Friday, September 21, 2007
 

(3089/898) A fictionalizing philosopher

Philip K. Dick
1335) I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus of writing is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an investigation & presentation, analysis & response & personal history. My audience will always be limited to those people.
Philip K. Dick
"Exegesis" (written 1981)
In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis (1991)
Lawrence Sutin, ed.
quoted by Lawrence Sutin in
Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (1989)
posted by CandaeK [PKD] (9/26/1995)

Sources

[PKD] - Internet Philip K. Dick mailing list



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/21/2007 09:58:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Hu-mah

1326) It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion.
William Ralph Inge
Outspoken Essays (1919)
posted by Jim Speirs [ISQ] (9/22/1995)

1327) It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his place.
H.L. Mencken
Prejudices (1919) [WHO]

1328) Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.
John F. Kennedy
quoted by Christina Koning in
The Wicked Wit of John F. Kennedy (2003)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/22/1995)

1329) A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.
Roy Blount, Jr.
"Reading and Nothingness, Of Proust
in the Summer Sun"
New York Times (6/2/1985) [WQ]
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/25/1995)

1330) Some fellows pay a compliment like they expected a receipt.
Frank McKinney ("Kin") Hubbard (attributed)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/20/1995)

1331) A precedent embalms a principle.
Benjamin Disraeli
speech on the Expenditures of the Country
(2/22/1848) [WQ]
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/20/1995)

1332)
You cross a lawyer with a godfather, baby,
[He'll] make you an offer that you can't understand.
Don Henley, Stan Lynch and John Corey
"Gimme What You Got" (song, 1988) from
Don Henley: The End of the Innocence (cd, 1989)
[Note: Apparently, this joke was in circulation for some time before this song came out. See also #2195 Rogers.]
1333)
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly ...
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie.
Don Henley and B.R. Hornsby
"The End of the Innocence" (song, 1987) from
Don Henley: The End of the Innocence (cd, 1989)

1334) Publicists say the more insecure a celebrity is, the larger the entourage. Paul Newman, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino do not have entourages. Known for their large entourages: Demi Moore, Calvin Klein, Eddie Murphy, Mike Tyson and Madonna.
Monique P. Yazigi
"The Art of the Entourage"
Sunday New York Times City Section (9/24/1995)

Sources

[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[ISQ] - Internet Serial-Quotations mailing list
[WQ] - Wikiquote
[WHO] - Who Said What (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 486 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/21/2007 09:53:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Numbers

1316) We are a nation of 50,000,000 VCRs flashing "12:00", "12:00".
Jeff Greenfield
on C-SPAN (9/15/1995)

1317) The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.
Pythagoras
cited by Diogenes Laertius in
"Life of Pythagoras" in
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
(c. 200)
posted by Dan Hayner [IQM] (9/20/1995)

1318) [E]verything a human being wants can be divided into four components--love, adventure, power and fame.
Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (attributed)
posted by Dan Hayner [IQM] (9/20/1995)

1319) [Three classes:] Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.
Leonardo da Vinci (attributed)
posted by Dan Hayner [IQM] (9/20/1995)

1320) [A]bout half the people alive today have never made a telephone call.
George I. Zysman
"Wireless Telephony for Developing Countries"
Scientific American (9/1995)

1321) [M]ore than half the world's population lives more than two hours' travel from the nearest telephone.
Russell Daggatt
"Satellites for a Developing World"
Scientific American (9/1995)

1322) What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
Herbert A. Simon
quoted by Hal. R. Varian in
"The Information Economy" in
Scientific American (9/1995)

1323) If you provide Internet access to an inefficient business, you have merely given it the ability to be inefficient instantaneously, in front of 30 million potential clients.
Clay Shirky
"Wired Money"
Scientific American (9/1995)

1324) John Donne wrote, "No man is an island, entire of itself." True enough, and true of countries, too, although Americans find the concept annoying. In physical terms, Americans view the U.S., like some classical physics experiment, as immune to outside influence. But the truth is that the economy is an open system and always have been.
Donald N. McCloskey
"The Analytic Economist: The Gulliver Effect"
Scientific American (9/1995)
1325) Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
Fred Hoyle
The Observer (9/9/1979)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/14/1995)

Sources

[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[ISQ] - Internet Serial-Quotations mailing list



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/21/2007 01:29:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Thursday, September 20, 2007
 

(3089/898) Conspiracy

1314) [T]here's something about a facile charge of conspiracy. It eats away at your powers of reason and makes you delusional and at least slightly psychotic. It's a stain, and you can't get it off. It makes you incapable of distinguishing reality from unreality. It throws your sense of proportion all out of whack, and you stop trusting your common sense. What can you trust? You never know. Is what I see really what I see, or is it an illusion being foisted upon me by the conspirators? It burrows into your brain, like termites, and turns it into sawdust.

Anyone who has ever handled a conspiracy case---on either side--- knows what I'm talking about. You never know whom you can trust. Every pathway could be littered with bungee traps. And it makes you crazy. Crazy. (Of which, some would say, I am living proof, cause I've handled a lot of conspiracy cases.)

[Johnny Cochran] and the ["Dream Team"] know this dynamic, too. They know that, by far, the best way to confuse and obfuscate and scatter the truth to the four winds, is to waft the innuendo of conspiracy: suddenly the whole cosmos starts getting viewed through a different lens. What was plainly trivial and irrelevant suddenly becomes relevant, and the smallest ion of information starts taking on a colossal significance: Staples? The staple holes are missing?????? A 2 week trial turns into a 2 year trial (the better to obscure the obvious), and everyone starts scattering off on wild goose chases (the better to fragment the jury). Anyone who thinks this dynamic isn't part of the master plan is being very, very naive.

What's the moral? When anyone tries to "plant" the seed of conspiracy into your brain, without making any effort at all to prove it, he's messing with yer head.
Tom Fellows
"Conspiracy Lore"
posted on the CourtTV O.J. Simpson
discussion board (7/27/1995)

1315) [Philosopher Harald Ofstadt] draws up a number of "laws" for nazism, one of which was that the greater the scale of the decision, the farther the distance must be between the person giving the order and the actual impact of its consequences. Hence, the person signing the order that sends millions of people to their deaths should have no further direct involvement in the process, and should never once lay eyes on one of their victims or their suffering, the idea being that this allows "objective" decisions to be made but in fact allowed the Nazi leaders to live in a fantasy world of idealism and absolutism. This is pretty much how nazism worked, and seems to me to be the key to much of the 20th century political scene. Not surprisingly, [Philip K.] Dick (who was of course interested in the construction & perception of reality) picked up on this in [The Man in the High Castle], where the leaders of the Reich pursue their own mad, fantastic plans that have no connection to the everyday world of the main characters, apart from causing their suffering.
John Morgan
posted on [PKD] (9/15/1995)
citing the work of Harald Ofstadt in
Our Contempt for Weakness:
Nazi Norms and Values
(1989)

Sources

[PKD] - Internet Philip K. Dick mailing list



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/20/2007 09:54:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Two cities: NYC

1306) [New York] is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe.
Jean Baudrillard
"New York" in
America (1986, tr. 1988) [CQ]

1307) The City of New York is currently undergoing a grave experiment that affects the comfort and, on occasion, the safety of even the most casual visitor. The experiment consists in seeing whether a city of that size can be operated on a far smaller amount of money than would make its life tolerable, and a still smaller amount than would make its life agreeable. The richer New Yorkers [...] are cooperating with an enthusiasm that the affluent rarely show for social experiment, and at great personal expense. They are paying for private security guards in unprecedented numbers and costly private schooling for their children ... and they are accepting numerous other costs and inconveniences in order to show that private affluence is consistent with public squalor.
John Kenneth Galbraith
"The United States"
New York (11/15/1971)
reprinted in A View From The Stands (1986) [CQ]

1308) New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, but I recognise that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines.
Federico Garcia Lorca
interview (1931)
quoted in The Poet in New York (1940) [CQ]

1309) We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.
Edward Hoagland
"City Rat"
Audience (3/1972)
reprinted in Heart's Desire (1988) [CQ]
Manhattan at Twilight
1310) [New York] is a beautiful catastrophe.
Le Corbusier
New York Herald Tribune (8/6/1961) [CQ]

1311) New York has trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness, if you have no inner stabilizer [...] In New York I have always felt lonely, the loneliness of the caged animal, which rings on crime, sex, alcohol and other madness.
Henry Miller
The Colossus of Maroussi (1941) [CQ]

1312) [New York] appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban conspiracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground) , to hang him from his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The Living City (1958) [CQ]

1313) I like it here in New York. I like the idea of having to keep eyes in the back of your head.
John Cale
London Times (9/27/1989) [CQ]
[Note: cf. Two cities: NYC (slight return)]
Sources

[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (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 487 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/20/2007 09:37:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Two cities: LA

1298) It's like a jumble of huts in a jungle somewhere. I don't understand how you can live there. It's really, completely dead. Walk along the street, there's nothing moving. I've lived in small Spanish fishing villages which were sunny all day long every day of the week, but there weren't as boring as Los Angeles.
Truman Capote
Conversations With Truman Capote (1985)
Lawrence Grobel, ed. [CQ]

1299) The freeway experience [...] is the only secular communion Los Angeles has [...] Actual participation requires total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over.
Joan Didion
"The Bureaucrats" (1976)
The White Album (1979) [CQ]

1300) Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like - Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything - but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there.
Clive James
"Postcard from Los Angeles 1" in
The Observer (6/16/1979)
reprinted in Flying Visits (1984) [CQ]

1301) Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.
Henry Miller
"Soiree in Hollywood" from
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945) [CQ]
Los Angeles
1302) It is hereby earnestly proposed that the USA would be much better off if that big, sprawling, incoherent, shapeless, slobbering civic idiot in the family of American communities, the City of Los Angeles, could be declared incompetent and placed in charge of a guardian like any individual mental defective.
Westbrook Pegler
New York World Telegram (11/22/1938) [CQ]

1303) Of all the world's storied thoroughfares, it must be confessed that none produces quite the effect of Hollywood Boulevard. I have been downcast in Piccadilly, chopfallen on the Champs Elysee, and doloroso on the Via Veneto, but the avenues themselves were blameless. Hollywood Boulevard, on the contrary, creates an instant and malign impression in the breast of the beholder. Viewed in full sunlight, its tawdriness is unspeakable; in the torrential downpour of the rainy season, as we first saw it, it inspired an anguish similar to that produced by the engravings of Piranesi.
S.J. Perelman
"The Marx Brothers" in
The Last Laugh (1981) [CQ]

1304) Writers who choose as a subject Los Angeles and its interminable suburbs do so at their peril. The most scrupulous observation yields nothing but cliche: freeways, blondes, the blistering smog, blah, blah, blah. This is because they have mistaken Los Angeles for a city. [...] L.A. is more akin to a theme park - Urban Sprawl Land - and its spirit of place is the isolating spirit of the desert, where, despite the wizardry of modern irrigation, nothing can grow and few things change.
Karen Karbo
"Of Mice and Men"
New York Times Book Review (9/10/1995)

1305) [Los Angeles] is in love with its limitless horizontality, as New York may be in love with its verticality.
Jean Baudrillard
"Astral America" in
America (1986, tr. 1988) [CQ]

Sources

[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (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 487 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/20/2007 07:51:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Making Monsters

1288) [T]he practice of uncovering repressed memories, along with the attendant theories of multiple personality disorder and satanic-cult abuse, are fads as widespread and as damaging as any the mental-health field has produced in this century. [...] [R]ecovered memory therapists are not, as they portray themselves, brave healers but professionals who have built a pseudoscience out of an unfounded consensus about how the mind reacts to sexual trauma. In the process they have slipped the ties that bind their professions to scientific method and sound research. Free from any burden of proof, these therapists have created an Alice-in-Wonderland world in which opinion, metaphor, and ideological preference substitute for objective evidence. While claiming to uncover the truth of their clients' past, these therapists have pursued a treatment regime that persuades clients to accept hypnotically generated images, gut feelings, dreams, and imaginings as valid memories. Without an understanding of the damage they have already caused, these therapists have employed methods that blur the already perilously thin line that separates memory from imagination and have unwittingly coerced their patients to mold their beliefs and behaviors to the expectations of their therapy.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)

1289) The human mind sees patterns. We tell ourselves stories about why one event might have been the cause of a second event and might therefore be a predictor of a third. In many areas, say religion or economics, we often offer such post hoc reasoning without requiring that the validity of those connections be demonstrated. Astrology, for another example, is an elaborate apparatus for creating the appearance of meaningful connections where none exist. All of us are experts at making such cause-and-effect conclusions within our lives.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)

1290) We tell ourselves stories in order to live [...] We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely [...] by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
Joan Didion
The White Album (1979)
quoted by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters in
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)

1291) Recovered memory therapists pursue hidden memories for years like archaeologists using dynamite. For months or years they blast away at what they believe are the barriers to memory, unaware that their process destroys the fragile treasure they claim to seek. While this mistake is not new to the field of psychotherapy, recovered memory therapists make it in the most egregious fashion.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)

1292) Until hard evidence is obtained and corroborated, the public should not be frightened into believing that babies are bred and eaten, that 50,000 missing children are being murdered in human sacrifices, or that Satanists are taking over America's day care centers or institutions. [...] While no one can prove with absolute certainty that such activity has not occurred, the burden of proof is on those who claim that it has occurred. [...] [It is now] up to the mental health professionals, not law enforcement, to explain why victims are alleging things that don't seem to have happened.
Ken Lanning (FBI Special Agent)
Investigator's Guide to Allegations
of Ritual Child Abuse
(1989)
quoted by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters in
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)
1293) Each [account of plausible Devil worship cited] is accompanied by statements which are anything but plausible [...] To understand why the stereotype of Devil-worshiping sects emerged at all, one must look not at the beliefs or behavior of heretics [...] but into the minds of the orthodox themselves. Many people, and particularly many priests and monks, were becoming more and more obsessed by the overwhelming power of the Devil and his demons. That is why their idea of the absolutely evil and anti-human came to include Devil-worship, alongside incest, infanticide and cannibalism. [...] Stories which contain manifestly impossible elements ought not to be accepted as evidence for physical events.
Norman Cohn
Europe's Inner Demons (1975)
quoted by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters in
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)

1294) [T]o believe the satanic-cult theories [...] requires that you give up the assumption your neighbor (or your doctor or the teacher who watches over your child) will act decently. If these theories are not true, recovered memory therapists can count themselves responsible for damaging not only individual lives and families but for tearing apart whole communities by eroding the trust the binds people together.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)

1295) Reasoned dialogue has a limited ability to withstand an assault by the mythic power of falsehood, especially when that falsehood is rooted in an age-old social and cultural phenomenon [...] Mythical thinking and the force of the irrational have a strange and compelling allure for the educated and uneducated alike. [...] Reasoned dialogue, particularly as it applies to the understanding of history, is rooted in the notion that there exists a historical reality that - though it may be subjected by the historian to a multiplicity of interpretations - is ultimately found and not made. [...] Even a historian with a particular bias is dramatically different from the proponents of these pseudoreasoned ideologies. The latter freely shape or create information to buttress their convictions and reject as implausible any evidence that counters them. They use the language of scientific inquiry, but theirs is purely an ideological enterprise.
Deborah Lipstadt
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault
on Truth and Memory
(1993)
quoted by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters in
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)

1296) Our growing willingness as a culture to throw history up for grabs - to believe anything is possible and therefore anything might be true - is the cornerstone from which the satanic-cult story is built. We are asked to deny reason in favor of belief.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(1994)

1297) While Freud's notions functioned something like a paradigm, his theories were prescientific and based on no empirical evidence. As in prescientific eras of other disciplines, his theories were accepted by consensus - not because of anything resembling empirical proof but because of his magnetism and the seductively broad nature of the ideas. No doubt it was the very arrogance and grandiose application of his theories that was appealing to intellectuals and mental-health practitioners who were happy to claim an understanding of what motivated people - even if they could not actually explain the working of these theories, much less prove their truth or value. Those who adopted his theories and defended his assertions gained by association something of Freud's status, at least vis-a-vis the untutored. Recovered memory therapists in many respects have operated within Freud's pseudoscientific paradigm. In doing so they have become to the study of the mind and behavior what astrologers are to the scientific study of the stars and planets. They have engaged in an enterprise based not on science but on impressionistic insight, myth, metaphor, and the powerful persuasive nature of the therapy setting.
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters
Making Monsters: False Memories,
Psychotherapy and Sexual Hysteria
(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 487 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/20/2007 04:17:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Adorno

1287) It is part of the mechanism of domination to forbid recognition of the suffering it produces, and there is a straight line of development between the gospel of happiness and the construction of camps of extermination so far off in Poland that each of our countrymen can convince himself that he cannot hear the screams of pain.
Theodor Adorno
Minima Moralia (1973)
posted by Bryan A. Alexander [PKD] (9/15/1995)

Sources

[PKD] - Internet Philip K. Dick mailing list


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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/20/2007 04:15:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Three Lessons

1286) Lesson No. 1: Only a fool would buy shares in a Wall Street firm. In good times the employees takes a huge chunk of the profits; in bad times they not only refuse to give them back but take more.

Lesson No. 2: The Wall Street labor market is now so perfectly fluid that a corporation on Wall Street is not so much a group striving to be prosper together as a bunch of people who happen to work in the same building. The operative unit in modern finance is the individual - another reason it makes little sense to invest in groups of financiers.

Lesson No. 3: The first rule of American capitalism is that the capitalists live by different rules than everyone else. During the leveraged-buyout craze of the 1980's, investment bankers jetted around the country preaching to managers the need to own their own firms, while the bankers themselves remained highly paid employees free of the risk of ownership.

Today the great trend in our economy is the drift of bargaining power from workers to owners. Even as corporate profits skyrocket, real wages remain stagnant. American corporations currently are thriving, in part because they are able to cut workers out of their gains. By contrast, a Wall Street firm that has just lost $1 billion cannot even reduce bonuses without risking the loss of its entire work force.
Michael Lewis
"The Capitalist: The Bonus Holdup"
New York Times Magazine (9/10/1995)
[Note that Lewis wrote this in 1995. Our current state of employee disempowerment, wage stagnation, and the shifting of risk from corporations to consumers didn't spring up overnight.]

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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/20/2007 04:12:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Wednesday, September 19, 2007
 

(3089/898) Introspection


1280) No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.
Alan Watts
"This is IT"
This Is It (1960)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/1995)

1281) If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
Chinese proverb (attributed)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/1995)

1282) Finally, after a long period of hating your family, your upbringing, the fact that you grew up in the suburbs, finally you stand there to take full responsibility for yourself. I think it's called maturity.
Jane Siberry
interviewed by Catherine Bush in
"Jane Siberry: Multimedia Musician"
Hot Wired (1995)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/1995)

1283) It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead.
unknown
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/1995)
[Note: Attributed to both Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, but no citations for either can be found in standard references or on the Internet.]
1284) Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love all year round, madam; that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals.
Pierre-Augustin Caron De Beaumarchais
The Marriage of Figaro (1778)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/1995)

1285) No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other - but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it.
Robert A. Heinlein
Methusalah's Children (1958)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/1995)

Sources

[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/19/2007 09:23:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Proverbs and maxims, old and new

1264) If you believe everything you read, better not read.
Japanese proverb (attributed)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/8/95)

1265) It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.
Publilius Syrus (widely attributed)
posted by George Osner [IQM] (9/8/95)

1266) My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.
Ashleigh Brilliant
"Pot-Shots" #1085
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/8/95)

1267) Before you run in double harness, look well to the other horse.
Ovid (attributed)
posted by Jeff Shepherd [ISQ] (9/11/95)

1268) Do not be in a hurry to tie what you cannot untie.
English proverb (widely attributed)
posted by Jeff Shepherd [ISQ] (9/11/95)
[Note: cf. #1221 Joubert.]
1269) You must create your own world. I'm responsible for my world.
Louise Nevelson (attributed)
posted by Jeff Shepherd [ISQ] (9/11/95)

1270) People want economy, and they'll pay any price to get it.
Lee Iacocca (attributed)
George Osner [ISQ] (9/11/95)

1271) Life is a gamble at terrible odds   if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.
Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (play, 1967)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/95)

1272) Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.
Scottish proverb (attributed)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/95)

1273) All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.
Marcel Proust (attributed)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/95)

1274) Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The Garden of Eden (written c.1950, published 1986)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/95)

1275) The most terrifying thing in the world is your own life, the fact that it's yours and nobody else's.
John Updike (attributed)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/95)
[Note: cf. #1253 Jong and #1364 Brilliant.]
1276) All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, then success is sure.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
letter to Mrs. Foote (12/2/1887)
quoted by J.E.H. Shaw on
Some Quotable Quotes for Statistics

1277) Unless you're willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won't happen.
Phillip Adams (attributed)
(1939)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/95)

1278) [T]his thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.
Mary Pickford (attributed)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/95)

1279) But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Herman Melville
"Hawthorne and His Mosses"
The Literary World (8/17 & 24/1850) [WQ]
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (9/14/95)

Sources

[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[ISQ] - Internet Serial-Quotations mailing list



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/19/2007 04:09:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Tuesday, September 18, 2007
 

(3089/898) Sidelong glances

1259) An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for months or years. A competent attorney can delay one even longer.
Evelle J. Younger
Attorney General of California
Los Angeles Times (3/3/1971)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/5/95)

1260) It isn't evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.
Ned Rorem
The Final Diary (1974) [WHO]
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/5/95)

1261) I admit it is better fun to punt than to be punted, and that a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Goody Night (1935) [ODQ]
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/5/95)

1262) Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.
Baltasar Gracian
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1637)
posted by George Osner [IQM] (9/7/95)
[Note: Alternately, translated as "Never act out of passion. If you do all is lost."]
1263) Agents are like country clubs. To quote Groucho Marx: "I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me as a member." No beginning, unsold writer should hire an agent that is willing to have him/her as a client.
Mike Resnick
posted on [SF-LIT] (9/7/95)
[Note: cf. #567 Marx]
Sources

[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[ISQ] - Internet Serial-Quotations mailing list
[ODQ] - Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edition (1992)
[SF-LIT] - Literary Science Fiction & Fantasy Discussion Forum
[WHO] - Who Said What (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 489 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/18/2007 10:43:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Monday, September 17, 2007
 

(3089/898) Inspection


1256) [T]he fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other.
Edward R Murrow
speech to Radio-Television News Directors in Chicago (10/15/1958)
posted by J9cqueline [IQM] (9/1/95)

1257) One of the most interesting phenomena I have ever noticed came when I was teaching hypnosis to a friend. I gave him, among other things, the posthypnotic suggestion that if anyone attempted to hypnotize him surreptitiously, without his having first given his conscious permission, he would cease to understand the language that was being spoken, and that [he] would remain so until his conscious mind had taken full control. A few months later he reported that two stimuli regularly triggered the safety seal, some commercials and some political speeches.
Ron Robertson
personal e-mail (9/3/95)

1258) One way that the soul of professional tennis reveals itself these days is in the parceling out of seats in the players' boxes at Wimbeldon and the three other majors. One seat goes to your coach, one goes to your trainer, one to your agent, one to the person you're most publicly having sex with and one to the administrator of your sneaker contract.
Peter de Jonge
"Sampras or Agassi?: A 90's Kind of Rivalry" in
New York Times Magazine (8/27/1995)


Sources

[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/17/2007 10:40:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Observations, again

1249) She knew that insofar as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not - the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
Howard J. Lambert [IQM] (8/28/95)

1250) Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
Laurens van der Post
The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958)
Howard J. Lambert [IQM] (8/28/95)

1251) Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities.
John F. Kennedy
speech at Vanderbilt University (5/18/1963)
Todd McMasters [IQM] (9/1/95)

1252) What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Self-Reliance"
Essays: First Series (1841) [WQ]
Todd McMasters [IQM] (9/1/95)

1253) No one to blame [...] That was why most people led lives they hated, with people they hated. [...] How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one's nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right! You may be fragmented, but you feel absolved of all the blame for it. Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Erica Jong
How To Save Your Own Life (1977) [CQ]
Todd McMasters [IQM] (9/1/95)
[Note: cf. #1275 Updike and #1364 Brilliant.]
1254) In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (widely attributed)
Todd McMasters [IQM] (9/1/95)

1255) Finish what you begin. Public confidence in government isn't guaranteed; it has to be earned. I know of no other way to earn the trust and cooperation of the public than first, to say what you intend to do, and second, to do it.
Neil Goldschmidt (attributed)
George Osner [ISQ] (8/28/95)
[Note: I haven't been able to find a citation for this quote, and there's only one Google hit for it. Presumably, the Neil Goldschmidt being credited is the former politician and businessman who was Governor of Oregon and Secretary of Transportation. In 2004, Goldschmidt admitted that in the mid-70s, during his first term as mayor of Portland, he had a lengthy sexual relationship with a girl who was 14 years old when it began.]
Sources

[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[ISQ] - Internet Serial-Quotations mailing list
[WQ] - Wikiquote



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/17/2007 08:52:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) A brief encapsulation of the history of Russia, for the benefit of those who don't have the time to study it for themselves


1248) As anyone knows who has skimmed the World Book Encyclopedia, the history of Russia can be understood as a struggle between the White Russians and the Slavs, or the Russians with long necks who want to be more like the West and the Russians with thick necks who don't. The long necks may drag Russia westward for a while, but the thick necks eventually drag it back into oblivion. To preserve their dignity and often their lives, the long necks erect a Potemkin village of sorts and then retreat hastily to Paris, until the time comes when the thick necks discredit themselves so much that the long necks are given another chance.
Michael Lewis
"The Capitalist: Ruble Roulette"
New York Times Magazine (8/13/1995)


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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/17/2007 01:27:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Sunday, September 16, 2007
 

(3089/898) Skeptical science stuff

1244) Every species is vague, every term goes cloudy at its edges, and so in my way of thinking, relentless logic is only another name for stupidity - for a sort of intellectual pigheadedness. If you push a philosophical or metaphysical enquiry through a series of valid syllogisms - never committing any generally recognised fallacy - you nevertheless leave behind you at each step a certain rubbing and marginal loss of objective truth and you get deflections that are difficult to trace, at each phase in the process. Every species waggles about in its definition, every tool is a little loose in its handle, every scale has its individual.
H.G. Wells
First and Last Things (1908)
quoted by Martin Gardner in
"Fuzzy Logic" in
Skeptical Inquirer (Sept/Oct 1995)

1245) We know that there is much that we don't know; but we cannot know how much there is that we don't know.
Lee Loevinger
"The Paradox of Knowledge"
Skeptical Inquirer (Sept/Oct 1995)

1246) I see [Wilhelm] Reich as the textbook example of Martin Gardner's diagnosis of pseudoscientists as hermit scientists: a cogent illustration that what makes science sound is peer interaction within a disciplined community; a dire warning to all of us of what can happen if we become so sure of being right that we pay no attention to the criticisms of competent, informed others.
Henry H. Bauer
"Sexpols, Orgone Energy, Cloud Busters, and Bions:
Remembered but Not Relevant"
Skeptical Inquirer (Sept/Oct 1995)
[review of Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals,
1934-1939 by Wilhelm Reich
(1995)
Mary Boyd Higgins (ed.)]

1247) The principle of the scientific method, in fact, is only a refinement, by analysis and controls, of the universal process of learning by experience. This is usually called common sense. The scientific addition to commonsense is merely a more penetrating analysis of the complex factors involved, even in seemingly simple events, and the necessity of numerous repetitions and controls before conclusions are established. Where laymen, as a rule, do not understand or apply the scientific method is in the matter of controls. Thousands of honest errors have been committed and ludicrous conclusions promulgated by failure to understand the necessity of controls.
Anton J. Carlson
"Science and the Supernatural" in Science
quoted in Skeptical Inquirer (Sept/Oct 1995)


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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/16/2007 11:59:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Running down some unknowns

1233) Conscience often gets the credit that belongs to cold feet.
unknown
Krasti, personal e-mail (8/23/95)
[Note: This aphorism exists in a lot of minor variations, and is occasionally credited to some specific source, but without citation. However, the central idea has been around for a long time:

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

William Shakespeare
Richard III (1592) [MAC]]
1234) Beware the fury of a patient man!
John Dryden
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Krasti, personal e-mail (8/23/95)

1235) If you see the truck coming, the impact isn't any less.
unknown
Krasti, personal e-mail (8/23/95)

1236) When you have lunch with a man who eats his lasagna with his fingers, you have reason to suspect that he may have one or two other social deficiencies.
Richard Mitchell
Less Than Words Can Say (1979)
Krasti, personal e-mail (8/23/95)

1237) Only the shallow know themselves.
Oscar Wilde
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894) [WQ]
Krasti, personal e-mail (8/23/95)

1238) A person who can read and doesn't, has no advantage over someone who cannot read.
unknown
Krasti, personal e-mail (8/23/95)
[Note: The most common atrribution of this quote is to Mark Twain, however its authenticity is uncertain. [NGF]&[TQ], not listed:[QMT]&[QT]]
1239) I drink to make other people interesting.
George Jean Nathan (widely attributed)
Krasti, personal e-mail (8/23/95)

1240) If I'm going to be alone, I want to be by myself.
The Misfits (film, 1961)
written by Arthur Miller
directed by John Huston
spoken by the character "Roslyn Taber",
played by Marilyn Monroe
Krasti, personal e-mail (8/23/95)

1241) The only time a woman really succeeds at changing a man is when he's a baby.
Natalie Wood
quoted in The Curmudgeon Woman (2000)
Nancy M. Henley & Jacqueline D. Goodchilds (eds.)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (8/23/95)

1242) Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.
W.H. Auden
"I Believe" (1939)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (8/23/95)
[Note: cf. #722 Stewart.]
1243) If you want your eggs hatched, sit on them yourself.
Haitian proverb (widely attributed)
posted by George Osner [ISQ] (8/23/95)

Sources

[ISQ] - Internet Serial-Quotations mailing list
[MAC] - Macmillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Famous Phrases (1948)
[NGF] - "Nice Guys Finish Seventh" (1992), Ralph Keyes
[QMT] - The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), R. Kent Rasmussen, ed.
[QT] - Quotable Twain (2002), David W, Barber, ed.
[TQ] - Twainquotes.com
[WQ] - Wikiquote




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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/16/2007 09:56:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

Another tactical and strategic blunder

Once again ANSWER, the anti-war coalition, has done its level best to screw things up. They held an anti-Iraq War protest in Washington DC yesterday, attended by "thousands" (they claim 100,000 but the claims of mass-gathering organizers are usually rightfully discounted) and a couple of hundred people were arrested.

There are two basic reasons for mounting a protest march:
  1. You want to put pressure on public officials to change whatever policy or action you're protesting against; and


  2. You want to convince other ordinary people to come out to your next protest, so the larger number of people will put more pressure on those public officials.
Unfortunately, to put pressure on public officials, you've got to have some leverage on them. They have to be vulnerable in some way, say by needing to be re-elected, or by having a conscience that can be reached. Neither of these things are true about the Bush Administration. In fact, their only vulnerability I can think of is that they're prone to disliking messy PR -- and the Administration's current situation in that respect is so very bad that a lousy protest isn't going to do diddley to make it worse.

So, the Bush Administration can't be reached through protesting -- but we knew that because they weren't in any respect affected by the previous protests, including those that were relatively massive. However, there are public officials who could conceivably reached by an anti-war protest: the Democrats.

It's possible that the right kind of protest would put some backbone into the party's relatively weak and unfocused position concerning the war and stiffen their opposition. What kind of protest would be the right kind? One in which the vast majority of the protestors were bourgeois middle-class and working-class people, one in which there were no huge puppets on display, one in which placards and banners were straight-forward and to the point, but politely so. The kind of protest where everyone focused on the issue at hand and didn't go off about their own favorite liberal/left-wing issue.

What we needed was the kind of protest where people don't get arrested because they want to perform a piece of half-baked political theatre like a "die-in" to dramatise their point.

In short, what was needed was a Middle American protest, not the kind of bullshit demonstration that ANSWER has been responsible for in the past.

What this protest did was to underline the cliched prejudice that "anti-war" equates to "half-baked lefty flake", instead of creating a new perception that, at least right now for this war, "anti-war" should mean "concerned everday American." Bush & Cheney don't care one way or the other, but moderate Democrats, who might have been subject to some pressure by the right sort of demonstration, can easily evade it now because ANSWER, once again, fucked up.

But a flawed demonstration is better than not at all, right? No, not really.

The Bush Administration is on the ropes, it's reeling from the pain of a thousand cuts, the last thing we would want to do is to give them some encouragement to believe that perhaps their position is somewhat more tenable than it appears. At this juncture, they don't have the people on their side, all the polls show that, but looking at Saturday's feeble, badly-conceived march, all they could possibly feel is encouraged, because all they saw there were the nutjobs and wackos they expected to see.

They won't bend to pressure, for sure, but 100,000 middle-class Moms and Dads and Aunt Bertha and Uncle Henry politely telling them in person that they're wrong has got to be a bit depressing, even for conscience-free assholes like the Bush Administration, and it's certainly not encouraging in any way.

Way to go, ANSWER. Keep it up, and you'll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet.

Update: My previous comments of a similar nature can be found here, here and here, and my friend Roger weighs in here.

Afterthought: I think perhaps a large part of the problem is that people don't think hard enough about what they want to achieve with their actions, and instead focus on what they feel they need to do. The resulting action, therefore, becomes primarily about people feeling good about themselves.

Someone really should ask the organizers and participants a question: Do you want to feel good, or do you want to get something done?"

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/16/2007 06:44:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Anatole France

Anatole France
1223) To die for an idea is to place a pretty high price on conjectures.
Anatole France
(Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault)
The Revolt of the Angels (1914)
posted by JR3000 [IQM] (8/23/95)

1224) You believe you are dying for your country -- you die for some industrialists.
Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault)
(attributed)
posted by JR3000 [IQM] (8/23/95)

1225) Burn, burn all the books which teach hatred! Exalt labor and love! Let us create rational human beings, capable of crushing under foot the futile magnificence of barbaric glories, and of resisting those bloody ambitions of nationalism and imperialism which have crushed their brothers.
Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault)
speech, Tours, France (8/1919)
posted by JR3000 [IQM] (8/23/95)

1226) If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.
Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault)
Crainquebille (1901)
posted by JR3000 [IQM] (8/23/95)

1227) Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault)
Crainquebille (1901)
posted by JR3000 [IQM] (8/23/95)

1228) The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault)
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
posted by JR3000 [IQM] (8/23/95)

1229) So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend and sustain injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem.
Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault)
Epigrams (1925)
posted by JR3000 [IQM] (8/23/95)
[Note: cf. #929 France.]
1230) All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
Anatole France (Jacques-Anatole-Francois Thibault)
(widely attributed)
posted by Joanne Curme [IQM] (8/23/95)

1231) If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.
W. Somerset Maugham
A Writer's Notebook (1949) [WQ]
[Note: Often misattributed to Anatole France, frequently in the form "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."]
1232) When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
Anatole France (Jacques-Anatole-Francois Thibault)
(widely attributed)
posted by Joanne Curme [IQM] (8/23/95)

Sources

[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[WQ] - Wikiquote



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 9/16/2007 03:22:00 AM | | | 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
Progressive populism!
Economic insecurity is key
Restore the balance
Cast the candidate
Persona is important
Calm,calming,assured,reassuring
Iraq, not "national security"
Prefer governors over senators
recent posts
bush countdown
oblique strategies
recent comments
some links
baseball
storm watch
(click for larger image,
refresh page to update)


topics
a progressive slogan
Fairness, progress and prosperity, because we're all in this together.

"I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."
(Alex Gregory - The New Yorker)
new york city
another progressive slogan
The greatest good for the greatest number, with dignity for all.
reference & fact check
iraq
write me
reciprocity
evolution v. creationism
humanism, skepticism
& progressive religiosity
more links
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
unfutz
awards and nominations
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
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
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
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Poulenc - Piano Music

Pop Ambient 2007
influences
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Aphex Twin
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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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Comments
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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Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.

Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.

Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
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=

take all you want
but credit all you take.



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