1806) Bits and pieces is what modernism and post-modernism are all about.
Jeremy J. Beadle Will Pop Eat Itself: Pop Music in the Soundbite Era (1993)
1807) The sound bite [is] the ideal weapon of the image-maker, of the advertising slogan man. The sound bite is the thing that will stick, the thing that's much more important than logical or consistent argument. [...] Slogans have, of course, always been part of politics, but since the late 1970s and especially in the late 1980s the idea that there might be any intellectual or analytical content to a speech organized around a few good sloganizing sound bites disappeared from common currency.
Jeremy J. Beadle Will Pop Eat Itself: Pop Music in the Soundbite Era (1993)
1808) Frankly, anyone so feeble-minded that they base their habits - be they drugs, drink, sex or violence - on what they hear in a pop lyric is probably beyond help.
Jeremy J. Beadle Will Pop Eat Itself: Pop Music in the Soundbite Era (1993)
1809) To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.
Theodor Adorno "Cultural Criticism and Society" (1951) published in Prisms (1981) (mis)quoted by Jeremy J. Beadle in Will Pop Eat Itself: Pop Music in the Soundbite Era (1993)
[Note: This quote is more famously known in the form of the dictum "No poetry after Auschwitz," or "There can be no poetry after Auschwitz." Sometimes a more specific proscription is made, such as "No lyric poetry after Auschwitz." The influence of the underlying idea can be seen in such derivative statements as "No history after Auschwitz" and "Ironic humor is no longer possible after 9/11." (emphasis added)]
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 444 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1803) If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky interview with John Pilger on "The Late Show" (BBC2 TV program, 11/23/1992) [CQ]
1804) The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Goebbels and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.
Nadine Gordimer "The Unkillable Word", speech (4/17/1990) published as "Censorship and the Word" [CQ]
1805) Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Salman Rushdie interview in Guardian (11/8/1990) [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 444 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1800) [W]hat [modern "luddites" such as Kirkpatrick Sale are] really opposed to, I believe, is not technology alone, it is the entire development and history of Western civilization and, one must not forget, its culmination in America. Beginning with the invention of critical reason by the Greeks, continuing with the development of natural science, the experimental method and scientific rationality in the early Renaissance, along with the nearly simultaneous invention and evolution of capitalism and the development of economic rationality during the same epoch, and extending even further into the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant growth of technological rationality from the early eighteenth century onwards, the whole project of Western humanity is one colossal mistake and disaster.
Steven Marcus "Rage Against the Machine" in The New Republic (6/10/1996) [review of Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age by Kirkpatrick Sale]
1801) [Alan D. Sokal, physicist and author of a deliberately bogus article published by a postmodern journal] showed [that] the sciences and humanities are not identical enterprises. In both, knowledge is required, premises must be accepted along with rules of argument, and institutions of authority are established. But [...] in science there exists facts and truths that are invariant - unaltered by culture, politics and prejudices [...] That may be one reason why science has such prestige and power.
[...] [W]hat makes science and mathematics powerful is what makes them different from games. Unlike baseball, science reveals something about the world outside of itself and outside the culture that produces it. Kepler's laws may have been the product of their time, but still describe the movement of the planets with great accuracy; Einstein's Special Theory is a valid in South America as it was in Europe; and pi, though it was approximated in ancient Egypt and Greece, is a constant everywhere. It appears in the Bible and it is used extensively in constructing skyscrapers. A variable pi, or a non-extant pi, wouldn't just give us a different culture; it would give us a different physical universe. Mr. Sokal invites anybody who feels the physical laws are mere social constructs to defy them by leaping from his 21st-story window.
These arguments, though, would be of little concern to the practictioners of "science studies," who [...] may be more interested in politics than in the nature of scientific truths. But that doesn't stop them from gazing at science's privileged position with envy and condescension, yearning for its power awhile having to make do with their own game of postmodern baseball.
1802) The uneasy marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an increasingly surreal world. More and more, we see that the events of our own times make sense in terms of surrealism rather than any other view - whether the grim facts of the death-camps, Hiroshima and Viet Nam, or our far more ambiguous unease at organ transplant surgery and the extra-uterine foetus, the confusions of the media landscape with its emphasis on the glossy, lurid and bizarre, its hunger for the irrational and sensational. The art of Salvador Dali, an extreme metaphor at a time when only the extreme will do, constitutes a body of prophecy about ourselves unequaled in accuracy since Freud's "Civilization And Its Discontents". Voyeurism, self-disgust, the infantile basis of our fears and longings, and our need to pursue our own psychopathologies as a game - these diseases of the psyche Dali has diagnosed with dismaying accuracy. His paintings not only anticipate the psychic crisis which produced our glaucous paradise, but document the uncertain pleasures of living within it. The great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century - sex and paranoia - preside over his life, as over ours.
J.G. Ballard Introduction (1974) to Diary of a Genius by Salvador Dali (auto-biography) posted by J.B. Fleming on the J.G. Ballard mailing list (5/30/1996)
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 444 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1797) No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute.
Paul Gallico New York Times (1/14/1962) [CQ] posted by Randy Cassingham on the This is True mailing list (5/26/1996)
1798) When they were little [my kids called me] Daddy. In college it was Father. Now it's Daddy again. I like Daddy. Father costs money.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (TV series, 1970-1977) spoken by the character Lou Grant, played by Ed Asner
1799)PRODUCT WARNINGS FOR PHYSICISTS
WARNING: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them.
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.
CAUTION: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles Per Hour
CONSUMER NOTICE: Because of the "Uncertainty Principle," It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving
ADVISORY: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Know as "Tunneling," This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your Neighbor's Domicile. The Manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result.
READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE: According to Certain Suggested Versions of the Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting this Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years.
THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result.
PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW: Any Use of This Product, in any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.
NOTE: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a "Gluing" Force About Which Little is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.
ATTENTION: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space.
NEW GRAND UNIFIED THEORY DISCLAIMER: The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled to Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are "Rolled Up" into Such a Small "Area" That They Cannot Be Detected.
PLEASE NOTE: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
COMPONENT EQUIVALENCY NOTICE: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied.
HEALTH WARNING: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Weight Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User.
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS: The Entire Physical Universe, Including This Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence of This Product in That Universe Cannot Be Guaranteed.
unknown posted by Simon Hickinbotham [PKD] (5/23/1996)
Sources
[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) [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 444 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1785) The function of a good newspaper and therefore of a good journalist is to see life steady and see it whole.
Charles Prestwich Scott quoted by James Fallows in Breaking the News (1996)
1786) We're against people who push people around.
motto of the New York newspaper PM (c.1940) quoted by James Fallows in Breaking the News (1996)
1787) Journalism is not mere entertainment. It is the main tool we have for keeping the world's events in perspective. It is the main source of agreed-upon facts we can use in public discussion. The excesses of journalism have been tolerated because no other institution can provide the benefits journalism can.
James Fallows Breaking the News (1996)
1788) If the [...] press somehow vanished, and if all of us could, through the Internet or 500-channel TV, get exactly the information we wanted, we would still want some way to compare impressions, to put things in perspective, to ask other people, "What do you make of this?"
James Fallows Breaking the News (1996)
1789) [The] real purpose [of journalism] is to satisfy the general desire for information to have meaning. People want to know the details, but they also want to know what the details mean. [...] What we read in the papers and see or hear on TV and radio should provide context that gives meaning to information.
James Fallows Breaking the News (1996)
1790) What bothers me is that the hyper-adversarialism that has ruined the American legal system is now really corroding journalism. [...] It is driven by the TV shows. You get two people who are adversaries and watch them fight. The more they fight, the better TV it is. It conditions people to be adversarial - and unlike in the law, this kind of adversary process is not even useful. It's adversarialism as a pure sport.
Jonathan Alter quoted by James Fallows in Breaking the News (1996)
1791) If trials were conducted the way most opinion polls are, the jury would be asked its opinion on the defendant's guilt or innocence before any arguments were made or witnesses called - and then the attorneys would make their argument match what the public already believed.
James Fallows Breaking the News (1996)
1792) If it bleeds, it leads.
media consultants' recommendation to local TV news to feature crimes, fires, autowrecks, etc (c.1990) quoted by James Fallows in Breaking the News (1996)
1793) Even more than broadcast coverage of national or world events, local TV news suggests an environment of generalized menace that cannot really be understood but that viewers should try to insulate themselves from. [...] The accumulated impact [...] [is] to give citizens a nightmarish view of life in their own community.
James Fallows Breaking the News (1996)
1794) Journalists are not like scientists, observing the behavior of fruit flies but not influencing what the flies might do. They inescapably change the reality of whatever they are observing by whether and how they choose to write about it. [...] The conventions of choosing "the news" are so familiar, and so much of the process happens by learned and ingrained habits, that it is easy for journalists to forget that the result reflects decisions, rather than some kind of neutral scientific truth.
James Fallows Breaking the News (1996)
1795) It's absolutely correct to say that there are objectively occurring events [...] Speeches are made, volcanoes erupt, trees fall. But news is not a scientifically observable event. News is a choice, an extraction process, saying that one event is more meaningful than another event. The very act of saying that means making judgments that are based on values and based on frames.
Cole Campbell editor, Virginian-Pilot quoted by James Fallows in Breaking the News (1996)
1796) Michael Schudson, a professor at the University of California at San Diego who is a prominent academic theorist of the news, has used the thought-experiment of a news establishment that suddenly vanishes, in order to show the real value of journalism.
Suppose, Schudson has said, that the elite press, which filters the news in a way may people dislike, went out of business sometime in the near future. Suppose further that, thanks to imminent advances in technology, each person could get exactly the information he or she wanted, with none of the annoying "spin" from editors or commentators. With a vastly expanded system of cable TV, each viewer could watch sessions of each congressional committee, each state legislature, each city council. Through the Internet, people at home could instantly find the latest research reports about heart disease, or AIDS, or the effectiveness of different exercise schemes. Through fully indexed online version of the COngressional Record, they could find out what any congressman said about any theme. On Court TV and its many channels [sic] they could follow all the major legal battles. If they wanted to know the crime rates for each part of town or the crash rate for each commuter airline company, they could pull up that information too. The media establishment as we know it would seem to be short-circuited. And yet, Schudson wrote in his book The Power of News, "Journalism - of some sort - would be reinvented."
People would want ways to sift through the endless information available. What is more important? What is most relevant? What is most interesting? People would want help interpreting and explaining events. [...] It is hard to picture the contemporary world, even in the face of a technology that makes each of us potentially equal senders and receivers of information, without a specialized institution of journalism.
James Fallows Breaking the News (1996) quoting Michael Schudson from The Power of News (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 444 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1783) [A talent for business] is an indefinable endowment, a sort of genetic luck perhaps, in which one need not invent anything or even start up a useful enterprise. Intelligence-corporate seems to be similar to intelligence-military, a gift for strategy in serious battle.
Elizabeth Hardwick "Family Values" New York Review of Books (6/6/1996)
1784) [The urge to venture afar] arises from the threefold nature of man. One motive is fame, for it is the nature of man to journey where there is great danger, and thus win honor and praise. A second motive is curiosity, for it is also man's nature to see things that he has heard about, and thus learn whether they are as he has been told or not. The third is the desire for gain, for men seek wealth wherever they have heard that gain is to be gotten.
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 445 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1779) Something is going on at the deep levels of political tectonics. A country cannot go through the cultural changes this country is going through without a more substantial political manifestation than we have had to date. This sustained and growing alienation between the public and the people whom it elects is going to be the central dynamic of politics for the next ten years or more. Until there is a rectifying of the disjunction between the political class and the public, we are going to go through more of these unpredicted events.
Tony Blankley press secretary to Newt Gingrich quoted by Michael Kelly in "The Political Scene: Uninvited Guests" in The New Yorker (3/11/1996)
1780) In July of 1994, the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, in Washington D.C., conducted a national survey of three thousand eight hundred voters and concluded that the two major parties had splintered into a multiplicity of subgroups, all of which derived their primary political identity not from either party but from their own subgroup. The Times Mirror study broke down the Republicans into anti-government, pro-business "enterprisers," religious and culturally conservative "moralists," and libertarians. Aligned with the Democrats were liberal "seculars" (college-educated urban and suburban sophisticates), centrist New Democrats, old New Dealers, and "the partisan poor." Between the two parties the survey identified a "detached center," dominated by what it called "new economic independents," which is to say those anxious middle-class jobholders who account for nearly twenty per cent of the total registered vote and support whoever best addresses their concerns at the moment. The Times Mirror study did find one common thread: a conviction that the politicians whom they had elected to office were not serving their interests.
Michael Kelly "The Political Scene: Uninvited Guests" in The New Yorker (3/11/1996)
1781) [Afrocentrism] creates a myth; and myths of this kind are disguised statements not about the past but about the present. At some level, the belief will persist that the case really has been - must have been - established, and that refutations, however detailed, are just another instance of the racial prejudices of the intellectual establishment.
Jasper Griffin "Anxieties of Influence" in New York Review of Books (6/20/1996) [review of Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (1996) by Mary Lefkowitz and Black Athena Revisited (1996), edited by Mark Lefkowitz and Guy Maclean Rogers]
1782) Government did right by me. I'm the first one to admit that fact. No, let's back up for a minute - I don't just admit that fact, I savor it. I hold it up as an example of what government should be in the business of doing: providing opportunity. You will never hear me say that I am a self-made man. I am not. My parents gave me their love, their example, and the benefit of their hard work. And the government gave me a big hand.
James Carville We're Right They're Wrong, A Handbook for Spirited Progressives (1996) "MicheleW", personal e-mail (6/3/1996)
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 446 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1774) A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
Channing Pollock in The Green Book Magazine (c.1915) found on the backstage call board at Overtime, Manhattan Theatre Club (4/1996)
1775) If the critics were always right we should be in deep trouble. On the other hand, nowadays they are wrong too often, which is bad for the theatre because it confuses the public. Critics are supposed to have judgement but not opinions. Too often they forget this.
Robert Morley 'Responsible Gentleman' (1966) found (in part) on the backstage call board Overtime, Manhattan Theatre Club (4/1996)
1776) I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.
Igor Stravinsky [London] Evening Standard (10/29/1969) found on the backstage call board at Overtime, Manhattan Theatre Club (4/1996)
1777) Pay no attention to what critics say, no statue has ever been put up to a critic.
Jean Sibelius quoted by Bengt de Torne in Sibelius: A Close-up (1937) found on the backstage call board at Overtime, Manhattan Theatre Club (4/1996)
1778) One of the first and most important things for a critic to learn is how to sleep undetected at the theatre.
William Archer (attributed) found on the backstage call board at Overtime, Manhattan Theatre Club (4/1996)
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 446 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1770) As a young man, racism seemed to me a single-edged knife, one that whites used to hold blacks down. Now I can see that our own racism can be as dangerous and insidious as that which we have battled for centuries. [...] We cannot defeat their racism with our own; we cannot defeat bigotry by cheating justice.
Christopher A. Darden In Contempt (1996) quoted by Adam Hochschild in "Closing Argument" in New York Times Book Review (4/28/1996)
1771) Even though integrity is a quality of the profane rather than the sacred, it is by no means clear that more of it will necessarily make the world around us better. Reflection, action and justification surely make for more considered behavior than instinct, passivity and dissembling; but nothing prevents someone from acting with integrity in the pursuit of evil. Racists often act out of ignorance, but some of them think (and write) about their views, carry out actions premised upon them and offer reasons to justify their actions. [...] If integrity is not always good, its opposites are not always bad. Corrupt political bosses severed the interests of their working-class constituents far more effectively than straight-laced reformers brimming with integrity. Cowardice is morally preferable when the costs of one's heroism are borne by others. Hypocrisy can be dishonest, but it can also be an art form, a brilliantly contrived sociological strategy designed to takes the pain out of the way we communicate messages to each other. [...] [I]ntegral heroes, already formed, have no need to grow; their quest is to discover what is already there. That is why people of integrity, so stiff and static, may be the stuff of epic poems, but they are thin gruel for modern fiction. We moderns like people whose flaws and fates follow not from inexorable laws from from their inability to make the rules they have learned fit the reality of the lives they lead.
Alan Wolfe "Looking Good" in The New Republic (3/18/1996) [review of Integrity (1996) by Stephen L. Carter]
1772) In the real world, of course, there is no escape from politics, which Max Weber described as "the slow drilling of hard boards." Governing is hard. Discretion must be exercised on the basis of uncertain knowledge; powerful interests must be placated or defeated; allies must be won and enemies outwitted. Politics is not ideology (which John Adams called "the science of idiocy"). What we need in Washington [...] are politicians, not visionaries.
Michael Lind "TRB From Washington: Kemp Fire" in The New Republic (3/11/1996)
1773) [I]n a capitalist economic system, a majoritarian political system, and a status-driven social system, not all Americans can achieve their dreams no matter how hard they try.
Jennifer L. Hochschild Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation (1995) quoted by George M. Fredrickson in "Land of Opportunity?" in New York Review of Books (4/4/1996)
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 447 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1764) [T]he only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.
Daniel C. Dennett Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995) quoted by Tim Beardsley in "Dennett's Dangerous Idea" in Scientific American (2/1996)
1765) The eccentric of today is the normal person of tomorrow.
Ralph Nader quoted by Michael Lewis in "The Normal Person of Tomorrow" in The New Republic (5/20/1996)
1766) The wonderful charm of New York is that when the [zoning] regulations are old-fashioned or don't make sense, you just charge ahead. [...] The city had one idea of how we were all supposed to live and function and it turned out to be a mismatch. [...] Being practical, we didn't obey.
Michael Kwartler architect and urban designer quoted by Kirk Johnson in "Where A Zoning Law Failed, Seeds of a New York Revival" in Sunday New York Times (4/21/1996)
1767) The simulation of sincerity has always been hard to distinguish from the real thing, and in Hollywood, the trick became even harder.
Jackson Lears "Screw Ambiguity" in The New Republic (4/22/1996) [review of John Wayne: American by Randy Roberts and James S. Olsen]
[Note: "If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made," and many other variations on that thought.]
1768)RULES FOR NEUROSURGEONS
You ain't never the same when the air hits your brain.
The only minor operation is the one that someone else is doing.
If the patient isn't dead, you can always make him worse if you try hard enough.
One look at a patient is better than a thousand phone calls from a nurse.
Operating on the wrong patient or doing the wrong side of the body makes for a very bad day.
Frank T. Verstiock Jr. When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales of Neurosurgery (1996) quoted in the "Sunday" column in New York Times Magazine (3/24/1996)
1769) You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.
Super Chicken to his trusty sidekick, Fred "Super Chicken" on George of the Jungle (animated TV series, 1967-1970) created by Jay Ward voiced by Bill Scott
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 447 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
What's most interesting about it is the relatively small number of events on the map, at least as I'm looking at it now. If we're supposed to be resigned to living in a permanent security regime because there's a terrorist around every corner just waiting to pounce, you'd think that there would be more worldwide evidence to support the contention. Of course, terrorism by its very nature is a secretive enterprise, but then so is armed robbery and yet we have no lack of those crimes to be mapped.
The point is that terrorism by its very nature must occur to be effective. We could tolerate any number of cells of terrorists, both inside the country and out, if we knew that they would spend all their time planning and never actually do anything. So the smallish number of terrorist incidents (especially if you subtract out the significant percentage of incidents which are most probably not part of any terrorist action at all, but misreportings, misunderstandings, misapprehensions and common garden-variety apolitical crimes) is either an indication that the extensive worldwide network of terrorists likes to plan really well, or that the claims that have been made about the dangers of terrorism have been somewhat overblown.
1761) [A photograph] isn't trustworthy simply because it's a picture. It is trustworthy if someone we trust made it. [...] We don't trust words because they're words, but we trust pictures because they're pictures. That's crazy. It our responsibility to investigate the truth, to approach images with care and caution. People need to realize that an image is not a representation of reality.
Pedro Meyer photographer, interviewed by Scott Rosenberg in "You Can't Believe Your Eyes" in Wired (12/1995)
This photograph supposedly showing John Kerry and Jane Fonda appearing together at an anti-war rally was widely distributed during the 2004 Presidential election, but it was a fake, made up of two photographs of separate and unconnected events.
1762) Nobody's very careful about objective reality. The O.J. Simpson trial was a vast demonstration of how any fact can be stretched in any direction. [...] By going deeper and deeper into detail, the [defense] lawyers [in the first Rodney King trial] turned King's beating into a nonissue. A dot. Abstract pixels. The question, Did you hit the guy or not? got diluted to nothing. In the DNA portion of the Simpson trial, again we analyzed the dots. There's this constant struggle to look at the dots rather than deal with the issue of the murders.
Pedro Meyer photographer, interviewed by Scott Rosenberg in "You Can't Believe Your Eyes" in Wired (12/1995)
The defense in the trial of the LAPD police officers charged with beating Rodney King neutralized the video by examining it in minute detail, which decontextualized it and greatly reduced its impact for the jury.
1763) Good artists copy. Great artists steal.
Pablo Picasso (attributed) quoted by the editors of Wired (12/1995)
[Note: This quote was co-opted by Steve Jobs for his personal motto, with the addition of "Genius is the art of hiding your sources." Quoted by Robert Works Fuller in Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank (2003)]
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 447 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1758) [S]cience is necessarily a conservative enterprise. Although insight, creativity, and even leaps of faith are vital to the endeavor, sound empirical evidence is the true coin of the realm.
Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky "Like Goes With Like: The Role of Representativeness in Erroneous and Pseudoscientific Beliefs" in Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 1996)
1759) The scientific process is sometimes slow, but it always involves making educated guesses that eventually lead to predictions that can be observed and put to a test. If the predictions turn out to be incorrect, the test is still successful as long as scientists learn enough to modify the theory, find a better one, or uncover mistaken assumptions. Unfortunately, even after the successes of twentieth-century science [...] there are a lot of people who still don't like (or don't understand) the scientific form of reasoning.
In fact, modern science s now under attack from many directions. On the left are those who twist legitimate multiculturalism by going way beyond it to extreme relativism. They dogmatically assert that all ways of seeking knowledge are equally valid, but still insist that the scientific method is flawed because it originated in a time and place that causes them to view it as a Eurocentric, white male behavior. Such thinking has encouraged proliferation of belief in pseudoscience and unscientific ideas ranging from crystal healing to flying saucers. Even worse, it has turned some woman and minorities away from careers in science, not only to their own detriment but to the detriment of society.
Science is also under attack from the religious right, whose literal interpretation of the Bible supersedes scientific evidence, logical reasoning, and common sense. In this fundamentalist view, any fact that is at odds with their own reading of the scriptures must be ignored. Unfortunately, this faction is not satisfiedmerely to reject science itself, but it now has an active campaign to remove scientifically valid subject (such as evolution) from the classroom and have them replaced by their own scientific opinions (such as creationism).
Mark Boslough "Scientific Knowledge is Money in the Bank" in Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 1996)
1760) [H]ow science works: perpetually self-testing, advancing by hypothesis and critical examination, inconveniently nonlinear but wonderfully upfront about uncertainty. By and large, humanity acts as if the scientific method is disconnected from our daily lives, and yet a wider awareness of that method would help greatly in framing the current environmental debate.
Thomas E. Lovejoy "Rethinking Green Thoughts" in Scientific American (2/1996)
[review of A Moment on Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism (1995) by Gregg Easterbrook, Noah's Choice: The Future of Endangered Species (1995) by Charles C. Mann and Mark L. Plummer, and Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the 20th Century (1995) by Mark Dowie]
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 447 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1754) Pseudoscience speaks to powerful emotional needs that science often leaves unfulfilled. It caters to fantasies about personal powers we lack and long for (like those attributed to comic book superheroes today, and earlier, to the gods). In some of its manifestations, it offers satisfaction of spiritual hungers, cures for disease, promises that death is a not the end. It reassures us of our cosmic centrality and importance. It vouchsafes that we are hooked up with, tied to, the Universe. Sometimes it's a kind of halfway house between old religion and new science, mistrusted by both.
At the heart of some pseudoscience (and some religion also, New Age and Old) is the idea that wishing makes it so. How satisfying it would be, as in folklore and children's stories, to fulfill our heart's desire just by wishing. How seductive this notion is, especially when compared with the hard work and good luck usually required to achieve our hopes.
Carl Sagan "Does Truth Matter?: Science, Pseudoscience and Civilization" excerpted from The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark (1996) Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 1996)
1755) Pseudoscience is embraced, it might be argued, in exact proportion as real science is misunderstood - except that the language breaks down here. If you've never heard of science (to say nothing of how it works), you can hardly be aware you're embracing pseudoscience. You're simply thinking in one of the ways that humans always have. Religions are often state-protected nurseries of pseudo-science, although there's no reason why religions have to play that role. In a way it's an artifact from times long gone. In some countries nearly everyone believes in astrology and precognition, including government leaders. But this is not simply drummed into them by religion; it is drawn out of the enveloping culture in which everyone is comfortable with these practices, and affirming testimonials are everywhere.
Carl Sagan "Does Truth Matter?: Science, Pseudoscience and Civilization" excerpted from The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark (1996) Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 1996)
1756) The truth may be puzzling or counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held beliefs. Experiment is how we get a handle on it.
At a dinner many decades ago, the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to the toast, "To physics and metaphysics." By "metaphysics," people then meant something like philosophy, or truths you could recognize just be thinking about them. They could also have included pseudoscience. Wood answered along these lines:
The physicist has an idea. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it seems to make. He consults scientific literature. The more he reads, the more promising the idea becomes. Thus prepared, he goes to the laboratory and devises an experiment to test it. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are checked. The accuracy of the measurement is refined, the error bars reduced. He lets the chips fall where they may. He is devoted only to what the experiment teaches. At the end of all his work, through careful experimentation, the idea is found to be worthless. So the physicist discards it, frees his mind from the clutter of error, and move on to something else.
The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded as he raised his glass high, is not that the practitioners of one are smarter than the practitioners of the other. The difference is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.
Carl Sagan "Does Truth Matter?: Science, Pseudoscience and Civilization" excerpted from The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark (1996) Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 1996)
1757) Pseudoscience differs from erroneous science. Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one. False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively. Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. A succession of alternate hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation. Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding. Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise.
Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Skeptical scrutiny is opposed. When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced.
Carl Sagan "Does Truth Matter?: Science, Pseudoscience and Civilization" excerpted from The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle in the Dark (1996) Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 1996)
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 447 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1751) Richard Feynman became so exasperated [at the National Academy of Sciences] that he resigned his membership, saying that he saw no point in belonging to an organization that spent most of its time deciding who to let in.
Gregory Benford "A Scientist's Notebook: Scientist Heroes" in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy (4/1996)
1752) Long experience has [...] taught me not to believe in the limitations indicated by purely theoretical considerations. These - as we well know - are based on insufficient knowledge of all the relevant factors.
Guglielmo Marconi quoted by Gregory Benford in "A Scientist's Notebook: Scientist Heroes" in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy (4/1996)
1753) Inspect ever piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.
Isaac Asimov quoted by William H. Steibing in "The Nature and Danger of Cult Anthropology" in Cult Anthropology and Creationism: Understanding Pseudoscientific Beliefs About The Past (1995), Francis B. Harrold and Raymond A. Eve, eds. cited by Joseph A. Ezzo in "Ever A Thumb to Suck, A Skirt to Hold" [review] in Skeptical Inquirer (May/June 1996)
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 448 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
It's always good to learn something new from popular culture -- such as, for instance, I had no idea that they had Spandex back in the 8th century, and, yet, that appears to be case, at least judging from this poster for the new movie version of that classic epic:
An example of the remarkable thin, flexible, cling-to-your-skin Spandex technology of the 8th Century AD, not rediscovered in modern times until 1959.
1743) Human beings today [...] are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City [London's Wall Street], the banking system, political and advertising conglomerates, vast entertainment enterprises. They've made themselves user friendly, but they define the tastes to which we conform. They're rather subtle, subservient tyrants, but no less sinister for that.
J.G. Ballard "Kafka in the Present Day" [London] Sunday Times (c.1993) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996)
1744) The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates - the inhabitants of the marketing zones in the consumer society, television audiences and news magazine readerships, who vote with money at the cash counter rather than with ballot paper at the polling boot. These huge and passive electorates are wide open to any opportunist using the psychological weaponry of fear and anxiety, elements that are carefully blanched out of the world of domestic products and consumer software.
J.G. Ballard "The Consumer Consumed" Ink (c.1971) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996)
1745) Perhaps our own fin-de-siecle decadance takes the form, not of libertarian excess, but of the kind of over-the-top puritanism we see in political correctness and the assorted moral certainties of physical fitness fanatics, New Agers and animal-rights activists.
J.G. Ballard "Back to the Heady Future" [London] Daily Telegraph (c.1993) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996) [review of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993) John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds.]
1746) Lysenkoism: A forlorn attempt not merely to colonize the botanical kingdom, but to instill a proper sense of the puritan work ethic and the merits of self-improvement.
J.G. Ballard "Project for a Glossary of the Twentieth Century" Zone (c.1992) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996)
1747) [P]sychiatrists - the dominant lay priesthood since the First World War [...]
J.G. Ballard "The Lure of the Madding Crowd" Independent on Sunday (c.1991) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996) [review of The Faber Book of Madness (1991) Roy Porter ed.]
1748) The history of psychiatry rewrites itself so often that it almost resembles the self-serving chronicles of a totalitarian and slightly paranoid regime.
J.G. Ballard "Magnetic Sleep" [London] Daily Telegraph (c.1994) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996) [review of From Mesmer to Freud (1993) by Adam Crabtree]
1749) I find wholly baffling the widespread belief today that the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was an immoral act, even possibly a war crime to rank with Nazi genocide.
J.G. Ballard "The End of My War" [London] Sunday Times (c.1995) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996)
1750) Time does not exist for those who are absolutely without anxiety.
Soren Kierkegaard (attributed) quoted by J.G. Ballard in "The Thousand Wounds and Flowers" New Worlds (c.1969) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996) [review of The Voices of Time (1981) J.T. Frazier, ed.]
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 448 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
The Red Sox were down 3 games to 1 against the Indians in the ALCS and came back to win, then went on to dominate the Rockies and sweep the World Series. They're this year's World Champions, and I congratulate them.
Clearly, Boston's management knows how to put together a well-balanced team, and is willing to pay to get the players they need, so I expect the Red Sox to be perennial contenders for years to come. As a Yankees fan, that doesn't particularly make me happy, but it does mean that there will be a lot of really exciting ball games to watch when those two teams meet up.
1741) I believe that principles set out in the Bill of Rights, taken together, commit the United States to the following political and legal ideas: government must treat all those subject to its dominion as having equal moral and political status; it must attempt, in good faith, to treat them with all concern; and it must respect whatever individual freedoms are indispensable to those ends, including but not limited to the freedoms more specifically specified in the document, such as the freedoms of speech and religion.
1742) There is almost no human activity that is as intensely social as modern warfare [...] When a military unit loses its internal cohesion and starts to fight as individuals there is such a radical and unfavorable change in the casualty ratio that it is almost always decisive [...] Every general staff in the world since 1914 has known that the bravery of individual soldiers in modern war is about as essential as whether they are handsome.
Leo Cawley "The War About the War: Vietnam Films and American Myth" in From Hanoi to Hollywood: The Vietnam War in American Film (1990) Linda Ditmar and Gene Michaud, eds. quoted by J.G. Ballard in "Push-button Death" [review], Guardian (c.1991) republished in A User's Guide to the Millenium (1996)
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 449 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1738) Those of us lucky enough to have fallen in love with cinema in the 60's and 70's have shed many tears at the loss of this once faithful, inspired and surprising lover.
Unfortunately, our lament does not stop at the screen, for others are dying in the family. Reading is near extinction and contemplation has been exiled. Memory, from lack of use, is losing its acuity, and memory is the true engine of cinema.
Most people do not "see" anymore - they "watch." When you watch, everything become the same. All images are equal. How can one think about cinema while looking through a scrim of TV, the Net and movie equivalents?
Steve Tremble director, Cornell Cinema, Cornell University letter to the editor New York Times Magazine (3/17/1996) commenting on "The Decay of Cinema" by Susan Sontag (2/25/1996)
1739) Nobody knows anybody else that well.
Joel and Ethan Coen Miller's Crossing (film, 1990) spoken by the character "Tom Reagan" played by Gabriel Byrne
1740) The hangman [...] is the third in the triumvirate of wife, hangman and devil who represent the three prongs of social control - family, state and religion.
Robert Leach The Punch and Judy Show: History, Tradition and Meaning (1985)
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 449 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1737) But the mystery remains. Why Darwin? No one thought him dull, but no one marked him as brilliant either. And no one discerned in him that primary emotional correlate of greatness that our modern age calls 'fire in the belly.' Thomas Carlyle, a good judge, who knew both Darwin brothers, Charles and Erasmus, well, considered Erasmus as far superior in intelligence.
I think any solution to this key puzzle in Darwinian biography must being with a proper exegesis of intelligence - one that rejects Charles Spearman's old notion of a single scalar quantity recording overall mental might (called g, or general intelligence, and recently revived by Murray and Herrnstein as the central fallacy of their specious book The Bell Curve). Instead, we need a concept of intelligence as a substantial set of largely independent attributes. This primary alternative to g has its own long and complex history, from an extreme misuse by the old phrenologists, to the modern tenable versions initiated by Louis L. Thurstone and J.P. Guilford and best represented today by the work of Howard Gardner.
I do not know what g-score might be awarded to Darwin by a modern Spearmanian. I do know, however, that we need the alternate view of independent multiplicity to grasp Darwin's triumph in the light of such unpromising beginnings (unpromising in the apparently hopeless sense of little talent combined with maximal opportunity, rather than the more tractable Horatio Alger mode of great promises in difficult circumstances.)
Morever, the theory of multiplicity includes an important historical and philosophical consequence for understanding human achievement. If Spearmann had been correct, and if intelligence were a single, innately provided and largely invariant quantity that could be plotted on a single scale, then we might frame a predictive and largely biological model of achievement with a predominant bias in blood lines and a substrate in neurology. But the theory of multiplicity demands a different kind of attention to narrative details - and a biography like Browne's thereby gains credence because the theory of multiplicity requires the amplitude of exposition she provides, and not only for the inherent fascination of learning about so many bits and pieces.
If the sum of a person's achievement must be sought in a subtle combination of differing attitudes, each affected in marvelously varying ways by complexities of external circumstances and the interplay of psyche and society, then no account of particular accomplishment can be drawn simply from predictions based on inherited mental rank. Achieved brilliance must be (1) a happy combination of fortunate strength in several independent attributes joined by (2) an equally fortuitous combination of external circumstances (personal, famililal, societal, and historical) so that (3) such a unique mental convergence can solve a major puzzle about the construction of natural reality. Explanations of this kind can only be achieved through dense narrative. No shortcuts exist; the answer lies in a particular concatenation of details - and these must be elucidated and integrated descriptively.
Stephen Jay Gould "Why Darwin" in New York Review of Books (4/4/1996) [review of Charles Darwin: Voyaging by Janet Browne]
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 449 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1733) Beware of things that are left in form but right in essence.
Mao Zedong "On Contradiction" (1937) posted by "netpolizei" on the Court TV OJ Simpson discussion board (3/13/1996)
1734) The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.
Mark Twain letter to Edward Dimmit (7/19/1901) [TQ]
1735) There are so many factions in the USA today, worrying and arguing over absolute drivel to the point that they are building fences to keep out the ants while the elephants stamp their ass into the pavement.
Brett Sloan (attributed) posted by "balance7" on the Court TV OJ Simpson discussion board (3/13/1996)
1736) In his treatment of contemporary black-white relations in the United States, [author Ronald] Segal devotes some critical attention to the current vogue of Afrocentrism. His charge that its advocates tend to substitute an idealized and mythological African past for the realities of the African American historical experience is justified. But as an historian he should have been more curious about why black nationalism or separatism of one kind or another reemerges in the United States whenever the American dream of equality for all begins to appear unrealizable to many African Americans (as seems to be the case right now). His own account of the persistence of racism in the United States might have given him a deeper understanding of what provoked many blacks in the 1920s or today to give up on the hope of being incorporated into a common color-blind society and to embrace a purely African identity as an alternative.
George M. Fredrickson "Home Away from Home" in The New Republic (3/11/1996) [review of The Black Diaspora by Ronald Segal]
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 449 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1725) Once there was a vine which realized that people came every year and took its grapes. It observed that nobody ever showed any gratitude. One day a wise man came along and sat down nearby. "This," thought the vine, "is my opportunity to have the mystery solved." It said, "Wise man, as you may have observed, I am a vine. Whenever my fruit is ripe, people come and take the grapes away. None shows any sign of gratitude. Can you explain this conduct to me?" The wise man thought for a time. Then he said, "The reason, in all probability, is that all those people are under the impression that you cannot help producing grapes."
Idries Shah The Magic Monastery (1972) Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1726) Once upon a time there was a man of great repute for his wisdom, who lived in a certain town. He told the people about life and death, about the planets and the earth, about history and about every kind of unknown thing. One day a dam burst and the people went running to him to tell them how they could solve the problem. The wise man drew himself up to his full height, "I think that you should avoid asking such puerile questions from a man of the mind. I am not a water engineer, I am a theoretician.
Idries Shah The Magic Monastery (1972) Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1727) There was once a man who did one thing right, and one thing wrong, in that order. The first thing was to tell a fool that he was a fool. The second thing was not to have made sure that he was not standing beside a deep well.
Idries Shah The Magic Monastery (1972) Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1728) A deer, in flight before a hunting tiger, paused long enough to call out to a mouse whom he saw sitting quietly beside his hole, "The Lord of the Jungle approaches, the Tiger is in a killing mood, flee for your life!" The mouse nibbled a piece of grass and said, "If you had news of a marauding cat, that would be something which might interest me!"
Idries Shah The Magic Monastery (1972) Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1729) A dervish was sitting by the roadside when a haughty courier with his retinue, riding past in the opposite direction, struck him with a cane, shouting, "Out of the way, you miserable wretch!" When they had swept past, the dervish rose and called after them, "May you attain all that you desire in the world, even up to its highest ranks!" A bystander, much impressed by this scene, approached the devout man and said to him, "Please tell me whether your words were motivated by generosity of spirit, or because the desires of the world will undoubtedly corrupt that man even more?" "O man of bright countenance, " said the dervish, "has it not occurred to you that I said what I did because people who attain their real desires would not need to ride about striking dervishes?"
Idries Shah The Magic Monastery (1972) Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1730) No answer is in itself an answer.
Sufi proverb quoted by Idries Shah in Caravan of Dreams (1968) Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1731) A man of Merv, well known as the home of complicated thinkers, ran shouting one night throughout the city's streets. "Thief, Thief!" he cried. The people surrounded him, and when he was a little calmer, asked, "Where was the thief?" "In my house." "Did you see him?" "No." "Was anything missing?" "No." "How do you know there was a thief, then?" "I was lying in bed when I remembered that thieves break into houses without a sound, and move very quietly. I could hear nothing, so I knew that there was a thief in the house, you fool!"
Niamat Khan in Caravan of Dreams (1968) Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1732) A man said to a Dervish, "Why do I not see you more often?" The Dervish replied, "Because the words "Why have you not been to see me?' are sweeter to my ear than the words 'Why have you come again?'"
Mulla Jami in Caravan of Dreams (1968) Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
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 449 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1719) The budget is a mythical beanbag. Congress votes mythical beans into it, and then tries to reach in and pull real beans out.
Will Rogers The Best of Will Rogers (1979) collected by Bryan Sterling Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1720) New York, that city from which no weary traveler returns without drawing again on the hometown bank.
Will Rogers The Best of Will Rogers (1979) collected by Bryan Sterling Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1721) Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will Rogers The Best of Will Rogers (1979) collected by Bryan Sterling Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1722) There is nothing as easy as denouncing. It don't take much to see that something is wrong, but it does take some eyesight to see what will put it right again.
Will Rogers The Best of Will Rogers (1979) collected by Bryan Sterling Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1723) Went down and spoke at the lawyers' convention last night. They didn't think much of the remark I had made about driving the shysters out of their profession. They seemed to be kinder in doubt just who would have to leave.
Will Rogers The Best of Will Rogers (1979) collected by Bryan Sterling Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
1724) The Lord so constituted everybody that no matter what color you are, you require about the same amount of nourishment.
Will Rogers The Best of Will Rogers (1979) collected by Bryan Sterling Ron Robertson, personal e-mail (2/28/1996)
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 449 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1717) [I]mitating images, sounds and gestures is part of the way humans have always communicated. But this used to be local: a matter of copying the neighbor who sews well or parodying a cousin who walks funny. What's special now is that the advertising, news and entertainment media have created and disseminated a stock of images whose potency transcends local boundaries, and computer technology has made it easier for people to use and manipulate them. [...]
Although we all use and understand this language of image, sound and gesture, few of us give it much conscious thought. [...] We live our lives in a great sea of communication and manipulation, where fragments of high culture are constantly being repeated, combined, repackaged and adapted. [...]
In a culture that uses up imagery incessantly, recycling is inevitable. Introductory art-history courses tend to consist of compendiums of familiar quotations. And even if you never took the course, the designers and art directors who are producing the imagery surely did. [...]
Part of what's involved in quotation and appropriation is just plain laziness. The images that get quoted are often not the best, merely the closes to hand. [...] What familiarity breeds isn't contempt. It's reuse.
1718) [The] kind of thinking [...] which refuses to make distinctions among artists on the basis of color or nationality or gender, which insists on inclusion rather than exclusion, is hardly fashionable with the current tribalism known as multiculturalism and cultural diversity. But it represents [...] the only kind of thinking that can prepare the way for great art, and builds the path to a reconciled society.
Robert Brustein "More Noise Than Funk" The New Republic (3/4/1996) [review of the George C. Wolfe / Savion Glover musical production Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk at the Public Theatre]
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 449 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
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
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
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
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.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
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
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.
1785) The function of a good newspaper and therefore of a good journalist is to see life steady and see it whole.
1789) [The] real purpose [of journalism] is to satisfy the general desire for information to have meaning. People want to know the details, but they also want to know what the details mean. [...] What we read in the papers and see or hear on TV and radio should provide context that gives meaning to information.
1794) Journalists are not like scientists, observing the behavior of fruit flies but not influencing what the flies might do. They inescapably change the reality of whatever they are observing by whether and how they choose to write about it. [...] The conventions of choosing "the news" are so familiar, and so much of the process happens by learned and ingrained habits, that it is easy for journalists to forget that the result reflects decisions, rather than some kind of neutral scientific truth.
1783) [A talent for business] is an indefinable endowment, a sort of genetic luck perhaps, in which one need not invent anything or even start up a useful enterprise. Intelligence-corporate seems to be similar to intelligence-military, a gift for strategy in serious battle.
1769) You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.
1753) Inspect ever piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.
The Red Sox were down 3 games to 1 against the Indians in the ALCS and came back to win, then went on to dominate the Rockies and sweep the World Series. They're this year's World Champions, and I congratulate them.
1738) Those of us lucky enough to have fallen in love with cinema in the 60's and 70's have shed many tears at the loss of this once faithful, inspired and surprising lover.
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