Friday, November 09, 2007
 

(3089/898) From Rozz Tox

Gary Panter - self-portrait
1866) Item 4: We say enough to the instigators of game show design for we are sick and dizzy. Show us the backs of these monstrous facades, for even bare plywood is a healthier texture. Oh you seekers of the new who run terrified from history into the clutches of an eternal life where no electric shaver can be built to last. [...]

Item 8: Beautiful and effective communicative marketing and aesthetic media are not innately evil; merely seductive. However, seductive aesthetics and media are prone to undermine common sense and vision in a capitalistic culture. Our own creations have shamed us. Teaching us that the hand and opinion of the individual are not as legitimate as that of opinion transmuted and inflated by broadcast [...] especially when that opinion is on 80-pound coated stock, in full color [...] or when that opinion steals invisibly and incomprehensibly into a box in our homes. Would that society reveled in certain varieties of vandalism and disarray. May we mow our lawns and remain civilized. [...]

Item 10: In a capitalistic society such as the in which we live, aesthetics as an endeavor flows thorough a body which is built of free enterprise and various illnesses. In boom times art may be supported by wildcat speculation or my excess funds in form of grants from the state or patronship as a tax write-off. Currently we are suffering from a lean economy. By necessity we must infiltrate popular mediums. We are building a business-based art movement. This is not new. Admitting it is. [...]

Item 12: Waiting for art talent scouts? There are no art talent scouts. Face it, no one will seek you out. No one gives a shit. [...]

Item 15: Law: If you want better media, go make it. [...]

Final Note: Capitalism for good or ill is the river in which we sink or swim, and stocks the supermarket.
Gary Panter
"The Rozz Tox Manifesto" (c.1980)
posted by Marc Librescu [PKD] (7/3/1996)

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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/09/2007 11:55:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) A quick miscellany

1863) "Race" is a cultural category disguised as biology.
Richard White
"The Return of the Natives" in
The New Republic (7/8/1996)
[review of Killing the White Man's Indian (1996)
by Fergus M. Bordewich and
Where White Men Fear to Tread (1995)
by Russell Means]

1864) What a wonderful world it would be if every lawyer would kill a priest and be hanged for it.
unknown
posted by Ron Robertson on the Court TV
Elements of Crime discussion board (6/30/1996)
Grandpa Simpson
1865) I used to be "with it", but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm "with" isn't "it", and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you...
The Simpsons (animated TV program)
Episode 7.24: "Homerpalooza" (5/19/1996)
written by Brent Forrester
directed by Wesley Archer
series created by Matt Groening
spoken by the character "Grandpa (Abe) Simpson"
voiced by Dan Castellaneta
"sig" (signature) of Jon Drukman [IDM] (7/2/1996)

Sources

[IDM] - Internet Intelligent Dance Music 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 437 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/09/2007 01:27:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Thursday, November 08, 2007
 

(3089/898) Stephenson's Zodiac

Neal Stephenson1860) Three hundred years ago, in Massachusetts, criminals were put in stocks in the public square and mocked. Today, we can't send [executives of large corporations which pollute the environment] to jail, but we can kick them out of civilized society, put them through unendurable stress [by exposing them in the media], and that's just as effective.
Neal Stephenson
Zodiac (1988)

1861) [T]he ability to think rationally is pretty rare, even in prestigious universities. We're in the TV age know and people think by linking images in their brains. That's not always bad, but it [can lead] to some pretty ludicrous shit [...]
Neal Stephenson
Zodiac (1988)

1862) Sangamon's Principle[:] The simpler the molecule, the better the drug.
Neal Stephenson
Zodiac (1988)

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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/08/2007 11:56:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Buy and Be Happy

Robert Duvall in THX-1138
1859) You are a true believer. Blessings of the State; blessings of the masses. Thou art a subject of the Divine, created in the image of Man, by the masses, for the masses. Let us be thankful we have Commerce. Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And be happy.
THX-1138 (film, 1971)
screenplay by George Lucas & Walter Murch,
directed by George Lucas
spoken by the character "OMM"
voiced by James Wheaton
"sig" (signature) of Erich Schneider,
seen on rec.art.sf.written (6/29/1996)

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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/08/2007 11:28:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) An American trait

1858) Americans have always been besotted with the power of the individual.
Caroline Fraser
"Mrs. Eddy Builds Her Empire" in
New York Review of Books (7/11/1996)
[review of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science by Mark Twain,
and other books]
Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name
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 438 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/08/2007 11:15:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Politics, anyone?

1856) "Getting people elected, whether we like it or not - it's not pretty [...] But getting people elected unfortunately has a lot to do with dividing, setting up bases of support and fracturing off those that - you know it's like busting a big rock."

"That is different from what it takes to govern [...] 'cause what it takes to govern is all about finding a consensus on different issues and bringing people together, people who don't always agree, under some sense of common purpose. And we are obsessed with getting people elected and we are obsessed with the show and so are you [...] So we provide daily entertainment. What we are not providing is serious solutions to what's going on in this country. Not us [...] not anybody."
Mark Goodin
campaign strategist for Oliver North (1994)
quoted by Todd S. Purdum in
"Tracking the North Campaign,
From Dirt to Ashes
" in
Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure Section (6/16/1996)

1857) [P]oliticians respond to changes in the culture. They do not dictate them.
Garry Wills
"The Would-Be Progressives" in
New York Review of Books (7/11/1996)
[review of They Only Look Dead
by E.J. Dionne and other books]

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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/08/2007 10:59:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Major Major

Joseph Heller in 1961
1855) Major Major Major Major had had a difficult time from the start. [...] In the hospital corridor [...] Major Major's father [...] filled out the birth certificate without faltering, betraying no emotion at all as he handed the completed form to the floor nurse. [...] "I have named the boy Caleb." he announced to [his wife] [...] in a soft voice. "In accordance with your wishes." The woman made no answer and slowly the man smiled. He had planned it all perfectly, for his wife was asleep and would never know that he had lied to her as she lay on her sickbed in the poor ward of the county hospital [...] A lesser man might have wavered that day in the hospital corridor, a weaker man might have compromised on such excellent substitutes as Drum Major, Minor Major, Sergeant Major, or C Sharp Major, but Major Major's father had waited fourteen years for such an opportunity, and he was not a person to waste it. [...] Not until Major Major was enrolling in kindergarten was the discovery of his real name made, and the effects were disastrous. The news killed his mother, who just lost her will to live and wasted away and died. [...] On Major Major himself the consequences were only slightly less severe. It was a harsh and stunning realization that we was not, as he had always been led to believe, Caleb Major, but instead was some total stranger named Major Major Major about whom he knew absolutely nothing and about whom nobody else had ever heard before. What playmates he had withdrew from him and never returned, disposed, as they were, to distrust all strangers, especially ones who had already deceived them by pretending to be someone they had known for years. Nobody would have anything to do with him. [...]

[T]he Army [took Major Major] in as a private and [made] him a major four days later so that Congressman with nothing else on their minds could go trotting back and forth through the streets of Washington D.C., chanting, "Who promoted Major Major? Who promoted Major Major?"

Actually, Major Major had been promoted by an I.B.M. machine with a sense of humor almost as keen as his father's.
Joseph Heller
Catch-22 (1961)
[Note: cf #1842 Lears]
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 438 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/08/2007 10:15:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Getting a grip on science


1849) What is truly troubling about the "cultural" or "critical" study of science as it tends to be carried out in universities today is what is troubling about postmodernism in general. By teaching that the distinction between true and false is one more repressive human fiction, postmodernism promotes contempt for the truth and undermines the virtues of intellectual integrity. Those who have never performed an experiment or mastered an equation can, therefore, enjoy a sneering superiority based on the alleged insight that science is a form of literary invention distinguished primarily by its outsized social cachet.
Peter Berkowitz
"Science Fiction" in
The New Republic (7/1/1996)

[discussing Sokal's article "Transgressing the Boundaries:
Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of
Quantum Gravity
", in the journal Social Text
(Spring/Summer 1996), and his description of the hoax in
"A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies"
in the journal Lingua Franca (May 1996)]

1850) I never met [Theodore J.] Kaczynski [the Unabomber] [...] [b]ut in the blaze of publicity after his arraignment, I recognized where I'd seen him before: in the movies. In Hollywood, scientists star in dramas of destruction. In their quest for power, they bring trouble on us all. If convicted, Kaczynski will be perfect - he'll get top billing in the celluloid pantheon of scientists becoming monsters, replacing Vincent Price plotting murders in his laboratory or Dr. Strangelove wheeling through the War Room. He will become the apotheosis of the stereotype, the archetype of the scientist, run amok.

I don't want him as the governing image of scientists in popular imagination. If I get to pick an embodiment, it will be in the likeness of the numberless people who have extended my leisure time and life expectancy with their intelligent work, people exemplified by Paul Ehrlich or Marie Curie but never by the gaunt face of Theodore J. Kaczynski.
Anne Eisenberg
"Among the Papers in Kacyzinski's Cabin"
Scientific American (6/1996)

1851) [S]cience is an attempt [...] to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course.
Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World (1996)
quoted by Joe Nickell in
"A Bright Light" [review] in
Scientific American (6/1996)

1852) Evidently the New Science, similarly to the New Math, has developed a New Scientific Method which requires no empirical evidence or rational argumentation, and of course the demand for coherence, logic, or "truth" is simply our old Eurocentric historical imperialist baggage being unjustly rammed down the throats of the innocents.
Zenon M. Feszczak
posted on [AMB] (6/13/1996)

1853) Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas

Every revolutionary idea – in science, politics, art, or whatever – seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
  1. "It's completely impossible – don't waste my time";

  2. "It's possible, but it's not worth doing";

  3. "I said it was a good idea all along."
Arthur C. Clarke
The Promise of Space (1968)
[Note: In The Quote Verifier [QV], Ralph Keyes gives this similar quote:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Although frequently attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer, no trace of it in his writing has been found. Keyes concludes that it probably came from Louis Agassiz, perhaps elaborating on an earlier thought by Schopenhauer. Others who have had similiar quotes attributed to them, aside from Clarke, are Michel de Montaigne, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Huxley, William James, Elbert Hubbard, J.B.S. Haldane and Charles Kettering.

Clarke's Laws - First Law: 110, 111, 751, 752; Second Law: 753; Third Law: 109, 647, 754, 755, 1013, 1057, 1402]
1854) Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.
Alan Turing
quoted by John D. Barrow in
Theories of Everything (1991)
Sources

[AMB] - Internet Ambient Music mailing list
[SF] - Science Fictionalisms (1995)
[QV] - The Quote Verifier (2006)



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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/08/2007 02:16:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Wednesday, November 07, 2007
 

(3089/898) Some more observations

How photos are retouched
1839) [R]emember that [fashion] magazines are selling images of what you can't get. It's about unconsummated desire. The object is to make you want to go out and buy lipstick so you can feel better about yourself.
anonymous fashion magazine editor
quoted by John Tierney in
"The Big City: Masochism Central" in
New York Times Magazine (6/16/1996)

1840) [An online friend] said to me not long ago that e-mail discussions, by their very nature, required exaggeration. She is correct, IMO, to a certain degree. We feel the need to ensure the attention we think our letter deserves. So there is a great temptation to overstate and exaggerate. And before you know it, some becomes all, sometimes becomes always, sometimes not becomes never, the rejection of a part becomes the rejection of the whole, the failure to read a certain book becomes a failure to read all books, and pride in flag and country becomes chauvinism.
Sanya A. Smyth
personal e-mail, (6/13/1996)

1841) Both [Howard Hughes and his father] had that cleverness and ruthlessness and attention to detail usually called a "knack" for making money.
Donald E. Westlake
"A Prison of His Own Making" in
New York Times Book Review (6/16/1996)
[review of Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
by Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske]
John Wayne (nee Marion Morrison)
1842) [John Wayne's] attachment to a single unchanging cinematic role may have stemmed from his own uncertain sense of who he was. Before he was John Wayne he was Marion Mitchell Morrison, but from his birth in 1907 until he was 5 he was Marion Robert Morrison. His family called him Robert. When he was 5 his mother had another son, and named him Robert, and told her first-born that from now on he would have a new middle name and be called Marion. In one fell swoop the boy had lost his pride of place, his mother's lap and his name. One can only imagine the effect of this on a young child.
Jackson Lears
"Screw Ambiguity" in
The New Republic (4/22/1996)
[review of John Wayne: American
by Randy Roberts and James S. Olsen]
[Note: cf. #1855 Heller]
1843) There is a kind of ambitious young person who mistakes frenetic movement for advancement in the world. He'll call you from the road and say, "I'm in Bangladesh on business, heading for Iceland," and you know that he thinks this is sufficient explanation for his purpose in life.
Michael Lewis
"Campaign Journal: Automatic Pilot" in
The New Republic (6/24/1996)

1844) On the plane heading back East I look up and take a mental photograph. A wise old man once told me how to do this: look hard, close your eyes, try to recall what you have seen. Repeat this procedure three times and you'll always remember the picture.
Michael Lewis
"Campaign Journal: Automatic Pilot" in
The New Republic (6/24/1996)

1845) Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
Ron Robertson
personal e-mail (06/20/1996)

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone1846) If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone.
The Godfather: Part II (film, 1974)
screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo
based on the novel by Mario Puzo
directed by Francis Ford Coppola
spoken by the character "Michael Corleone"
played by Al Pacino

1847) Where it is a question of criminal justice, it is all too easy to imagine a society that wished to humiliate its criminals, but was fastidious about seeing that only the guilty were humiliated. The society depicted in The Scarlet Letter is a fair approximation of this state of things - sinners were not only to be punished, but were to be cast out of society. Still, it was a society that cared very much that what we suffered was our just deserts. The Alabama legislature recently reintroduced chain gangs; and its aim was precisely to humiliate the prisoners by doing so - the modern, lightweight shackles would do none of the physical damage that old-fashioned chains had done, but they would do just as much emotional damage. Lawmakers took it for granted that nobody ought to be in an Alabama jail without having committed a crime; they did not repudiate justice, but they expressly denied that criminals had to be treated decently.
Alan Ryan
"The Politics of Dignity"
New York Review of Books (7/11/1996)
[review of The Decent Society
by Avishai Margalit]
William S. Burroughs
1848) No one owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.
William S. Burroughs (attributed)
posted by Deborah L. Benedict on the
Court-TV message boards (6/23/1996)


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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/07/2007 11:54:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Tuesday, November 06, 2007
 

(3089/898) Silicon Snake Oil

Clifford Stoll1831) Online debates of tough issues are often polarized by messages taking extreme positions. It's a great medium for trivia and hobbies, but not the place for reasoned, reflective judgment. Surprisingly often, discussion degenerate into acrimony, insults and flames.

[...] Virtually everything is debated on the Usenet: whether computers are best left on at night, if cats can be fed a vegetarian diet, of abortion should be legal.

Predictable replies - maybe, maybe, and maybe, but each with more stridency. Plenty of opinions, but not much informed dialogue, and even less consensus.

Of course, since there are no easy answers, arguments over the Usenet are seldom resolved. They'll degenerate into name-calling; eventually one of the participants figuratively walks away, and a new debate begins.

Now, recurrent debates aren't bad - they're just circular and tedious.
Clifford Stoll
Silicon Snake Oil (1995)

1832) Network junkies excitedly tell me that self-publishing leapfrogs over publishers, editors and broadcasters. The network passes messages from your keyboard to a thousand other monitors. It's not one-to-one communication like the telephone or one-to-many broadcasting like radio. Rather it's a many-to-many medium, a garden where freedom of speech blooms.

But the reality is that with millions of users posting messages to the network, the valuable gets lost in the dross. There are no pointers to the good stuff - you don't know which messages are worth reading. You can select by subject area, but there's no way to pick only the interesting comments.

With everyone able to upload their work to the network, the Internet begins to resemble publishers' slush piles. It's up to the reader to separate out the dregs. What's missing from the network are genuine editors.

Ah, editors! The bane of writers, reporters, and publishers, editors yet serve as a barometer of literary quality and advocates for the reader. Without them on the net, you simply have no way of telling what's worth reading.

By eliminating editors, our networks demonstrate their importance. There are plenty of writers on the Usenet, but few editors. It shows.

Indeed the best newsgroups rely on voluntary moderators, serving as unpaid filters. [...] Their attempts to impose order on the chaos generate resentment, accusations of censorship, and occasional subversion; but it's the moderators who give shape and direction to the newsgroups. There are so few moderated newsgroups only because nobody's willing to put in the long, unpaid hours.
Clifford Stoll
Silicon Snake Oil (1995)

1833) Since there's no identification required on the Internet, you can be as anonymous as you wish. You can change your name and identity as you please, and you location may be little more than a node.

You can invent a more confident persona, freed from shyness and physical limitations. A housewife in Boise, Idaho, gives herself the name Amazon Gal; a New York City teenager becomes Ranchhand. At this masquerade party, you truly don't know who you're associating with.

[...] As my computer screen scrolls before me, I see each person with the same font, style, and packaging. In person, we'd sense a difference in clothing, facial expression, accent, and sex. All these disappear online.

[...] Tailoring a persona is an experience of otherness, a way to escape the here and now.
Clifford Stoll
Silicon Snake Oil (1995)
Silicon Snake Oil
1834) In some ways, the Internet reminds me of talk radio - the land where anyone can have his say. A forum for both fringe and trivial? A place where there's plenty of talkers and few listeners?

Uh-oh ... there's a closer analogue. It reminds me of CB radio.
Clifford Stoll
Silicon Snake Oil (1995)

1835) [I]solated facts don't make an education. Meaning doesn't come from data alone. Creative problem solving depends on context, interrelationships, and experience. The surrounding matrix may be more important than the individual lumps of information. And only human beings can teach the connections between things.
Clifford Stoll
Silicon Snake Oil (1995)

1836) A little icon blinks whenever a message arrives at my computer. [...] This gives electronic mail a powerful sense of immediacy. [...] "Open me now," the message tells us. [...] The Internet propagates a sense of urgency. Writers once gave me a week to answer a letter. Today, if I don't reply within a couple of days, they'll ping me again.

My natural reaction? Type out an answer and ship it across the ether. Yet after I hit enter, I don't get another crack. I'm sending out my first draft. Unpolished, unedited. [...]

E-mail [...] discourages reflection. While logged on, it's difficult to compose a message and then push it aside for review [...] it's too easy to press the send button. As a result, many letters are sent without thinking about their consequences.
Clifford Stoll
Silicon Snake Oil (1995)

1837) In 1979, as NASA's Pioneer spacecraft flew by Saturn, I helped record the down-linked data onto magnetic tape. To make certain that we didn't lose any of this priceless data, we saved it in four formats: 9-track magnetic tape, 7-track tape, paper tape, and punch cards. That's a lot of boxes and cards [...]

Fifteen years later, all those cards [...] [are] in fine shape, but I can't read 'em. Punch-card and paper-tape readers just don't exists anymore. Nor do those big reel-to-reel tape recorders. [...]

Think of the many extinct formats: 78-rpm records; 2-inch quad-scan videotape, phonograph cylinders; paper tape; 80-column punch cards; 100-column punch-cards; 7-track digital tape; reel-to-reel audio tape; 8-track tapes; DECTape; 8-millimeter movies; 5-inch glass lantern slides.

Then think of the formats that are disappearing today: 45- and 33-rpm vinyl records; 5 1/4-inch floppy disks; Betamax tapes; single-side, single-density diskettes; EBCDIC coding.

[...] Today's information isn't just magnetic domains on ferric oxide or simple bumps on a glimmering plastic disk. The format of the data is essential [...]
Clifford Stoll
Silicon Snake Oil (1995)

1838) Not all information is good information. We're already getting so much information, so fast, that it's more than our brains can process, digest and evaluate.
Charles Osgood
quoted by Clifford Stoll in
Silicon Snake Oil (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 440 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/06/2007 02:19:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Have You Seen The Stars Tonite?

1830)
Have you seen the stars tonite?
Would you like to go up on 'A' deck and look at them with me?
Have you seen the stars tonite?
Would you like to go up for a stroll and keep me company?

Do you know
We could go
We are free
Any place you can think of
We could be

Have you seen the stars tonite?
Have you looked at all?
The family of stars.
Paul Kantner & David Crosby
"Have You Seen The Stars Tonite" (song) from
Paul Kantner & Jefferson Starship
Blows Against The Empire (record album, 1970)

Paul Kanter & Jefferson Starship - Blows Against the Empire
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 440 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/06/2007 02:31:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) The death penalty

1829) "Nothing is gained by execution, and a lot is lost," [criminologist James Alan] Fox maintains. It costs more, largely because of the legal machinery needed to ensure a fair trial and not, as many people believe, because of repeated appeals. Given the sentence, prosecutors take more care in preparation, and judges give the defense a wider latitude. The argument that it is expensive to lock up murderers for life does not wash with Fox, either. He disputes the typically cited estimates of $30,000 to $40,000 a year, which comes from dividing the correctional budget by the number of inmates. Most costs are fixed and do not drop when prisoners are executed. "You can't call up the commissioner and tell him we're going to cut his salary because there is one fewer inmate," Fox sneers. "The actual expendable cost for incarcerating that one person is probably a couple of thousand dollars."

"We have a very good alternative to the death penalty, which is life in prison," he explains. "One reason so many American thirst for the death penalty is that they don't trust the criminal justice system." They fear that such offenders will be given parole after only a brief jail term. But to Fox, the system works pretty well, given that millions of people pass through it. It is the rare instance of a corrupt judge or a recidivist parolee that captures the front pages. "Good news is no news," he concludes, "and bad news is big news."
Philip Yam
"Profile: James Alan Fox;
Catching A Coming Crime Wave" in
Scientific American (6/1996)

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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/06/2007 02:01:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Monday, November 05, 2007
 

(3089/898) Tainted Truth

Tainted Truth
1817) Asking the right question is the pillar of good science, both social and otherwise, as well as a source of endless debate and despair among researchers. In survey work, the perfect question has become the Holy Grail, forever out of reach. Researchers dedicate themselves to the question, experimenting with words to create the perfect inquiry - a question that does not presume, lead or color. But [...] there will never be a truly neutral question.

Researchers know one thing about questions: However precise and neutral they seem to be, they often have unpredictable effects - response effects, researchers call them. Response effects arise from the quirkiness of language and the complexities of human emotion - pride, embarrassment, self-righteousness, contempt or any of the hundreds of other strings that play when one person speaks to another. Even under ideal circumstances, when asked to remember something recent and concrete, recall is often different from fact. [...]

The imprecision of language exacerbates the problem. Single words that mean the same thing con convey wildly different ideas. Taxes or revenues? MX missile or Peacekeeper? Pro-choice or pro-abortion? Welfare or public assistance? Department of War or Department of Defense? [...] S.I. Hayakawa called some words "purr-words" and others "snarl-words." A young monk was once rebuffed by his superior when he asked if he could smoke while he prayed. Ask a different question, a friend advised. Ask if you can pray wile you smoke. [...]

[R]esearchers now know that the order in which questions are asked is as critical as the wording of any of them. [...] The wording of questions, their order, their intonation, the pacing - are all so subtly persuasive that they can look innocent even thought they have been consciously manipulated. The pitfalls of the researcher's craft have become the tools of its corruption.
Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1818) The thinner the data, the thicker the dogma.
unnamed researcher
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1819) Pecuniary Truth: Truth is what sells. Truth is what you want people to believe. Truth is that which is not legally false.
Jules Henry
Culture Against Man (1963)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1820) Deception is often undertaken by those who know or assume that they have a more objective view of the situation than those to whom they speak. [...] [They] sincerely believe that they manipulate facts in order to convey a "truer picture".
Sissela Bok
Lying (1978)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

Cynthia Crossen1821) Overseeing advertising claims is a relatively modern phenomenon, another consequence of our increasingly complex world. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, people typically had a "craft knowledge" of most things they bought - they understood how the product was made and how to judge its quality - and advertising rarely outweighed it. But as the number of products and their technological sophistication grew, people could not maintain a craft knowledge of most items they bought - their blender, their lawn mower, even their cake mix. Today a few people retain knowledge of cars or of items used for a hobby, such as fishing or skiing. But most have neither the opportunity nor the expertise to inspect technologically sophisticated goods coming from around the globe.
Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1822) When the people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.
E.G. Bulwer-Lytton
Alice; Or, The Mysteries (1838)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1823) [T]hat great compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs which is called public opinion.
Sir Robert Peel
letter to John Wilson Croker (3/23/1820)
Croker Papers (1884)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1824) It isn't polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It's right and wrong.
Harry S. Truman
quoted by David McCollough in
Truman (1992)
quoted by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1825) In public policy debates and deliberations, words like decency, right and wrong, fairness, trust and hope have lost their force. Numbers, which can offer so much illumination and guidance if used professionally and ethically, have become the tools of advocacy. Even if their cause is worthy, people who massage data undermine the power and purity of statistics that may be crucial to future decisions. There are numbers we will never know, and we should admit it. It is essential to understand the homeless before making policy about them. But [...] understanding is not the same as counting.
Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1826) The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told at all times. If we do not penalise false statements made in error, we open up the way, don't you see, for false statements by intention. And of course a false statement of fact made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.
C.P. Snow
The Search (1959)
quoted (in part) by Cynthia Crossen in
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1827) The idea of seeking truth through advocacy is tested most often in America's courts of law. At the heart of the legal system is the belief that truth lies among the self-interested claims of competing parties. The ethics of [social] research are quite different. Self-interest, though acknowledged to be inevitable, is seen as something to be staunchly resisted. Although scientists and social scientists who appear in court insist their work meets their profession's highest standards, in fact their work always supports their clients' positions, or else it and they are simply dropped from the action.

The bald self-interest at the heart of litigation research is only one of the many ways it differs from the academic search for truth. A court constructs its view of truth from the materials before it. If a witness says black is white, and no one contradicts it, then for the purpose of the court, black is white. Legal adversaries stake out extreme positions, making consensus unlikely. In research, however, consensus is an indicator - though an imperfect one - of truth.

The methods by which the two disciplines seek truth also differ. In uncorrupted research, the ideal is to search for an unknown, probably hypothesized, truth; in law, it is to assemble facts to support a predetermined position.
Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(1994)

1828) Since it has become standard procedure for many kinds of cases to produce two sets of competing data, judges and juries often fall back on the more subjective judgment of credibility: which expert had better credentials, was more articulate or held up better under cross-examination.
Cynthia Crossen
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact
in America
(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 441 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/05/2007 01:19:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Sunday, November 04, 2007
 

(3089/898) When you take stuff like this seriously, instead of just enjoying the humor of it, you end up invading Iraq

1816) Back in London, I was having dinner in the Groucho Club ... when one more person started in on the Stars and Stripes. Eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about "Your country's never been invaded." ... "You don't know the horror, the suffering. You think war is..."

I snapped.

"A John Wayne movie," I said. "That's what you were going to say, wasn't it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think life is a John Wayne movie – with good guys and bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know something Mr. Limey Poofter? You're right. And let me tell you who those bad guys are. They're us. WE BE BAD."

"We're the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We're three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock-market crash on our mother's side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, and roll them all together and it wouldn't give us room to park our cars. We're the big boys, Jack, the original giant economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d'Antibes. And we've got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go."

"You say our country's never been invaded? You're right, little buddy. Because I'd like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who'd have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying cheerio. Hell can't hold our sock hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit farther and buy more things than you know the names of. I'd rather be a junkie in a New York jail than king, queen and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch."
P.J. O'Rourke
from an essay originally published in
Rolling Stone (1986),
republished in Holiday in Hell (1988),
quoted, in part, by Peggy Noonan in
What I Saw At The Revolution (1990)
Sanya A. Smyth, personal e-mail (6/4/1996)

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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/04/2007 11:54:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Scattershot

Bernard Shaw
1810) [George Bernard] Shaw was, on any reckoning, a nutter, even by the standards of a time when being any sort of political radical seems to have required you to go whole hog in food and clothing faddism and in imbibing whatever daft theories of the self were on offer. Join the Fabians, say, or some other league of socially reformist chums, and immediately you must start exposing your naked body to the sun, get those pores into the air and light, cobble up a pair of sandals for city wear, dine on fruit juice at a socialist vegetarian cafe, wrap your loins in a woolen shirt and worry yourself silly lest your sperm was of the sort declared scientifically degenerate by the latest German sex clinician.
Valentine Cunningham
"Don Juan in Hell" in
New York Times Book Review (6/2/1996)
[review of Bernard Shaw: The Ascent
of the Superman
by Sally Peters]

1811) [For Thomas Sowell] cultures are more than grab bags of quaint customs equally deserving of respect and praise; they involve differences in social choices, economic efficiency and political stability, in the relative significance people attach to such fundamentals as sex, art, thrift, violence and the "particular ways of accomplishing the things that make life possible."
Thurston Clarke
"Culture Capital" in
New York Times Book Review (6/2/1996)
quoting Thomas Sowell from
Migrations and Cultures (1996)

1812) The background interview is a vicious device because it lets officials escape responsibility.
Edwin A. Lehey
quoted by Martin F. Nolan in
"Newsroom Cynics, Listen Up" in
New York Times Book Review (6/2/1996)
[review of News Values: Ideas for
An Information Age
by Jack Fuller]

1813) [P]sychologists Alan Baddeley of England's Cambridge University and Pierre Salame of Strasbourg's Center for Bioclimatic Research [...] gave tests to find out how well French college students could recall nine-digit numbers when subjected to different kinds of environmental noise.

Ninety-five decibel inanimate noise (like a subway train) did not lower ability to store numbers in short-term memory, but human voices did, even when speaking - or singing - in a language the students did not understand.
Janet Asimov
"Science: Sounding Off" in
Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy (5/1996)

1814) Few people truly want raw data, they seek information, taste, even wisdom. Filtering the Net gusher is essential, and finder software continues to improve beyond the simple key-word seekers of today. But these still take our scarcest resource: time. Often gobs of it.
Gregory Benford
"A Scientists's Notebook: Net@Fandom.com" in
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (6/1996)

1815) Idealism in America desperately needs a new language. Those who preach in the old style [...] preach only to the converted, and so they convert no one.
Sara Mosle
"What We Talk About When
We Talk About Education" in
The New Republic (6/20/1996)
[review of Amazing Grace
by Jonathan Kozol and other books
about the "crisis in education"]


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

Ed Fitzgerald | 11/04/2007 06:24:00 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
Smash Mouth - Summer Girl

Poulenc - Piano Music

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

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

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


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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.

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© 2003-2008
Ed Fitzgerald

=o=

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but credit all you take.



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