Anne Frank [1929-45]
"When something becomes important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."
~~ Elon Musk
"When I see a garden in flower, then I believe in God for a second. But not the rest of the time."
~~ Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich
"Baseball is what we were, football is what we have become."
~~ Mary McGrory [ 1918-2004]
"Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity that somebody wishes they had missed."
~~ actress-comedian Lily Tomlin
"There are two kinds of writer's block. One is when you freeze up because you think [that] you can't do it. The other is when you think [that] it's not worth doing."
~~ Tom Wolfe
"All my life, my parents said, 'Never take candy from strangers'. And then they dressed me up and said, 'Now go beg for it'."
~~ comedian Rita Rudner
"Advice is judged by results, not by intentions."
~~ Marcus Tullius Cicero [106 B.C.E. – 43 B.C.E.]
"Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs."
~~ novelist Mary Gaitskill
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
~~ Dave Johnson
"Donald Trump is not the worst-case scenario for the upcoming election. There will be a comedy film called 'Bodies For It' about a zombie who runs for President."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
“This other war, the war upon destruction of natural assets is one that will never be finished. Our weakness in this vast war is largely ignorance, that most of our citizens do not realize what is going on under their very feet.”
~~ Louis Bromfield [1896-1956]
"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards, to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."
~~ James Earl 'Jimmy' Carter Jr., during Oprah Winfrey tv interview 9/2015
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]
"What you see and hear depends a great deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," spoken by Zara in Act III, Scene VIII.[2] (This is usually paraphrased as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.")
~~ English playwright Sir Wm. Congreve [1670-1729]
"Sometimes it's the people [that] no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."
~~ British computer genius Alan Turing [1912-54]
"There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year."
~~ Daniel Ellsberg
[re coffee:] “Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”
~~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand [1754-1838]
“I believe humans get a lot done, not because we're smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee.”
~~ New York City artist Flash Rosenberg
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
~~ Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates."
~~ J.K. Rowling
"For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination."
~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]
"The love [that] you liberate in your work is the only love [that] you keep."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
"Comedy is British, wit is French, humor is American."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]
“The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.”
~~ Haruki Murakami
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]
"Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the center of the city."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures."
~~ Elizabeth Gilbert
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain."
~~ Vivian Greene
"The path [that] we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place."
~~ Barack Obama, in his acceptance speech at the 2012 Democratic Party Convention
"The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something [that] you believe is worthwhile."
~~ Julia Child [1912-2004]
"If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
~~ Roald Dahl [1916-90]
"The biggest adventure [that] you can take is to live the life of your dreams."
~~ Oprah Winfrey
"How about we treat every man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion?"
~~ Boston Pete, blogger on DailyKos
"The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”
~~ Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
"Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."
~~ William E. Gladstone [1809-98], in 1866
"If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
"So far, the trend seems to be toward ... most people ending up miserably poor [as] the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution ... with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."
~~ paraphrase of Stephen W. Hawking
“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
~~ labor activist Lucy Parsons [1853-1942]
"A person's a person, no matter how small."
~~ Dr. Seuss {Theodor Geisel 1904-91}, in "Horton Hears A Who"
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me. . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
~~ cartoonist & poet Shel Silverstein [1930-99]
"In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and the job's a game."
~~ Mary Poppins character, as written by P.L. Travers [1899-1996]
"It's no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then."
~~ Lewis Carroll [1832-98], in "Alice"
"Behind his mask, the writer is always watching; he cannot help it. He observes, analyzes, takes mental notes, stores nuggets of the talk and behavior around him for later use."
~~ English author Frederick Forsyth
"Rosa sat, so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running, so our children can fly."
~~ viral email on election night 2008
"There was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages."
~~ wordmeister Richard Lederer
"The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness - which means: man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions."
~~ Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]
"A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it."
~~ Jerry Seinfeld
"Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on."
~~ Henry Rollins
"In Buenos Aires, mothers say to me, 'My son is 34 and he's not getting married; I don't know what to do'. So I tell them, 'Don't iron their shirts anymore'."
~~ Pope Francis
"One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the gulf between how serious we [poets] take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else."
~~ Billy Collins
"The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]
"The basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people."
~~ author Marilynne Robinson
"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is, What are we busy about?"
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it."
~~ French actress Brigitte Bardot
"What an elder sees sitting, the young can't see standing."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]
"No one has ever become poor by giving."
~~ Anne Frank [1929-45]
"When something becomes important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."
~~ Elon Musk
"When I see a garden in flower, then I believe in God for a second. But not the rest of the time."
~~ Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich
"Baseball is what we were, football is what we have become."
~~ Mary McGrory [ 1918-2004]
"Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity that somebody wishes they had missed."
~~ actress-comedian Lily Tomlin
"There are two kinds of writer's block. One is when you freeze up because you think [that] you can't do it. The other is when you think [that] it's not worth doing."
~~ Tom Wolfe
"All my life, my parents said, 'Never take candy from strangers'. And then they dressed me up and said, 'Now go beg for it'."
~~ comedian Rita Rudner
"Advice is judged by results, not by intentions."
~~ Marcus Tullius Cicero [106 B.C.E. – 43 B.C.E.]
"Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs."
~~ novelist Mary Gaitskill
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
Thursday, October 01, 2015
News Factoids for Third Quarter 2015
On June 19th, flash floods caused collapse of two freeway bridges on I-10 near Desert Center, California; the two-way closure is longterm and traffic is being diverted; eastbound traffic goes south on Highway 86 at Indio to I-8, westbound traffic goes north on I-95 at Blythe to Highway 62 and thru High Desert. (The Federal Highway Administration lists 119 obsolete bridges and 79 structurally-deficient bridges in Riverside County, California – just another example of damage caused by Republican under-funding of infrastructure repairs for the last ten years.
Americans drank 10.9 billion gallons of bottled water in 2014, up 7.3% over 2013 (and likely to overtake sales of soda pop in 2015).
Eighteen of the 22 components in the Bloomberg Commodity Index have dropped at least 20 percent during August from recent highs, which means that there is now a bear market. The last time this happened was October 2008 {just prior to the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown}. The center of this commodity collapse is the energy market: Chevron's earnings were down a dramatic 90% from last year, and Exxon's earnings were down 51% year-over-year, the worst quarter since early 2009.
The collapse in energy shares alone adds up to $1.3 trillion and is expected to create a $4.4 trillion hole in energy company earnings over the next three years. This has caused the energy sector to be the leading sector for layoffs in the entire economy.
Billie's friend's Weed Killer Recipe
• 2 cups Epsom salts
• 1 gallon cider vinegar
• 1 cup dish soap
— cheap and non-toxic; it works best if you use a sprayer (like a handheld bug or weed sprayer)
Copyright 2015 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved
Americans drank 10.9 billion gallons of bottled water in 2014, up 7.3% over 2013 (and likely to overtake sales of soda pop in 2015).
Eighteen of the 22 components in the Bloomberg Commodity Index have dropped at least 20 percent during August from recent highs, which means that there is now a bear market. The last time this happened was October 2008 {just prior to the G.O.P. Economic Meltdown}. The center of this commodity collapse is the energy market: Chevron's earnings were down a dramatic 90% from last year, and Exxon's earnings were down 51% year-over-year, the worst quarter since early 2009.
The collapse in energy shares alone adds up to $1.3 trillion and is expected to create a $4.4 trillion hole in energy company earnings over the next three years. This has caused the energy sector to be the leading sector for layoffs in the entire economy.
Billie's friend's Weed Killer Recipe
• 2 cups Epsom salts
• 1 gallon cider vinegar
• 1 cup dish soap
— cheap and non-toxic; it works best if you use a sprayer (like a handheld bug or weed sprayer)
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