Saturday, January 06, 2007
 

(3089/898) Life among the cosmically insignificant

415) Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore!
Robert Penn Warren
Star Papers: Subtleties of Book Buyers (1855) [B16]
Abstract Black and White by Connor Fitzgerald
416) OHNOSECOND - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake, such as accidentally deleting your e-mail address book in a non-recoverable way.
Elizabeth P. Crowe
"The Electronic Traveler"
quoted by Gareth Branwyn in
"Jargon Watch"
Wired (6/94)

417) We never should have sought either solace or moral instruction in Nature, who was not made for us, or even with us in mind, and who existed by her own rules for billions of years before we arrived. Better to learn a stern truth about marvelous multifariousness (and cosmic indifference to us) than to persist in a myth of warm cuddliness or intrinsic harmony that might channel proper attention from our bodies and minds (true humanism) as the source of ethics and value. [...] Darwin's revolution remains incomplete [...] until we face the cosmic insignificance that our own evolution truly implies - thus liberating us to grasp the deeply human meaning of our lives and most curious brainpower.
Stephen Jay Gould
"The Power of This View of Life"
Natural History magazine (6/94)

418) We learn to love by falling in love, as one learns to dance by dancing.
Mindy Aloff
"The Education of Lincoln Kirstein"
New York Times Book Review (7/17/94)
[review of Mosaic: Memoirs by Lincoln Kirstein]

419) [Jonathan] Grudin's Law: When those who benefit are not those who do the work, then the technology is likely to fail or, at least, be subverted.
Donald A. Norman
Things That Make Us Smart (1993)
referring perhaps to Jonathan Grudin
"Social Evaluation of the User Interface:
Who Does the Work and Who Gets the Benefit" (1987)

420) Only the most advanced animals are capable of true, cooperative social behavior. Sure, insects are social animals, working together to enhance the survival of the group. But this is unplanned, unintentional. Our cooperation is intentional and planned. We even devise governmental and legal structures to ensure its continuance. The result is that most of us live in complex, cooperative societies, where the combined efforts of the group far exceed the capabilities of any individual. Yes, there are rivalries and feuds among individuals and, at times, deadly wars between competing societies, but these do not change the fact that our social cooperative efforts are an essential part of human civilization. This is how we weather the elements, get through famine and flood. This is how we develop knowledge and education, formal methods of schooling that allow each generation to benefit from the lessons of the previous generations. We succeed so well at survival that a considerable fraction of our time goes towards the pursuit of enjoyment in the arts, literature, sports, and entertainment. No other animal has such luxury or ability.
Donald A. Norman
Things That Make Us Smart (1993)


Sources

[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993)



Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 745 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 1/06/2007 01:50:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Friday, January 05, 2007
 

The tale of the tangled tongue

You know when you tell a lie, a big lie, one that has to be maintained for a long period of time, things can sometimes get confusing and the truth just slips out without any intention on your part? Well, that's what seemed to have happened to the Republican's incoming House Minority Leader John Boehner today, commenting on the transfer of power to Nancy Pelosi. Boehner starts out okay according to this account, giving the big lie:
"In 1994 when we took control of the House, 12 years ago, it wasn't that — we wanted to treat Democrats the way we had asked to be treated. And, frankly, that's what we did.[...]

Now this, of course, is entirely untrue, in fact the complete reversal of the truth. While there may well have been some dissing of the GOP during the Democratic control of the House, what the Republican did when they took over is, basically, to act as if the Democrats didn't exist, and if they existed, they certainly didn't matter in any way. They squashed the Democrats underfoot.

So having started out to promulgate the big lie, Boehner continues, but gets a bit muddled, and the truth just slips out, accidentally:

[...] What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would like to have been treated,"

Exactly, the Republicans want to be treated not as they actually treated the Democrats in reality, but as the Democrats would like to have been treated, but weren't.

Maintaining those big lies over the course of time takes a lot of energy and concentration, and I get the feeling the Republicans are feeling just a little enervated just now. We should keep our eyes and ears peeled for more slips like this.

[via TPM]

Ed Fitzgerald | 1/05/2007 10:00:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

Friday Photography: Pagoda


click to enlarge

Daryl Samuel

Location: Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

Previous: Hands With Softball / On Alcatraz / Cameras / Lighthouse / Photographer At Work / Patio Chairs / Greek Church / Santa Fe Mailboxes / Rocking Horse / Sunset Sandpiper / Hands / Bird of Paradise / Feeding the Pelican / Sunset Silhouette / Staircase / Mallards / Masts / Greek Column / Paddlewheel / Olive Trees / Madison Square Park in the Snow

Ed Fitzgerald | 1/05/2007 02:12:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Getting it straight

412) Although there is a great deal to be learned from the plague of AIDS, the lessons it teaches lie in the realms of science and society, and certainly not within the purview of religious elucidation. We are dealing not with a punishment but with a crime - one of those random crimes that nature now and then perpetrates on its own creatures. And nature, as Anatole France reminds us, is indifferent; it makes no distinction between good and evil.

[...] How can one begin to make sense of this affliction? No wisdom has been discovered, no lesson revealed. AIDS as a metaphor, AIDS as an allegory, AIDS as symbolism, AIDS as jeremiad, AIDS as a test of mankind's humanity, AIDS as an epitome of human suffering - it is these kinds of lucubrations that consume the intellectual energy of moralists and litterateurs nowadays, as though something good must at any cost be salvaged from this foul scourge. But even history fails us; analogies with past plagues are always found wanting.
Sherwin B. Nuland
How We Die (1993)

413) Dogma, certainly without evidence, is the great menace, the great nemesis, of art, of religion, of politics, of economics, of philosophy, of how to write articles for magazines, of just about everything that we do and think. Dogma is a great ossifier of mind and of imagination, of all creativity. It is an integral part of human nature, being our laziness's answer to the strain that goes with thinking. The only qualification in science's favor - not that it doesn't have dogmas, because certainly it does, loads of them - is that its dogmas tend to collapse in a heap a bit more readily than those you find in art, religion, politics, and the rest. If you have a scientific dogma and it's discovered that according to it 1+1 ≠ 2, this often means you're in trouble. (Not always, as quantum theory shows us.) Whereas in politics you can hold on to your dogmas on that basis for decades, in religion for centuries. In psychoanalysis, 1+1 ≠ 2 is a genuine advantage.
Ralph Estling
"The Scalp-Tinglin', Mind-Blowin', Eye-Poppin',
Heart-Wrenchin', Stomach-Churnin', Foot-Stumpin',
Great Big Doodley Science Show!!"
Skeptical Inquirer (Summer 1994)

414) The majority of grade-school textbooks in whatever discipline use the reductionist style [...] When I read these texts, no matter how hard I try to concentrate, the idea generally escapes me. Why? Because the style is overly simplistic. Attempting to make sure that no single statement is unclear, the textbook utilizes sentences that are simple in structure, that is, they contain only one main cause. Of necessity, sentence after sentence begins with the same subject. Ideas, in effect, are placed next to each other without their relationships being signaled by normal sentence connectives. What is absurd about such writing is that the attempt to make writing simple actually makes it much harder to comprehend. Grade school texts are, for the most part, unreadable [...] The more we condescend to students and stoop below their levels to make sure they don't miss anything, the more we bore them and destroy their motivation to learn. It is time we stopped writing textbooks as if every student were a moron who could not take in more than one piece of information per sentence. Why? Because the method does not work. The condescension to students' abilities and the lowering of expectations leads to high scored and confirms "success," but few graduates are competent, as employers readily know.
Frank Reuter
"The Synthetic Mind Clashes with the Reductionist Text"
Skeptical Inquirer (Summer 1994)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 746 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 1/05/2007 01:40:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Thursday, January 04, 2007
 

(3089/898) The meaning of the juice

409) O.J. [Simpson] was so graceful, so ingratiating that it was easy to forget how he got here, a ghetto gang leader, a high school, junior college, major college Alpha male who had learned to knock down anything in his way. He was a prince of jock entitlement [...] Even the rougher-edged sports stars in the American Powerboy rankings [...] are given too many social waivers. But a stylish pleaser like O.J. Simpson has to be accused of murder to get critical attention.
Robert Lipsyte
"Behind the Easy Smile, O.J. Was Hard to Read"
New York Times (6/19/94)

410) I just hope [the potential writer of an "instant book" on the O.J. Simpson case] understands that unlike [Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers], Simpson is a true American hero, having become (A) a great football player, (B) a sportscaster, (C) an actor in several bad movies, and (D) the spokesperson for a car-rental agency. Not to mention that he had a gorgeous blond wife.
Steve Lopez
"In a frenzy to feast on O.J."
Philadelphia Inquirer (6/19/94)

411) The most striking feature of [the public and media obsession with the O.J. Simpson story] has been the endless search for portent and meaning [...] In the past, you could luxuriate in a horror without insisting that the horror, or your luxuriating, was an index to the state of American life and belief. [...] We, as Americans, no longer believe in the integrity of events; that is, we are no longer able to accept events at their own value - horrifying or funny or just sordid - but we must see them as episodes in a drama, by some unknown author. [...] Nobody could have foreseen that life in the global village was actually going to be like life in a village, and we would turn to the glinty-eyed shamans to explain all that spooky stuff we just saw in the fire. What used to be called, pre-Geraldo, the "primitive mind" was mired in the belief that memorable events are always significant: the comet looms in the sky, and kingdoms must fall; the river floods, and the gods are angry. [...] To look for meaning where only sensation resides is to put an end to rationality.
unknown
"Comment: Don't Mean Diddly"
The New Yorker (7/11/94)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 747 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 1/04/2007 09:29:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Wednesday, January 03, 2007
 

Tolkien's birthday


J.R.R. Tolkien
January 3, 1892 - September 2, 1973

I don't believe that Tolkien, who was politically conservative and a devout Catholic, would have shared my political or personal philosophies, but nevertheless over the many years I have been reading him (over 35 years now since I first read The Lord of the Rings) I have derived a great deal of pleasure, and comfort, from his writing -- and I believe I share that with many others on my side of the cultural divide.

After years of living in a country that is on the brink of ruin thanks to right-wing misrule, I look forward to the day that this passage, from The Return of the King, will be appropriate for us:

'A great Shadow has departed,' said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known.
It's hard to feel that kind of unbridled joy when all around you the world is going to hell in a handbasket, when you can see every day the effects of the mistakes, incompetence, corruption and malfeasance of our rulers -- it's put a real damper on life, in my experience. Nevertheless, throughout this continuing crisis, Tolkien has been there as a source of both inspiration and consolation.

Happy birthday, and thank you, Professor Tolkien. Aiya meldomelin nolmo!

Ed Fitzgerald | 1/03/2007 04:40:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE







by

Ed Fitzgerald

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am...
site feed
2008 rules of thumb
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election prediction
HOUSE
Democrats 230 (+27) - Republicans 205

Actual:
Democrats 233 (+30) - Republicans 201 - TBD 1 [FL-13]

SENATE
Democrats 50 (+5) - Republicans 50

Actual:
Democrats 51 (+6) - Republicans 49

ELECTION PROJECTIONS SURVEY
netroots candidates
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Never a bridesmaid...

...and never a bride, either!!

what I've been reading
Martin van Creveld - The Transformation of War

Jay Feldman - When the Mississippi Ran Backwards

Martin van Creveld - The Rise and Decline of the State

Alfred W. Crosby - America's Forgotten Pandemic (1989)
bush & company are...
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
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ideologues
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isolated
kleptocratic
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lacking in public spirit
liars
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misleading
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not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
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perverse
philistine
plutocratic
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propagandists
rapacious
relentless
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rigid
scandalous
schemers
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venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
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without integrity
wrong-headed

Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
Island in the Sky (1952)

Robot Chicken

The Family Guy

House M.D. (2004-7)
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz


"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)


Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:




Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
Smash Mouth - Summer Girl

Poulenc - Piano Music

Pop Ambient 2007
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
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Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.

Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.

I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.


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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
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If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.

If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.

(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)

Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.

original content
© 2003-2008
Ed Fitzgerald

=o=

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but credit all you take.



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