Third Quarter 2014 News Factoids

More Americans now die from prescription painkillers (16,000 per year) than from heroin and cocaine combined — per C.D.C. {Notice also that deaths from marijuana each year is still zero.}

Back in May, the White House announced completion of a new rooftop solar system, saying that every component was made in America and it would pay for itself in energy savings over the next eight years.

Since Republicans are oblivious to the difference between the freedom of actual democracy and America's current totalitarian fascist government, maybe I should write a book called "Fascism For Dummkopfs".

India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product.

Republican Party dirty tricks returned to New Mexico in August, with a fake mailing from 'NM Dems' delivered on Saturday the 9th telling voters that political events on Sunday the 10th were cancelled.

According to Publishers Weekly in June 2014, Amazon sells 41% of all new books that are sold in America; it also sells 65% of all books purchased online, whether digital or print – and yet, books constitute only seven percent of Amazon's total sales.

The latest analysis by the factcheckers at PunditFact says that Fox News hosts and personalities speak 60 percent 'mostly or outright false' information, while MSNBC is 46 percent.

ECONOMIC NEWS
The July trade deficit drained $40.5B from the U.S. economy, mostly due to goods purchased from China.

Chicken prices rose to record highs recently because G.M.O. roosters had the side effect of 25 percent less fertility; producers hope to replace them by Fall. — per TIME Magazine

DROUGHT NEWS
The snowpack in California's mountains shrank by 86% in just one year.

WILDFIRE NEWS
Since 1985, the size of the average wildfire on federal land has QUADRUPLED. Of the top ten biggest burn years on record, NINE have happened since 2000.
— per National Interagency Fire Center

GLOBAL WARMING NEWS
Things are indeed heating up at Yellowstone National Park. In July, underground thermal changes melted the asphalt of one of their roads, which has been closed to tourist traffic.

Hurricane Marie on the west coast of Mexico in late August caused flooding of several low-lying streets in Seal Beach, California, as well as in neighboring Long Beach. Surfers were pleased at the larger waves.

DEBUNKING ANOTHER MYTH:
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY CUTS COAL INDUSTRY JOBS
“At the end of the 1970s there were more than 250,000 coal miners in America. Since then, however, coal employment has fallen by two-thirds ... because most coal now comes from strip mines that require very few workers. At this point, coal mining accounts for only one-sixteenth of 1 percent of overall U.S. employment; shutting down the whole industry would eliminate fewer jobs than America lost in an average week during the Great Recession of 2007-9 ... The real war on coal, or at least on coal workers, took place a generation ago, waged not by liberal environmentalists but by the coal industry itself. And coal workers lost.”
— Paul Krugman, New York Times, May 2014

NEW WORRY: CELL PHONE INTERCEPTS
As if there is not already enough to worry about, Popular Science Magazine has found 17 'fake' cellphone towers across the southern half of the United States. Well, not really fake because they connect to your cell phone, then drop 4G service to 2G service, turn encryption to OFF, and listen to your call and-or deliver spyware to your handset. The actual discoveries were by Nevada security firm E.S.D. while demonstrating their ESD CryptoPhone 500 device (for sale at $3,500 each). Unable to confirm ownership of these towers, the various authors and interviewees conclude that it is NOT the N.S.A., because the Feds already have direct access thru your cellphone carrier. So if not the U.S. government, then who is hijacking & infecting cellphones as they pass thru these geographic cells (almost all near military bases)?
Copyright 2014 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

September 2014 Quotations (59)

"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind are convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

“I never said all actors are cattle. What I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.”
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]

"I was constantly astonished by the extraordinary DREAMS of ordinary people."
~~ Louis 'Studs' Terkel [1912-2008], in "Working" (1974)

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius."
~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]

"You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right."
~~ Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]

"There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside."
~~ Upton Sinclair [1878-1968]

"The mind is not a receptacle; information is not education. Education is what remains after the information that has been taught has been forgotten."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

[on sexual politics] "A desire to have all of the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry."
~~ Dorothy L. Sayers [1893-1957]

"Never explain. Your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe it anyway."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
~~ Galileo Galilei [1564-1642]

"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting."
~~ Gautama Buddha [5th Century BCE]

"The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic."
~~ John F. Kennedy [1917-63]

"People can't change the truth, but the truth can change people."
~~ Anonymous

"You can live in the most democratic country on earth, and if you are lazy, obtuse, or servile within yourself, [then] you are not free."
~~ Ignazio Silone {pseudonym of Italian author & politician Secondino Tranquilli [1900-78]}, in 1955

"Fascism is capitalism in decay."
~~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin [1870-1924]

"I see [illegal immigration] as white people finding loopholes in the slavery laws."
~~ comedian Chris Rock, interview in TIME Magazine (March 2007)

"I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write."
~~ J.K. Rowling

“To be, in a word, unborable . . . It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.”
~~ David Foster Wallace [1962-2008] in "The Pale King" (2011)

"Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change."
~~ Frank Lloyd Wright [1867-1959]

“The most important things are the hardest to say because words diminish them.“
~~ Stephen King, in "On Writing" (2000)

"A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet."
~~ Truman Capote [1924-84]

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"A lie is something that hasn't happened but might just as well have."
~~ Judith Rossner [1935-2005]

"A primitive artist is an amateur whose work sells."
~~ Anna Mary Robertson 'Grandma' Moses [1860-1961]

"There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain."
~~ cubist painter Georges Braque [1882-1963]

"The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened."
~~ Bella Abzug [1920-98]

“We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.”
~~ Dr. Eric Berne [1910-1970]

“The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull.”
~~ Dr. Eric Berne [1910-1970]

"Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others."
~~ Dr. Eric Berne [1910-1970]

"Chocolate is cheaper than therapy and you don't need an appointment."
~~ saying on t-shirts

"Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"Think before you speak. Read before you think."
~~ Fran Lebowitz

"No evil is honorable, but death is honorable. Therefore death is not evil."
~~ Zeno of Citium [334?-262? B.C.E.]

"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices."
~~ Eric Temple Bell [1883-1960]

"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"The Cornell Sun, thank goodness, showed me what to do with my life, and I did it."
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]

"A forest bird never wants a cage."
~~ playwright Henrik Ibsen [1828-1906]

"If you can't explain it simply, [then] you don't understand it well enough."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"The thing about quotes on the internet is that you cannot confirm their validity."
~~ Abraham Lincoln

"A writer is a world trapped in a person."
~~ Victor Hugo [1802-85]

"I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions."
~~ Stephen Covey

"Admit when you're wrong. Shut up when you're right."
~~ John Gottman

"Should not the giver be thankful that the receiver received? Is not giving a need? Is not receiving mercy?"
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver."
~~ Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]

"Democracy cannot be saved by supermen, but only by the unswerving devotion and goodness of millions of little men."
~~ Adlai E. Stevenson II [1900-65]

"Love the giver more than the gift."
~~ Brigham Young [1801-77]

"Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Blessed are those that can give without remembering and receive without forgetting."
~~ poet Elizabeth Bibesco [1897-1945]

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]

"The Truth, when you finally chase it down, is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears."
~~ Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005]

"Civilization is a failure. We need to think what we can do together in love and peace."
~~ musician Serj Tankian

"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]

"Never waste a minute thinking about people [that] you don't like."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]

"The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

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

Blog Post #300: Statistics For The 299 Previous

The blog website shows that the next post on my 'Dateline Chamesa' weblog will be the 300th posting. So rather than try to figure out some special essay or such, I decided to look at the Past: what then were the 299 previous posts?

The year 2005 saw 22 posts in the 'other' category.
The year 2006 saw 12 WM essays, 1 quotations post, 0 factoid posts, and 33 other (1 graphic).
The year 2007 saw 6 WM essays, 4 quotations posts, 4 factoid posts, and 21 other.
The year 2008 saw 12 WM essays, 13 quotations posts, 7 factoid posts, and 9 other (1 graphic).
The year 2009 saw 7 WM essays, 9 quotations posts, 5 factoid posts, and 1 other.
The year 2010 saw 2 WM essays, 10 quotations posts, 4 factoid posts, and 1 other.
The year 2011 saw 3 WM essays, 13 quotations posts, 6 factoid posts, and 4 other.
The year 2012 saw 5 WM essays, 13 quotations posts, 8 factoid posts, and 19 other (2 graphics).
The year 2013 saw 4 WM essays, 9 quotations posts, 6 factoid posts, and 12 other.
The year 2014 has so far seen only 14 posts: 5 quotation posts, 3 factoid posts, and 6 other.

The blog began in October 2005 and so the blog has been going for 108 months. (The overlapping WMail ezine began in mid-2000 and was ended October 2007.) The summary of the blog postings in that nine years is: 51 WM essays, 77 quotations posts, 43 factoid posts, and 128 other (4 graphic) postings - all of which crossfoots.

The most popular post was the October 2011 "A Walter T. Foster Story", with a mere 24 views.

Okay, back to work . . .
Copyright 2014 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

Viral "Arab/Muslims Worry Me" Letter

YOU WORRY ME!
by Captain John Maniscalco, American Airlines Pilot

I've been trying to say this since 9/11, but you worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me.

I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate, but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On September 11, Arab/Muslims hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings, killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers.

The Palestinians celebrated, the Iraqis were overjoyed as was most of the Arab world. So, I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage, hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.

How do I differentiate between the true Arab/Muslim Americans and the Arab/Muslim terrorists in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter MORE of the same good neighbours and children?

The events of September 11 changed the answer. It is not MY responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens, with ALL of its faults. It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I DEMAND to know and I have a right to know, whether or not you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation; that He will protect it and let it prosper? Or do you pray that Allah will destroy [America] in one of your Jihads? Are you thankful for the freedom that this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by also paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America? If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it.

Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions YOU are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America. Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent, because I worry about who you regard as innocent. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks, because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy; I am interested only in action. What will you do forAmerica - our great country - at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting 'Allah bless America'. I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.

The F.B.I. has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the W.T.C. attack. Many of these people live and socialize right now in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, NOW! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals.

The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing 'leaders' like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat.

If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people, then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good, pure, and true, when your 'leaders' ARE teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance? It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if huge numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us – our rights under the greatest constitution in the world. I want to know where every Arab Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to DEMAND it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family.

I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no grey areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance, and it is up to YOU to show ME, where YOU stand.

Until then, "YOU WORRY ME!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Posted here because the opinion piece makes a lot of sense.
HOWEVER
The origin of this work is in dispute. The usually-reliable www.Snopes.com verification website states that it was printed in a less vitriolic form in the Hyattsville, Maryland Gazette (under the title “An open letter to my Arab-Muslim neighbors”) on 12 October 2001, credited to a Kevin Daly of Beltsville, Maryland. The piece first appeared on the internet in June 2002; although there is a real pilot licensed by the F.A.A. named John Maniscalco, efforts by Snopes to verify authorship led to 'dead ends'; the somewhat opinionated Snopes entry is dated August 2007.

August 2014 Quotations (61)

"The energy of the mind is the essence of life."
~~ Greek philosopher Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine."
~~ internet activist Richard M. Stallman

"The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.”
~~ Will Durant [1885-1981]

“Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.”
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

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

"To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

"The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

"The supreme crime of [organized religion] to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind, that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence."
~~ Upton Sinclair [1878-1968], in "The Profits of Religion: An Essay In Economic Interpretation" (1918)

"Seek the truth or hide your head in the sand. Both require digging."
~~ Andrew Nolan

"Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Change your thoughts and you change your world."
~~ Norman Vincent Peale [1898-1993]

"I fell in love with cinema because I preferred this life instead of real life."
~~ Claude Lelouch

"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
~~ Plato [428?-327? B.C.E.]

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
~~ John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006]

"The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction manual didn't come with it."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

"The map is not the territory."
~~ Alfred Korzybski [1879-1950]

"There's a moral here somewhere."
~~ Anthony Lane, New Yorker Magazine critic

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
~~ Alex Carey, in "Taking The Risk Out of Democracy" (1996)

"Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it."
~~ Maya Angelou [1928-2014]

"I'd like to believe an accumulation of experience has made me a sort of a grown-up person, so I can have judgment and taste and whatever."
~~ Maurice Sendak [1928-2012]

"The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine."
~~ televangelist Mike Murdock

"It is never too late or too soon, it is when it is supposed to be."
~~ Mitch Albom

"What you owe yourself is to work for your living; what you owe your neighbor is not to interfere with his work."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"No act of kindness no matter how small is ever wasted."
~~ Aesop [620–564 B.C.E.]

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

"There's nothing [that] you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.”
~~ Dorothy L. Sayers [1893-1957]

"It is better to live one day as a lion, than a dozen years as a sheep."
~~ Louis L'Amour [1908-88], in "Flint" (1960)

"There are no fresh starts in life, just new opportunities to screw up."
~~ Steve Lopez

"Nobody ever listened himself out of a job."
~~ Calvin Coolidge [1872-1933]

"A basic proposition of epistomology . . . is that an observed fact requires no proof; it simply IS, self-demonstrating."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"One must have the mind of winter to behold the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."
~~ poet Wallace Stevens [1879-1955]

“Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.”
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything."
~~ Edward John Phelps [1822-1900]

"Only the impossible happens. The Universe is impossible. You and I are impossible. And there it is."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

"It's hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge . . . I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985]

"Salad is not a meal!" ~~ guys' saying

"Whosoever plants a tree / Winks at immortality"
~~ Post-It poem by Felix Dennis [1947-2014]

"A champion is someone who gets up when he can't."
~~ boxer Jack Dempsey [1895-1983]

"In the future there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders."
~~ Facebook, Inc. COO Sheryl Sandberg

"The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them – especially not from yourself."
~~ philosopher Daniel Dennett

"Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free."
~~ poet Robert Hass

"There is no such thing as perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity."
~~ Salman Rushdie

"Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury."
~~ Coco Chanel [1883-1971]

"Children need models more than they need critics."
~~ essayist Joseph Joubert [1754-1824]

"The battle to halt global warming, aka 'climate change', is over. We lost."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history. It goes from one generation to another."
~~ Louis 'Studs' Terkel [1912-2008]

"Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober, not to make us sad but wise."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness."
~~ Nancy Mitford [1904-73]

"Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person."
~~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]

"They don't call women 'the opposite sex' for nothing!"
~~ G.E. Nordell

"All cats are libertarians: Completely dependent on others but fully convinced of their own independence."
~~ showed up on Twitter circa 2009

"As soon as I saw you I knew an adventure was going to happen."
~~ Winnie the Pooh character, as written by A.A. Milne [1882-1956]

“A library card is the start of a lifelong adventure.”
~~ Lilian Jackson Braun [1913-2011]

"It's ironic how in America the colors red, white, and blue represent freedom until they're flashing behind you."
~~ syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton

"Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses."
~~ Marilyn vos Savant

"Ninety-nine percent honesty is the foundation of any relationship."
~~ line from 2014 movie "What If"

"The Koch Industries have a philosophy that profits are above everything else."
~~ Bill Koch, on "60 Minutes"

"The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626] (tacked to the darkroom door of American photographer Dorothea Lange [1895-1965])

"Whether humanity makes it or not depends on the way [that] we behave today."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

"The one thing that can change most of our problems is dancing."
~~ rock legend James Brown [1933-2006]

"Hydraulic fracturing IS pollution until scientifically proven otherwise."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616] Page

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

News Factoids for April & May 2014

“The world is not ready for the impacts of climate change, including more extreme weather and the likelihood that populated parts of the planet could be rendered uninhabitable, says the planet's leading body of climate scientists in a major new [United Nations} report.”
-- National Geographic, 31 March 2014

I wrote a new short story: "Duncan's Legacy" which is posted to my Writings Department.

Very scary (and tedious) slide shows are being spammed all over about President Obama's House Bill 2847, which supposedly goes into effect on July First. The scare is that it will crash the economy, the dollar will go kaflooey, all hell will be visited on the reader of the spam. But facts make the fear-mongers look really silly. Just a five-second look on Wikipedia tells the whole tale: The name of the enacted bill is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which closes loopholes enjoyed by the privileged One Percent who have money stashed overseas. If you have no funds stashed overseas, then this act of Congress will have no effect on your life, except maybe having to hear the Oligarchy's propaganda machine whine and whine about actually paying for government benefits that they expect for free (or do not like, such as regulation of food quality, of drugs, of pollution, etc.).

When diesel locomotives were first introduced in Canada, the railroads had to test several horn models before one was found that discouraged moose rather than attracting them.

ANOTHER COMMODITY FAILURE
Coffee beans in Central America have been damaged by the roya fungus (also called 'rust'); expect higher prices.

The "Koch Brothers Exposed" video [Brave New Films April 2012] can now be watched for free online watch entire movie free [1:00:51] at Youtube
Copyright 2014 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

April 2014 Quotations [66]

"I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil."
~~ Robert F. Kennedy [1925-68]

"I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
~~ John Muir [1838-1914]

"An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form."
~~ Maxim Gorky [1868-1936]

"The best way to cheer yourself [up] is to try to cheer somebody else up."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war."
~~ Dr. Maria Montessori [1870-1952]

"Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig."
~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]

“Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families."
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]

"Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
~~ Greek philosopher Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"Football: A sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!"
~~ Audrey Hepburn [1929-93]

"Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me."
~~ Immanuel Kant [1724-1804]

"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."
~~ Wm. Blake [1757–1827]

"Action expresses priorities."
~~ 'Mahatma' Gandhi [1869-1948]

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone."
~~ poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox [1850-1919]

"We never know the worth of water till the well is dry."
~~ Thomas Fuller [1608-61]

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]

“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded."
~~ Terry Pratchett

"I don't intend to be the richest person in the cemetary; my wealth is the legacy [that] I leave behind."
~~ Amanda Okoli

"If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough."
~~ anonymous

"follow your inner moonlight / don't hide the madness"
~~ poet Allen Ginsberg [1926-97]

"We make our discoveries thru our mistakes; we watch one another's success, and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve."
~~ Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch [1863-1944]

"Amateurs write when they are inspired. Professionals are inspired when they write. This is a subtle but important distinction."
~~ Michael Hyatt

"Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]

"Let us both small and great push forward in this work, in this pursuit, if to our country, if to ourselves we would live dear."
~~ Quintus Horatius Flaccus [65 B.C.E.-8 B.C.E.] known as Horace

"The US Supreme Court's decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission ... continued its drive to give Americans a government of, by and for big money."
~~ Viki Harrison

"Forget all the reasons why it won't work and believe the one reason why it will."
~~ anonymous

"Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it."
~~ Bill Cosby

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]

"Are you sure you want to empty the Spam folder?"
~~ modern Eternal Question

"Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God."
~~ Lenny Bruce [1925-66]

"Nothing can be beautiful which is not true."
~~ art critic John Ruskin [1819-1900]

"If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."
~~ Margaret Atwood

“A quart of Ale is a dish for a king."
~~ WilliamShakespeare [1564-1616], in "The Winter’s Tale" [circa 1610-11]

“The philosophy of one century becomes the common sense of the next."
~~ Henry Ward Beecher [1813-87]

"The Purpose of Life Is To Live A Life of Purpose"
~~ Richard Leider

"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]

"Elections should be held on April 16th - the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders."
~~ Thomas Sowell

"Go confidently . . . Live the life [that] you imagined."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"Never stay awake at night asking yourself questions you can't answer."
~~ Charlie Brown character, as drawn by Charles M. Schulz [1922-2000]

"If you can't fix it with a hammer, you've got an electrical problem."
~~ handyman humor

"All fishermen are liars, but not all liars are fishermen."
~~ anonymous

"I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"I have a plan: RUUUNNN!"
~~ Scarecrow in animated Oz movie

"The answers [that] you get from literature depend on the questions [that] you pose."
~~ Margaret Atwood

"A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time."
~~ Henry Ford [1863-1947]

"I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion. I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more. I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion. I could die for that."
~~ John Keats [1795-1821]

"Every time [that] you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world [that] you want."
~~ Anna Lappé

"The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me."
~~ Dudley Field Malone [1882-1950]

"If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score."
~~ Bill Copeland [1946-2010]

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
~~ George Eliot [1819-80]

"If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door."
~~ Milton Berle [1908-2002]

"Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country."
~~ John F. Kennedy [1917-63]

"I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work."
~~ Thomas Alva Edison [1847-1931]

"It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark."
~~ Howard J. Ruff

"It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up."
~~ Vince Lombardi [1913-70]

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
~~ Sun Tzu [544?-496? B.C.E.]

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em."
~~ William Shakespeare [1564-1616]

"That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back in your pocket."
~~ humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]

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

News Factoids for First Quarter 2014

The White House website contains the following statement:
"President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible Administration in history. That begins with taking comments and questions from you, the American people, through our website."
EXCEPT FOR THE PART WHERE THEY HAVE SHUT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE'S PUBLIC FAX NUMBER

WEATHER DEPARTMENT

In January, a national propane shortage caused declared emergencies in 31 states.

"Thus far in 2014, truly bizarre weather has been the norm. Blizzards buried Birmingham, Alabama and Tokyo, Japan while it hit 62° in Alaska in January. California suffered thru its worst drought in more than a century, while the wettest winter since 1766 submerged much of New England in a biblical flood. Australia was so hot – 110 degrees for days at a time – that 1,000 bats fell out of the trees, dead of heat stroke." — William Falk, The Week Magazine

CLIMATE & FARMING DEPARTMENT

Back in January, I noticed that the bear claw pastries at the bakery of my local Albertsons supermarket had no almond slices on the top. I asked the clerk who called the baker from the back, who explained that the price of almonds in the five-pound box has tripled! and that he has been unable to find a cheaper source, so his choice was to remove the decorative nuts rather than raise the price. The crop for 2013 was average, but the drought in California is expected to reduce the size of the nuts and of the crop, so the agribusiness quasi-monopoly is raising prices NOW because their profits must be protected. (And then the further increase in price later this year won't look so huge.)

Major article in the newspaper here last week about bartenders cutting back on limes, especially on margarita cocktails. Because of weather changes and a crop disease and theft by organized crime, Mexico's lime crop is seriously down this year. So producers have raised the price of a carton from $18 to $100. Expect more of the same for other food crops.

As the shortage of fresh limes continues, airlines are no longer bringing them on board for alcoholic cocktails, not even on vodka tonics.

A virus that originated in China has killed millions of U.S. baby pigs in the last year across 27 states. The F.D.A. is still trying to track how the disease entered the country, and expect that production this year will decline by seven percent. So of course greedy meatpackers are already charging a 13% higher price for bacon.

As the prices of food ingredient crops keep rising, be aware that the annual C.O.L.A. (Cost of Living Adjustment) on Social Security will NOT be increased: the Social Security C.O.L.A. formula is based on C.P.I. (the Consumer Price Index) which does not include changes in costs of food or energy, as well as incorporating a below-reality factor for healthcare for the elderly.

BRILLIANT IDEA DEPT.

Somebody is going to make a fortune building a smartphone app for the growing number of automobile recall repairs, or maybe AAA or Carfax will do it. Set up a big database from all the manufacturers, searchable by make/model/year and-or VIN, with data about whether and when the recall repair got installed on each vehicle. The economic model would be long-term license for new & used auto dealers, short term (six month?) license for individuals shopping for a new or used vehicle.
Copyright 2014 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

March 2014 Quotations (60)

"Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat."
~~ Dorothy Parker [1893-1967]

"Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

"We are what we repeatedly do."
~~ Greek philosopher Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defense."
~~ Dr. J.A. Langford

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time [that] you fall."
~~ Nelson Mandela [1918-2013]

“You can become a winner only if you are willing to walk over the edge.”
~~ Damon Runyon [1884-1946]

(re: acting) "You've got to show your soul. Otherwise, you're just a piece of equipment."
~~ Sylvester Stallone

"A book is a device to ignite the imagination."
~~ British playwright Alan Bennett

"Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Your job today is to sparkle !"
~~ G.E. Nordell

"I am, therefore I'll think."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"A 2012 poll found that people who listened to no news were better informed than those who listened to Fox News."
~~ journalist Charles Blow, New York Times

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home."
~~ Anna Quindlen, in "How Reading Changed My Life"

"The moviemaker can ask questions but not give solutions."
~~ Costa-Gavras

"Free men of every generation must combat renewed efforts of organized force and greed to destroy liberty."
~~ Robert M. 'Fighting Bob' La Follette [1855-1925]

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."
~~ poet T.S. Eliot [1888-1965]

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting."
~~ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Stuart, Countess of Bute

"Addressing our climate crisis is not just a question of morality or ethics; it is a question of our own survival."
~~ Sen. Harry Reid

"The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will'. Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilites as probabilities.”
~~ Charles Dickens [1812-70]

"Wisdom begins in wonder."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]

"Leap and the net will appear."
~~ naturalist John Burroughs [1837-1921]

"Be curious, not judgmental."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

"Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering 'It will be happier . . .'."
~~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson [1809-92]

"There is neither happiness or misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness."
~~ Alexander Dumas, fils [1824-95]

"Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed."
~~ Mary Oliver

"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."
~~ Emily Dickinson [1830-86]

"Believe [that] there is a Great Power silently working all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest."
~~ Beatrix Potter [1866-1943]

"We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom."
~~ Count Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910]

"I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us."
~~ Anne Lamott

"If light is in your heart you will find your way home."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]

"Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you because it will."
~~ Cheryl Strayed

"Someone [that] I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift."
~~ Mary Oliver

"Life appears too short to be spent nursing animosity or registering wrongs."
~~ Charlotte Brontë [1816-55]

"For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack."
~~ D.H. Lawrence [1885-1930]

"The stomach carries the heart, and not the heart the stomach."
~~ Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes [1547-1616]

"Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it."
~~ Simone de Beauvoir [1908-86]

"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."
~~ Henry James [1843-1916]

"Imagination is the eye of the soul."
~~ Joseph Joubert [1754-1824]

"I travel not to go anywhere, but to travel. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Talent is a long patience, and originality and effort of will and intense observation."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]

"We live, man and worm, in a time when almost everything can mean every thing."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]

"Democracy is a Life, and requires daily struggle."
~~ Robert M. 'Fighting Bob' La Follette [1855-1925]

"I know of only one duty, and that is to love."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809] in 1776

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826], in 1779

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
~~ James Madison [1751-1836, in 1785

"There is nothing but beauty – and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie."
~~ French poet Stéphane Mallarmé [1842-98]

“Never underestimate the fondness of people and organizations for the status quo.”
~~ Andrew McAfee, author of "Enterprise 2.0"

"I am awake for the first time, and all else before me has been a mean sleep."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

"All our progress is unfolding. Trust the instinct to the end."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"Books are the carriers of civilization."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"God will not look you over for medals, diplomas, or degrees – but for scars."
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

"The most exquisite things in nature and in art possess an indefinable quality called style."
~~ Gustav Stickley [1858-1942]

"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"The dog barks but the caravan passes on."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]

"If the sun and moon should doubt / they'd immediately go out."
~~ Wm. Blake [1757–1827]

"Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either."
~~ Golda Meir [1898-1978]

"Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage."
~~ Maya Angelou

"Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less."
~~ Susan B. Anthony [1820-1906]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal."
~~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton [1815-1902]

"Economics is too important to be left to the experts."
~~ Ludwig von Mises [1881-1973]

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

Washington State Is Proof For Minimum Wage Hike

“When Washington [State] residents voted in 1998 to raise the state’s minimum wage and link it to the cost of living, opponents warned [that] the measure would be a job-killer . . . In the 15 years that followed, the state’s minimum wage climbed to $9.32 — the highest in the country. Meanwhile job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage points above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington’s restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. [Washing-ton State's] poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years.”
~~ Bloomberg News

Imperative Admonition

Your job today is to sparkle !

February 2014 Quotations (55)

“We all do better when we all do better.”
~~ Sen. Paul Wellstone [1944-2002]

"There are no fresh starts in life, just new opportunities to screw up."
~~ Steve Lopez

“The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.”
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970], in "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" (1937)

"There is no god higher than truth."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"Fire is the heart of the house."
~~ Frank Lloyd Wright [1867-1959]

"The mind of man is beneficent and noble only when it obeys truth."
~~ Nobel-laureate Hermann Hesse [1877-1962] in "The Glass Bead Game" (1943)

"What is the most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands."
~~ Alexis de Tocqueville [1806-59]

"No large institution values independent thought, and public schools actively despise and punish it; they demand and attempt to enforce and reward mindless obedience."
~~ Crispin Sartwell

"Not one in fifty really uses his eyes properly."
~~ Agatha Christie [1890-1976]

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]

"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."
~~ oil baron Armand Hammer [1898-1990]

"Make sure that the things you do keep us alive."
~~ song lyric by Graham Nash

"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it."
~~ Harry Emerson Fosdick [1878-1969] in the 1940s

"Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate."
~~ Dave Barry

"The tragedy of man is that of somebody who is starving and sitting at a richly laden table but does not reach out with his hand, because he cannot see what is right in front of him. For the real world has inexhaustible splendour, the real life is full of meaning and abundance, where we grasp it, it is full of miracles and glory."
~~ German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann [1882-1950]

"The business of the poet and novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things."
~~ English author Thomas Hardy [1840-1928]

"We love justice greatly, and just men but little."
~~ Philibert Joseph Roux [1780-1854]

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?"
~~ Epicurus (341?-270? B.C.E.)

“Those believing [that] they have not voted are mistaken, for their indifference affects all our futures.”
~~ M.A. Denck

"What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give."
~~ mystery author P.D. James

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Money, and not morality, is the principle of commercial nations."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness."
~~ Zhuangzi, also known as Zhuang Zhou or Chuang-tzu [350 B.C.E.]

"The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"The more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer."
~~ Stephen W. Hawking

"And we all die and the stars will go out one after another . . ."
~~ beat poet Wm. S. Burroughs [1914-97]

"TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM: Too much religion is apt to encourage evil."
~~ Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus [99-55 B.C.E.]

"The only thing that will make you happy is being happy with who you are, and not who people think you are."
~~ actress Goldie Hawn

"Getting money from any government agency is like getting cheese from a cow – a long and involved process."
~~ old saying

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
~~ Nelson Mandela [1918-2013]

"If anyone destroys this country it will be the conservatives."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten."
~~ Donald E. Westlake [1933-2008] in "Two Much"

“You can keep, the things of bronze and stone and give me one man to remember me just once a year.”
~~ Damon Runyon [1884-1946]

"We have art so that we may not perish by the truth."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"Organized religion is like organized crime: it preys on people's weaknesses, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate."
~~ Anonymous

“Flatterers are the worst type of enemy.”
~~ Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus [56?-117? C.E.]

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others."
~~ Greek philosopher Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"People say [that] nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day."
~~ Winnie the Pooh, as written by A.A. Milne [1882-1956]

"Dream big dreams."
~~ Barack Obama

"The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction."
~~ Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]

"Ever tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
~~ Samuel Beckett [1906-89]

"Saying [that] atheism is a belief system is like saying [that] not going skiing is a hobby."
~~ comic actor Ricky Gervais

"Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted."
~~ British biographer Hesketh Pearson [1887-1964]

"Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people [that] you disagree with."
~~ folksinger & activist Pete Seeger [1919-2014]

"If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses."
~~ Joseph Epstein

"If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much."
~~ Lewis Carroll [1832-98]

"Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating."
~~ Ben Stein, professional idiot

"Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery."
~~ Julian Barnes

"It sometimes strikes me that men and women aren't quite the right people for each other."
~~ novelist Penelope Fitzgerald [1916-2000]

"Pretend to be in complete control and people will assume that you are."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011]

"Elegance is the only beauty that never fades."
~~ actress Audrey Hepburn [1929-93]

"Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire."
~~ Wendell Berry

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

Early Voting Fun

I drove down the hill yesterday to the new Temporary City Hall so that I could do Early Voting (which started February 12th) for the Municipal Election on March 4th. Filled out the form, put ink in the proper ovals, and put the Official Ballot into the Official Voting Machine. I was voter #27. So the precinct ladies thanked me and I got up to leave, and I asked if there was an 'I Voted' sticker to wear.

Well, the new City of Rio Communities is struggling to get funding, and the election process is a huge expense, so they decided not to purchase any such stickers, which cost entirely too much - $100 for a roll of a thousand.

So I said something like "That's a shame", and the Official Election Clerk reached across her desk and got a sheet of white address labels and wrote on one "I Voted!". She handed it to me and I stuck it on my t-shirt and thanked them and wore it proudly for the rest of my errands.
Copyright 2014 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved

official City of Rio Communities website

I went to the council meeting tonight for my new City of Rio Communities, New Mexico where I was on the agenda to formally propose building a temporary city website (my labor free, reimbursement up to $300 for cost of domains & hosting for two years). The council tabled the matter, since there is no existing budget item for such. So one citizen got businessmen sitting near him to pledge the $300 to be paid to the city and earmarked for a website. He then spoke during Public Comments and told the council that the cost was covered and that the council should stop stalling progress. So I have begun coding the pages . . .

December 2013-January 2014 News Factoids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The time is always ripe to do right."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Year-End Website Statistics for 2013

Hey, got'er done on the First!

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

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

Winter Solstice 2013 Quotations (58)

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
~~ Guillaume Apollinaire [1880-1918]

"The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hifi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment."
~~ Herbert Marcuse [1898-1979]

"When you're down, every rat is big enough to try to eat you."
~~ Western author Max Brand [1892-1944]

"Women's virtue is man's greatest invention."
~~ Cornelia Otis Skinner [1899-1979]

"Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather."
~~ punk rocker Mike Dirnt

"He who limps is still walking."
~~ Polish poet Stanislaw Lec [1909-66]

"Think for yourself and question authority."
~~ Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]

"Disney has the best casting. If he doesn’t like an actor he just tears him up.”
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]

"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education."
~~ playwright Wilson Mizner [1876-1933]

"No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess."
~~ Sir Isaac Newton [1643-1727]

"Every solution of a problem is a new problem."
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1831]

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply."
~~ Stephen Covey [1932-2012]

“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”
~~ Henry Ford [1863-1947]

“They are able because they think they are able.”
~~ ancient Roman poet Virgil [70 BCE-19 BCE]

"Time ripens all things; no man is born wise."
~~ Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes [1547-1616]

"Motion pictures, first of all, should be impressionistic."
~~ Maurice Tourneur [1876-1961]

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
~~ poet T.S. Eliot [1888-1965] , in the 1942 poem "Little Gidding"

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."
~~ Elmer Davis [1890-1958]

"For those that fought for it, freedom has a flavor [that] the protected shall never know."
~~ USMC LCpl. Edwin L. 'Tim' Craft

"Freedom is not free."
~~ USAF Col. Walter Hitchcock

"Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves."
~~ writer Carol Lynn Pearson

“Life is so often not a matter of yards, but of inches.”
~~ G.E. Nordell

"To live alone one must be an animal or a god, says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both – a philosopher."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics ... are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
~~ Charlie Chaplin [1889-1977]

"When I was 14, I was the oldest [that] I ever was. I've been getting younger ever since."
~~ Shirley Temple {Black}

"To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art."
~~ François de La Rochefoucauld [1613-80]

"The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine."
~~ ancient Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos [c. 460 - c. 370 BCE]

"Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship.”
~~ Elsa Schiaparelli [1890-1973]

"Man ... lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."
~~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

"All creative people want to do the unexpected."
~~ actress & inventor Hedy Lamarr [1913-2000]

"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live."
~~ Gustave Flaubert [1821-80]

"There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."
~~ Nelson Mandela [1918-2013]

"Higher has always been the trajectory of intelligent evolution."
~~ Dr. Timothy Leary [1920-96]

"Religion is a primitive form of philosophy."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Son, give 'em a good show, and always travel first class."
~~ actor Walter Huston [1883-1950]

"There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it."
~~ critic Diana Trilling [1905-96]

"Your net worth to the world is determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]

"Live in each season, as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]

"Blanket cynicism gives the illusion of understanding."
~~ Marcia Angell, MD

"A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain."
~~ poet Robert Frost [1874-1963]

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are."
~~ W. Somerset Maugham [1874-1965]

"Absolute passion cannot be understood by a third party."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]

"Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]

"Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge."
~~ rock musician Don Henley

"No matter how smart you think you are, you are actually way less smart than that."
~~ author David Foster Wallace [1962-2008]

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]

"We are always the same age inside."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]

"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."
~~ American capitalist Warren Buffett

"Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat."
~~ Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-80]

"The face of a child can say it all. Especially the mouth part of the face."
~~ humorist Jack Handey

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in."
~~ old Greek proverb

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