638) Bacteria live anywhere damp. In water. In mud. In the air, as spores and on dust specks. In melting snow, in boiling volcanic springs. In the soil, in fantastic numbers. All over this planet's ecosystem, any liquid with organic matter, or any solid foodstuff with any trace of damp in it, anything not salted, mummified, pickled, poisoned, scorching hot or frozen solid, will swarm with bacteria if exposed to air. Unprotected food always spoils if it's left in the open. That's such a truism of our lives that it may seem like a law of physics, like gravity or entropy, but it's no such thing, it's the relentless entrepreneurism of invisible organisms, who don't have our best interests at heart.

Bruce Sterling
"Science: Bitter Resistance" in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (2/95)

[Note: cf. Gould #309 and
Chadwick #391]

639) At the close of the century, [bacterial] antibiotic resistance is one of the gravest threats that confronts the human race. It ranks in scope with overpopulation, nuclear disaster, destruction of the ozone, global warming, species extinction and massive habitat destruction. Although it gains very little attention in comparison to those other horrors, there is nothing theoretical or speculative about antibiotic resistance. [...] We have spent billions to kill bacteria but mere millions to truly comprehend them. In our arrogance, we have gravely underestimated our enemy's power and resourcefulness. Antibiotic resistance is a very real threat which is well documented and increasing at a considerable rate. In its scope and its depth and the potential pain and horror of its implications, it may be the greatest single menace that we human beings confront - besides, of course, the steady increase in our own numbers. And if we don't somehow resolve our grave problems with bacteria, then bacteria may well resolve that population problem for us.

Bruce Sterling
"Science: Bitter Resistance" in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (2/95)

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 697 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

STATE       ELECTIONS    WINS        MISSES              PERCENTAGE

MISSOURI  26 (1904-2004)  25  1956                          96.2
          24 (1912-2004)  23  1956                          95.8   cf. NV
          20 (1928-2004)  19  1956                          95.0   cf. TN
          29 (1892-2004)  26  1896,1900,1956                89.7   cf. OH

NEVADA    24 (1912-2004)  23  1976                          95.8
          20 (1928-2004)  19  1976                          95.0   cf. TN
          26 (1904-2004)  24  1908,1976                     92.3   cf. MO
          29 (1892-2004)  24  1892,1896,1900,1908,1976      82.8   cf. OH

TENNESSEE 20 (1928-2004)  19  1960                          95.0  
          24 (1912-2004)  22  1924,1960                     91.6   cf. NV 
          26 (1904-2004)  22  1904,1908,1924,1960           84.6   cf. MO
          29 (1892-2004)  24  1896,1900,1904,1908,1924,1960 82.8   cf. OH

OHIO      14 (1952-2004)  13  1960                          92.9 
          26 (1904-2004)  24  1944,1960                     92.3   cf. MO 
          24 (1912-2004)  22  1944,1960                     91.7   cf. NV
          20 (1928-2004)  18  1944,1960                     90.0   cf. TN
          29 (1892-2004)  26  1892,1944,1960                89.7

DELAWARE  29 (1892-2004)  25  1916,1948,2000,2004           86.2   cf. OH
          14 (1952-2004)  12  2000,2004                     85.7   cf. OH
          20 (1928-2004)  17  1948,2000,2004                85.0   cf. TN
          26 (1904-2004)  22  1916,1948,2000,2004           84.6   cf. MO
          24 (1912-2004)  20  1916,1948,2000,2004           83.3   cf. NV

1. Missouri - 1 miss (1956) from 1904 on, perfect since 1960


2. Nevada - 1 miss (1976) from 1912 on, perfect since 1980


3. Tennessee - 1 miss (1960) from 1928 on, perfect since 1964


4. Ohio - 2 misses (1944, 1960) from 1896 on, perfect since 1964


5. Delaware - 2 misses (2000, 2004) from 1952 on, perfect from 1952 to 1996

Goldman CEO's 2006 compensation totaled $54.3 mln

NEW YORK, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein received more than $54.3 million in cash, stock and options last year after leading Wall Street's most profitable investment bank for just six months.

Blankfein, 52, named CEO in June after Henry "Hank" Paulson quit to become U.S. treasury secretary, earned $600,000 in salary, a cash bonus of $27.2 million, and $261,906 for such perks as a car, driver and financial counseling services, according to a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

He also received $15.7 million in restricted stock, options to purchase 209,228 shares with a present value of $10.5 million, and $82,876 in "other" compensation, including company contributions to his pension plan, term life insurance and medical plans.

Excluding option grants, his cash and stock pay rose 42 percent from 2005.

[...]

Among other Goldman executives listed in the proxy statement, Co-Presidents Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried each received cash bonuses of $26.7 million, while Chief Financial Officer David Viniar was awarded a $20.2 million bonus.

625) Morally [...] knowing vaguely disreputable things about someone which you refuse to print seems indisputably superior to printing vaguely disreputable things about someone just because you happen to know them.

Adam Gopnik
"Read All About It"
New Yorker (12/12/94)

626) Ronald Reagan's political genius lay [in being] a seemingly unaggressive figure with a paralyzingly aggressive story to tell. [...] The media had pounced on Johnson and Nixon as liars, because those men knew perfectly well that what they were saying were lies. In Reagan's case, the discrepancy between reality and his words was so vast that it was pointless to argue. You couldn't expose a pattern of deception because almost everything was deception, which at some level Reagan genuinely believed to be true.

Adam Gopnik
"Read All About It"
New Yorker (12/12/94)

627) Left-wing thought in America tends to be extremely abstract [...] It offers big, systematic explanations of small things. The left has become so deeply committed to the notion that consciousness produces reality - that cultural politics are the only real politics - that many of its members have become content with victories in the field of consciousness and bored with actual political work.

On the other hand, right-wing thought in America, even serious right-wing thought, tends to be extremely personal. The right, to its credit, still believes in the consequences of individual actions, and this makes it much better at emphasizing the villainies of individuals. The right is much better at character assassination, because the right still believes in character [...]

These different habits of mind may account for the apparent oddity that, while the American media tend, in their big fog of feeling, to go left, in the details of their personal assaults they still tilt to the right. Rush Limbaugh and Noam Chomsky are both correct: most people in the American media share the cultural prejudices of the left, but they still enforce the political vendettas of the right.

Adam Gopnik
"Read All About It"
New Yorker (12/12/94)

628) The left's ambitions are political and its triumphs are cultural, while the right's ambitions are cultural and its triumphs political. This is more or less O.K. with most people on the left, since they believe that cultural victories are the same thing as political ones, but it drives the right crazy, and accounts for one of the most curious aspects of the media in the last decade - the extraordinarily embittered and vicious turn that the right-wing press has taken at a time when it is winning every political victory. [...] The reasons for this [...] aren't hard to find. Most American conservatives [...] are social or cultural conservatives - frightened or alarmed by the disruption of the continuities and verities of American life in the past twenty years. From the opposing camp, of course, the recent story of the American right looks like one of mostly unchecked triumph, but it does not look that way to the right. The right has dominated American political discussion [...] and so far nothing has changed. The flood of social transformation has, if anything, gathered force.

Adam Gopnik
"Read All About It"
New Yorker (12/12/94)

629) To Liebling's three basic personages of the press - the reporter, who says what he saw; the interpretive reporter, who says what he thinks is the meaning of what he saw; and the expert, who says what he thinks is the meaning of what he didn't see - is added the meta-columnist, who says what he thinks that other people will think is the meaning of what they haven't seen, either.

Adam Gopnik
"Read All About It"
New Yorker (12/12/94)

630) Liberalism [...] [believes] that analyzing something to death is the same thing as killing it off. To show that a Rush Limbaugh rant, for example, is stylized, and has a more complicated internal structure than you might expect, is somehow assumed to make it less dangerous.

Adam Gopnik
"Read All About It"
New Yorker (12/12/94)

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 700 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Lee sent a note through the lines offering to surrender. Grant's headache and Meade's illness vanished. The bleeding and dying were over; they had won. [...]

The terms were generous: officers and men could go home "not to be disturbed by U.S. authority as long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside." This clause had great significance. Serving as a model for the subsequent surrender of other Confederate armies, it guaranteed southern soldiers immunity from prosecution for treason. Lee asked another favor. In the Confederate army, he explained, enlisted men in the calvary and artillery owned their horses, could they keep them? Yes, said Grant; privates as well as officers who claimed to own horsers could take them home "to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter." "This will have the best possible effect upon the men," said Lee, and "will do much toward conciliating our people." After signing the papers, Grant introduced Lee to his staff. As he shook hands with Grant's military secretary Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian, Lee stared a moment at Parker's dark features and said, "I am glad to see one real American here." Parker responded, "We are all Americans."

The surrender completed, the two generals saluted somberly and parted. "This will live in history," said one of Grant's aides. But the Union commander seemed distracted. Having given birth to a reunited nation, he experience a post-partum melancholy. "I felt ... sad and despressed," Grant wrote, "at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which people ever fought." As news of the surrender spread through the Union camps, batteries began firing joyful salutes until Grant ordered them stopped. "The War is over," he said; "the rebels are our countrymen again, and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations." To help bring those former rebels back into the Union, Grant sent three days' rations for 25,000 men across the lines. This perhaps did something to ease the psychological as well as physical pain of Lee's soldiers.

So did an important symbolic gesture at a formal ceremony three days later when Confederate troops marches up to stack their arms and surrender their flags. [...] As [Confederate General John B.] Gordon approached [...] with "his chin drooped to his breast, downhearted and dejected in appearance," [Union officer Joshua L.] Chamberlain gave a brief order, and a bugle call rang out. Instantly, the Union soldiers shifted from order arms to carry arms, the salute of honor. Hearing the sound General Gordon looked up in surprise, and with sudden realization turned smartly to Chamberlian, dipped his sword in salute, and ordered his own men to carry arms. These enemies in many a bloody battle ended the war not with shame on one side and exultation on the other but with a soldier's "mutual salutation and farewell."

James M. McPherson
Battle Cry of Freedom (1988)

If these men, who saw their country almost destroyed and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men can behave such, can we do any less when our time comes?

We're probably quite a ways away from that kind of victory, and, when it comes, there won't be such a clear point of demarcation as a formal surrender. Still, I see signs of progress.

I know that people are upset about the fact that Congress hasn't done something more substantial about Iraq other than to vote on the non-binding resolutions, but I'm really not concerned, not yet. The resolutions are simply a first step, a shot fired across the bow, an action necessary in order to legitimize the next steps that need to be taken. If those steps aren't taken, then I'll join in the general angst about the Democratic leadership of Congress, but at least for the moment, it seems to me that everything is going pretty much as one would plan it to.

I understand about the pessimism some folks feel. I keep hoping that The People will wake up, and really see what's going on, how they've been taken and lied to, and cheated and stolen from (in more ways than one), but I've been disappointed so many times now that it's sometimes hard to believe it could happen. I do think we see in the disintegrating support for the Iraq war not just the usual American impatience with anything that takes more than a couple of years to achieve, but a realization that it really won't work no matter how many years we put into it, not only because our leaders don't really understand or appreciate the kind of war we're involved in, but also because our goals are not achievable in the circumstances, even taking the very best of those goals as being the most important to our leadership (which I doubt is actually the case). I see in the disapproval of the war, and in the results of the 2006 election, what I hope is a glint of the possibility of a general rethinking about what we're about, a return to the classic American values that Bush and Cheney and their backers (like Richard Mellon Scaife) are utterly opposed to.

It's certainly possible that I'm deceiving myself. It's much more probable that the election of 2006 was simply an indication that Americans don't like a loser, and that Bush and Cheney have, by the decisions of their Administration, shown themselves to be a big-time losers indeed. Still, that general perception will probably be enough to allow us to reclaim the White House and begin the long, long task of rebuilding this country.

Update: At least some people understand the true situation in Iraq. Of course, others are generally clueless.

[Thanks to Cathy]

616) [When] high definition television becomes the norm [...] [a]ll of the politicians currently in power will be voted out of office and we will have a new power structure. Because high-definition television has a flat gamma curve and higher resolution and people who look good on today's television will look bad on HDTV and voters will respond accordingly. Their oversized pores will be visible, the red veins in their noses from drinking too much, the artificiality of their TV-friendly hairdos will make them all look, on HDTV, like country-and-western singers. A new generation of politicians will tale over and they will all look like movie stars, because HDTV will be a great deal like film, and movie stars know how to look good on film.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character "Cy Ogle",
a political media consultant

617) A human being cannot withstand the scrutiny given to a presidential candidate, any more than a human being could survive the medieval trial by fire, in which he was forced to walk barefoot across hot coals. [...] Anyone can walk barefoot across hot coals. But you have to do it right. There's a trick to it. If you know the trick, you can survive. Now, back in medieval times, some people got lucky and happened to stumble across this trick, and they made it. The rest failed. It was therefore essentially a random process, hence irrational. But if they had fire-walking seminars in the Dark Ages, anyone could have done it.

The same thing used to apply to the modern trial by ordeal. Abe Lincoln would never have been elected to anything, because random genetic chance gave him a user-unfriendly face. But as a rational person I can learn all of the little tricks and teach them to my friends, eliminating the random, hence irrational elements from the modern trail by ordeal. I have the knowledge to guide a presidential candidate through his trial in this, the Age of Scrutiny.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character "Cy Ogle",
a political media consultant

618) All that Democrat/Republican stuff is bullshit [...] And as far as liberal versus conservative, well, people are very promiscuous in the way they use those words. They don't really mean anything. Within those two camps there are a lot of wide divisions. And between those two camps, there is a lot more overlap than you think. None of that bullshit really matters. The only thing that matters is values.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character
"Caleb Roosevelt Marshall",
a U.S. Senator

619) This that I am saying to you is not abuse. It's the truth. It's just that sometimes the truth is so harsh that when people hear it spoken, it sounds like abuse. And one of the problems we got in this country [...] is that everyone is so easy to offend nowadays that no one is willing to say things that are true.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character "Eleanor Richmond",
a banker turned bag lady turned U.S. Senator's aide

620) Americans may be undereducated, lazy, and disorganized, but they do one thing better than any people on the face of the earth, and this is watch television. The average eight-year-old American has absorbed more about media technology than a goddamn film student in most other countries. You can tell lies to them and they'll never know. But if you try to lie to them with the camera, they'll crucify you.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character "Myron Morris",
a political filmmaker

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 701 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.