Primary Care

"[Merle] Haggard, who once derided pot-smoking hippies in his 1969 hit "Okie From Muskogee," got hooked on marijuana after a doctor said it was a good substitute for his Valium habit."

--Dean Goodman, reporting for Reuters

Accountability and Economists

If economists were held accountable in their job performance in the same way as administrative assistants or dishwashers, they would be fired.

--Dean Baker

Who are you for?

"I'm a pastor, not a politician. People always say, 'Rick, are you right wing or left wing?' I say 'I'm for the whole bird.' "

- Rick Warren

On Unification

 

	“It's interesting that so many Obama fans are so eager to throw him under the bus for this decision. I like Rick Warren. He is a brilliant guy and his fight for social justice is rare in conservative Christianity. The fact that he is very conservative makes his voice for social justice much more powerful. For Obama to pick Warren is a unifying act. Much of Obama's campaign was about unifying the country. Obama supporters that are all up in arms about this decision seemed to have forgotten that. Their idea of united Americans is united around liberal social policies. I think this was a good move for Obama.”

- Dustin DeKoekkoek

Legitimacy

The tipping point seems to be the Bernie Madoff $50 billion Ponzi scandal, which represents the grossest failure of authority and hence legitimacy in finance to date in as much as Mr. Madoff was a former chairman of the NASDAQ, for godsake. It’s like discovering that Ben Bernanke is running a meth lab inside the Federal Reserve. And out in the heartland, of course, there is the spectacle of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich trying to desperately dodge a racketeering rap behind an implausible hairdo. What seems to spook people now is the possibility that everybody in charge of everything is a fraud or a crook. Legitimacy has left the system.

--capt dave

Yeah.... (unless maybe i could get a bit of that wanking and stimulus myself? wait! not that "wanking and stimulus"!)

"Could we have "financial system dollars" and "regular dollars," so that their wanking and stimulus can be self contained to the fake economy, while us real guys can pay an honest buck for a hamburger, a buck whose value is backed by virtue of the fact that it represents actual real labor input to the economy that produced something other than a derivative of a derivative of the shadow of a phantom?"

--Hoopajoops LTD
{lightly edited by dkearns72}

And sadder than the bearded lady?

"Critics are to writers not as doctors are to patients but as bearded ladies are to trapeze artists—another, sadder act in the same big show."

-- Adam Gopnik

On Meaning

 If we cannot say no, then our yes means nothing. 

-Peter Block

Message for a society designed around desk-clearing

"If you spend all your time cleaning your desk, you'll just have clean desk. That's not enough."

-- Bill Harley

"As a consequence"

"I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment."

--John Steinbeck

{a special hat/tip to Mark P.}

Yeah, the math has always struck me too.

"When you looked around, you used to be baffled by the ratio of upright people to prone, devastated people. Sure, you understood your math was off. You knew the prone, devastated people were hidden behind locked doors, if they could help it.

But still: There seemed to be a LOT of walking, functioning, smiling, grocery-shopping, 401-K-stuffing, married, baby-having, employed, vacation-planning people in the world, compared to, you know, YOU.

It’s still hard to shake."

--Jenn Mattern

On his Nine Point Investment Plan

All bets are off for the moment, obviously. The big question this week is which one of your neighbors you should eat first when things get bad. And of course I expect some sort of zombie problem. But in normal times, the nine point list is useful.

-Scott Adams

On Leadership

This generation of political leaders is confronting a similar situation, and, so far, they have failed utterly and catastrophically to project any sense of authority, to give the world any reason to believe that this country is being governed.

The American century was created by American leadership, which is scarcer than credit just about now.

-David Brooks

And he's not even Austrian..... (or: "The people who call themselves 'capitalists' these days seem to be anything but")

"Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works"

--John Stuart Mill

Please note: 21st century etiquette.

"There is no socially accepted excuse for being without your cell phone. “I didn’t have my phone”: that just does not sound believable. Either you are lying or you are depressed or you have something to hide. If you receive a text, therefore, you are obliged instantaneously to reply to it, if only to confirm that you are not one of those people who can be without a phone."

--Louis Menand

On looking on the bright side

"...the evidence clearly suggests that the future will be more of a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome-style apocalypse. When you talk about zombies you're just fear-mongering."

--Louis Jeansonne

Let's boil it all down, shall we, on a question underlying most of the $50 TRILLION derivatives market

"If it takes a rocket scientist [to] explain a trade (with no universal agreement as to the explanation) and there is no performing underlying asset, it’s a Ponzi scheme."

--Anonymous, 12:43pm


{Perhaps the title of this post should have been "Goodnight and Good Luck"}

Got pitchforks?

The sight of the overclass clutching our children to their pudgy selves as human shields while shooting at each other is a shaping event. All those ancien regime aristocracies who got mobbed to death: It was ugly, but they bought their ticket in the queue on merit. Mmmphh.

--Richard Kline

On Not Being Depressed

I have always said that we do not have to worry about another Great Depression because we know how to get out of one now. (it's simple -- spend money.) The problem is that "we" may not be the ones deciding policy.

- Dean Baker

Blogged with the Flock Browser

What's next?

"But forces have been set in motion and momentum rules. One thing for sure: the American public is about to undergo a severe mood adjustment. There will be fewer American Idol fans and worshippers of Donald Trump by the close of business on Friday."

--James Kunstler

Ever heard a 30-year veteran bond trader talk like this?

"The conventional wisdom held that the successful passage of the rescue legislation would introduce some stability into the markets. The ink was not dry on the legislation when stocks began to head south again, and in a serious manner. It is beginning to look as though the authorities well need divine intervention to save the day.

My suggestion is that members of the staff at the New York Fed should take some time and trek two blocks south to Our Lady of Victory Church at Pine and William. They should get down on their knees and pray and then light a candle.

That looks like the only viable solution for now."

--John Jansen

At least there's always gallows humour.....

"Shall all the countries join hands and sing kumbaya,

or would a nice little war somewhere (like central Europe) be more effective?

or perhaps, a multinational, coordinated lynching of bankers and hedgies on [TV] be paliative?"

JimPortlandOR | 10.05.08 - 3:54 pm | #

Well, that's comforting.....

So that is where the US is now: in the middle of a financial crisis, with the economy sliding into recession, monetary policy already at maximum easing, and fiscal transfers impotent. That is an unenviable situation, to say the least....


--Martin Feldstein

On the inner male voice and the call of the wild.

There's times I'd like to bed down on a sofa,
And let some pretty lady rub my back.
And spend the early morning drinking coffee,
Talkin' about when I'll be coming back.

But I don't let no no woman tie me down,
And I'll never get too old to get around.
I wanna die along the highway, and rot away,
Like some old high-line pole,
Rest this ramblin' fever in my soul.

--Merle Haggard

On "Helping"

"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back."

- Anonymous

Blogged with the Flock Browser

On hard-won lessons, personal and cultural.

This is the work of an older and wiser thinker, one who has understood that most painfully achieved axiom of Western civilization: In religious disputation, invective achieves absolutely nothing.

--Jacques Berlinerblau (speaking of Michael Novak)

On the Bailout

And if they're going to do something, then what they ought to do is make loans, which the financial institutions have to repay with interest. And if you think -- that's an idea which the Chileans have used in a bigger crisis than this for them in 1982, and it worked for them.

People paid back the loans. They weren't allowed to pay dividends until they repaid the loans. They weren't allowed to take bonuses until they repaid the loans. I think that's the way -- if we're going to do this, then that's the way we should do it.

- Allan Meltzer

On Peer Pressure

“Because Jess made me.”

- Dan Kearns

For the Love of Blue Collars

Many liberals claim to love working-class families, but the moment they glimpse a hunter with an uneven college record, they hop on chairs and call for disinfectant.

- David Brooks

How to make a blue-stater blue.....

"A theory of democracy, however intellectually sophisticated, that is neither understood nor accepted by the demos for which it is contrived is a theory of democracy both misbegotten and stillborn. Two hundred years ago, and even more so today, the American people, from whom democratic legitimacy is derived, are incorrigibly and overwhelmingly, however confusedly, religious. This America continues to be, in the telling phrase of Chesterton, “a nation with the soul of a church.”"

--Richard John Neuhaus

On taking on capitalism's iron rules, or "what is hubris?"

"Government has not been able to hold bank the forces which have taken down financial giant after financial giant. Capitalism demands pain. Good risk is rewarded and imprudent risk is punished. We were engaged in an orgy of imprudent risk taking for nearly a decade and now a heavy price will be paid for the violation of so many simple and common sense precepts of trading."

--John Jansen

On Leadership

"Well as far as I’m concerned, I’ve had about enough cowboy for a while - an independent maverick is exactly what we DON’T need. We need a bridge builder - someone who will rebuild our relationships with our allies, cross party lines to find workable solutions to the political stand-offs of the last eight years, surround himself with others who can challenge and inform him, and lead us forward."

- Sarah Case

On Misquoting

"... the ad itself doesn't bother explaining how the candidates differ on school vouchers, the subject of my column. Instead, it insults our intelligence by expecting us to believe that Obama thinks kindergarteners should be taught how to use condoms before they're taught to read. Right. And Joe Biden eats puppies for breakfast." 

- Steve Chapman

On Deficit Spending

"Is there anyone who would prefer the fiscal situation of Zimbabwe, even though its deficit is not even a tenth as large as the U.S. deficit?"

- Dean Baker

On patriarchy

"Finished [my] wife's Stampin' project while she was at work in hopes of freeing up some booty time tonight. This is what married men do."

--Simianfarmer

Finally, somebody to cut through the crap and speak it!

"People are saying the reason prices are falling are because of all of the foreclosures, but the foreclosures are happening because the prices are falling. They've got it backwards. The prices are falling because they're too freakin' high."


-- Chris Thornberg

On Appreciation From Afar

Its a bit of nerd-boy humour about our crushes on the smart girls, i guess.

- Dan Kearns

Quick description of American Capitalism

"If I lose my job, it's ok, it's creative destruction.

If I get sick and my medical insurance is inadequate, it's just bad luck.

If I file for bankruptcy, it's all my fault.

But if YOUR fund makes a bad investment, it's my fault too."

trader walt | 08.23.08 - 11:18 am | #

On Turnabout

"Say the word 'atheist' 100 years ago and it conjured up a vision of sexy, freewheeling rebels celebrating life, love and creativity in their rejection of a higher power. Say it now and a vision of fun-hating killjoys, desperately scared that somewhere a Christian is having a good time by singing lustily in church on a Sunday morning, comes to mind."

--Julie Burchill

On meaning

I’ve been feeling like a really bad mom lately. Even if the day has been good and I’ve managed a good balance of kid-time, housework, office work, and time to relax and spend with [my husband], I still feel regretful and guilty every night before bed. I generally have a hard time finding meaning in the daily grind and all the ways we as people use up the hours of our life. But it’s been hitting me even harder lately.

-- Dixie Vandersluys

Cuteness

"These cheeks are not meant for pinching."

- Jacob Z

Blogged with the Flock Browser

How contemporary Christians have forgotten the lessons of Paul? (of Tarsus that is, not McCartney)

"It’s as if we don’t believe non-Christians can be talked to on their own terms. We have to pull them into our presentation; into our “script.” They have to become the subject of our questions. They must be the dummies and we must be the ventriloquists. Evangelism training, preaching and apologetics must create some kind of a “subject” willing to allow, hear and answer the right questions. “Canned” presentations seem to be primarily about the Christians need to dominate a conversation. These all betray our fears that we may not be able to control what is presented or the conversations that might follow."

-- The IMonk

How to save retail in a recessionary environment?

The mall is still a good place to go to look at hot chicks. If the stores put chairs in their windows rather than merchandise, they'd probably attract more customers.

Glass floors on the second level would also help.

Perhaps I should start a consulting business?


-- "Currently Smoking Cannabis | 07.27.08 - 4:49 pm | #"

A theory of the past.

"I’m ecstatic in my own dark, morbid way and subscribe to a theory of the past that allows the future to unfold: We all did the best we could."

--David Carr

On Change

“In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.”

- Benjamin Disraeli

Blogged with the Flock Browser

On Weekend Pleasures

"Cleaned the garage. Mid-day snooze. Park with the kids. Mow the lawn. Heinie & hotdogs for supper. Milkshake for dessert. A good day."

--Marc Vandersluys

Even science has absolute limits.

"However, the pioneering work of Max Planck (1858-1947) in the field of quantum physics suggests that there is, in fact, a minimum distance (now called the Planck length, 1.616 × 10−35 metres) and therefore a minimum time interval (the amount of time which light takes to traverse that distance in a vacuum, 5.391 × 10−44 seconds, known as the Planck time) smaller than which meaningful measurement is impossible."

Some uncomfortable truth?

"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The root of it all?

"We all want to change the world for everyone else, just not for ourselves."

--Jesse Johnson

Missouri Rain

From our hotel room we had a good view of a lake, or maybe it was a river. It might have been a side street. It's hard to say. Anyway, we could see a number of boats tied up to a dock. The only wrinkle is that the entire dock and all the boats were floating down the river, or lake, or side street, until they plowed into another dock. In California it hardly ever rains so hard it ruins our boats. I was impressed.

- Scott Adams

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Open Your Mind

Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.

- David Brooks

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Who is it that REALLY needs the timeout?

"And consider giving yourself an informal timeout now and again. Everyone will benefit. When your child is singing the 'I Hate Mommy' song for the 17th time in a row and you feel yourself about to lose control and run wild up the parental misbehavior scale—nagging, shouting, threatening, overpunishing, all the way up to laying hands on the little miscreant—try turning around and walking out of the room. Go sit somewhere quiet for a couple of minutes and cool off. Sometimes a little timeout from reinforcement is just what you need."

--Alan Kazdin

Images that arrest. Mesmerizing.

"Measurements compiled by Lawson and her colleagues show that a D-cup in a low-support bra can travel as much as 35 inches up and down (35 inches!) during exercise..."

--Adrienne So

Salt of the Earth

"Nothing like a Polish-American event - accordions, drums, and communion wafers surrounded by an American flag, potted geraniums, and a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer sign hung high. I'd like to think that Jesus would have felt right at home. He hung out with crowds like these, real people who work hard and pray hard. People who know what it's like to sweat and get their hands dirty. Simple values, simple lives. I mean this in a good way. I came from people like these."

-- The Mater

Holy epistemological breakthrough, batman!

"The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning. We see a friendly yellow Labrador bounding behind a picket fence not because that is the transmission we receive but because this is the perception our weaver-brain assembles as its best hypothesis of what is out there from the slivers of information we get. Perception is inference."

--Atul Gawande

On the health of your community

"Austin Fitts has developed her own model of community health. She calls it the Popsicle Index. The Popsicle Index is the percentage of people in a community who think that an elementary-school child can safely walk to the neighborhood grocery and come home with a Popsicle—alone. When she was a little girl, Austin Fitts thinks that everybody in her old Philadelphia neighborhood thought that she could do that. And she did. The Popsicle Index was near 100 percent. Now, in that same neighborhood, going alone to the grocery to buy a Popsicle isn’t something very many mothers would allow. Fifty years later, the index has dropped to 10 percent, maybe lower."

--Michael Linton

On patriotism and the people

Country is sittin' on the back porch, listen to the whippoorwills late in the day.

Country is mindin' your business; helpin' a stranger if he comes your way.

Country is livin' in the city; knowin' your people, knowin' your kind.

Country is what you make it, country is all in your mind.



Country is workin' for a living, thinkin' your own thoughts, lovin' your town.

Country is teachin' your children: find out what's right and stand your ground.

Country is a havin' a good time, listen to the music, singing your part

Country is walkin' in the moonlight, country is all in your heart.



--Tom T. Hall

On "Sex and the City" and 36%

"...a staggering one in four adults in New York has the virus that causes genital herpes, with the rate climbing to a colossal one in two for African-Americans.... Far more women carry the virus than men -- 36% vs. 19%. This makes New York the national capital for genital herpes..."

On the generations

"You know that on some level, at some moment, Dwight D. Eisenhower looked at John F. Kennedy and thought: Punk."

--Peggy Noonan

On Worry

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

~Matthew 6:34

On Modern Hollywood and the Disconnect

"At one point in the film I said, 'I hope there is a redemptive element to this film, and not just a bunch of depressed, angry people having sex'.

--Marc Vandersluys

On Looking for Love

"Every color here is severe this morning--the world is dripping in either a very light downpour or extremely heavy mist. I wake up depressed this morning, a different shade of blue--still have the cold and spent last night exchanging texts with yet another guy that I wish I hadn't given my number to. My shrink would have theories on how I draw these guys, but I know it's just plain old-fashioned--my mother told me to play nice with everyone, especially the losers, and now that's all that's left."

-- "Jo Jarden"

The Wisdom of Life

"Besides the noble art of getting things done; there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials."

- Lin Yutang

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Accepting Life as it Comes to You

"We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us - how we can take it, what we do with it - and that is what really counts in the end."

- Joseph Fort Newton

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Why does wikipedia work?

"Whatever else it may be, Wikipedia is a monument to the obsessive-compulsive fact-mongering of the adolescent male. (Not since Portnoy's Complaint has sexual sublimation been quite so wordy.)"

The Dream.

"...one of this panel’s many virtues was its consistent civility. The participants themselves stressed that intelligent and reflective people of goodwill can and do disagree. Eschewing ad hominem attacks, they opted to offer arguments and rebuttals, a mutual exchange whose currency is reason. This brought to mind Fr. John Courtney Murray’s famous remark that “disagreement is a rare achievement, and most of what is called disagreement is simply confusion.”"

On the Housing Bailout

It is not clear what ideological issue is at stake here, since the ideology that we all should pay higher taxes to keep the banks rich has never been well articulated.



--Dean Baker

Blogged with the Flock Browser

On Higher Education, Yesterday and Today

"A college education should immerse you in the highest achievements of Western culture in order to give you the tools to enrich your experiences and refine your moral judgments. Education in this sense is about coming to know yourself, not because you construct your own reality, but because your nature is the same as everyone else’s. When a multiculturalist professor tells you that all truth is relative, ask him how he knows that, and when he tells you that Western culture is wicked and wrong, ask him what cultural criteria he is using to make that comparison. Better yet, do not ask your professors these questions, because multiculturalism is killing higher education as sure as the Romans killed Jesus. Share your questions with your friends, find a professor friendly to your faith, and keep higher education in your prayers."

On destiny

"But my charm lies in admitting the silly things. Someone has to. So."

-Jenn Mattern

On Selling Out

"The concept of “selling out” is only meaningful for teenagers angry that their favorite bands are getting popular. The rest of the adult population should get over it, it’s called taking care of your shit at that age."

--Commenter #33

This is what we threw it away for?

"Sadly, the decline of traditional authority has not been matched by the emergence of an enlightened, future-oriented alternative. Today, figures of authority rarely speak the language of human values. Instead they hide behind a cynical, technocratic worldview, and subject public life to the narrow instrumentalist logic of performance, delivery and best practice. Many of yesterday’s student radicals have been integrated by this new Establishment. They have opted for a small-minded, politically correct worldview..."

--Frank Furedi

On Dark Times

"In the hour of adversity be not without hope
For crystal rain falls from black clouds."

--Persian Poem

Opinions

"Do not search for the truth," said an ancient patriarch, "only cease to cherish opinions." ...Much of what I find wrong in my life is related to my opinions - that is, my prejudices, assumptions, self-righteous stances, attitudes. For example, I continue to assume that I have the inside track on how everything should be done, and that other people are too short-sighted to recognize this great truth. Reality proves me wrong.

--Anonymous

On life and how it turns out

"I am one of a pair of sisters. Dad left on my 11th birthday. There was no love, no trying and the heartache oozed from every pore of our home and seemed to have frozen mom to her very marrow.

We survived. Never doubted her love or her competence. The only lasting hurt is knowing that she had a love that didn’t take flight the way she wanted."


--Amanda (comment#14)

On marriage

"Jane Austen writes about men and women in society—which is a fancy way of saying that she writes about marriage. And marriage, for Austen, is indeed about love: love as the joy of “submitting to new attachments” and the freedom to enter “new duties.” Love, one might go so far to say, as responsibility."

--Amanda Shaw

On the human image

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

Stephen Hawking

On Accountability

This is yet another instance, where the people in power get to mess up, again and again and again, and never get held accountable. It is only people who clean toilets and drive trucks for a living who are held responsible for the quality of their work. The elite have a lifetime license for incompetence.

--Dean Baker

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Who are the real provincials?

"Californians... are a people... already surfeited with a smug sense of superiority and, as an ironic consequence, a parochialism and insularity at odds with the innovation, prosperity and openness for which California is rightly known."

--Mayhill Fowler

To Think or Not To Think

Why can't the NYT leave such speculation to readers and just tell readers what happened.

--Dean Baker

On Humility

"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."

--Thomas Edison

Where It's All Going

Our wonderful cultural and financial elites in their blue-havens dont believe in "In God We Trust" on the currency anyways (they know its just for the yokels), so they really should change it to their new motto of "Private Profits, Public Losses. Suckers."

- dkearns72

Blogged with the Flock Browser

On Discipline and Freedom

“Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear — and doubt.”

- H.A. Dorfman, The Mental ABC’s of Pitching

On Generational Personalities

Competitive consumerism wasn’t invented by boomers or yuppies. However, it is deeply rooted in yuppie culture. I win if my house is bigger than yours, or if my cell phone is smaller than yours. Or if my laptop computer is thinner or my hiking boots are thicker.

On Conversation, part III

"“I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of ‘Proust’ by Samuel Beckett...” “If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one’s education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn’t imagine it.”"

--Augusten Burroughs

On Conversation, part II

Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.

--Rachel Donadio

On Conversation

"No one's had a decent word to say for men's sexuality since circa 1972."

--Howard Jacobson

On Domestic Work and Paid Work

"The measurable erosion of the family-centered culture is hastened when the loudest voices share an agenda to glorify the social import and psychological satisfaction of work, which, coincidentally, justifies and confirms their own decisions. “To date, the prevailing norms for working mothers have been shaped by an influential core of the occupational elite who publicize the presumed universal social and psychological rewards of paid employment . . . while ignoring the social and psychological benefits of unpaid caring and household work"...

--Neil Gilbert

On Dependency and Denial

Why is it that the first thing people do when they decide they aren't alcoholics is go out and drink?

- Anonymous

On Patriotism

I love the freedoms we've got in this country. I appreciate your freedom to burn your flag if you want to, but I really appreciate my right to bear arms so I can shoot you if you try to burn mine.

- Johnny Cash

On Science & Religion

Science gives us Knowledge, and religion gives us Meaning. Both are prerequisites of a decent existence. The paradox is that these two great values seem often to be in conflict. I am frequently asked how I could reconcile them with each other. When such a question is posed by a scientist or a philosopher, I invariably wonder how educated people could be so blind as not to see that science does nothing else but explore God’s creation.

--Michael Heller

On Rank-Link Imbalance

So when they decide that they do in fact have an inner soul and it’s time to take it out for a romp ... . Well, let’s just say they’ve just bought a ticket on the self-immolation express. Some desperate lunge toward intimacy is sure to follow, some sad attempt at bonding. Welcome to the land of the wide stance.

- David Brooks

On Photography

Photography is interesting because it is both a craft and an art. The craft is the ability to take technically correct photos. Good lighting, framing, exposure, focus etc. The art is the ability to convey emotion. If I see a scene that elicits a certain emotional response in myself, the ability to convey that same emotion through a photo is art.

Art can be created with any old camera. Especially if one loves their subject.


--TheJesse

The Glovebox

But we all know that glove compartments are nothing but a practical joke involving crap that falls out when you open the door. And you can never find what you need with the front-load design no matter how long you paw around in there.

- Scott Adams

On the Value of Time

One realizes the full importance of time only when there is little of it left. Every man's greatest capital asset is his unexpired years of productive life.

- Paul Weeks Litchfield, Goodyear executive and ACF Trustee

On the Opposite Sex

"Well, I really, really, really, really, really, really like girls.
Yeah, I really, really, really, really, really, really like girls.
I like girls.
I like girls.
I like girls."

- George Thorogood

On complexity, fragility, and identity

[Oliver Sacks] reminds us of our extreme psychological complexity, and of the fragility of the human mind. From the inside, the mind can seem simple and automatic, like a pearl in an oyster, but actually it all depends on the complex orchestration of the millions of neurons that compose our brains: and if anything goes even slightly amiss in the machinery the mind can be altered beyond recognition. This realization gives us the feeling that we are suspended over an abyss, totally reliant on the mechanics of the physical organ that sustains the self. That organ is marvelously impressive, but it is also alarmingly prone to breakdown and malfunction; just deprive a tiny part of it of oxygen for a few seconds and all hell can break loose at the level of the conscious self. It makes you feel nervous about your nerves, does it not?

--Colin McGinn

On lying

Indeed, bright kids—those who do better on other academic indicators—are able to start lying at 2 or 3. “Lying is related to intelligence,” explains Dr. Victoria Talwar, an assistant professor at Montreal’s McGill University and a leading expert on children’s lying behavior. Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill. A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require. “It’s a developmental milestone,” Talwar has concluded.

Po Bronson

On the 1970s

Louis de Bernières’s new novel, A Partisan’s Daughter, is set in the 1970s. Its hero has a car, a “shit-brown Allegro”. The Austin Allegro was a horror, expelled from the death throes of British mass car production. Everything about it was bad, including, in this case, the colour. The moment it is mentioned in the novel, the reader knows exactly what it means – that there was something horribly wrong with the 1970s.
Bryan Appleyard

On the Interconnectedness of Humans

"Our bodies are born of another; language is learned from those around us; our way of understanding the world is largely conditioned by family, friends, teachers; the atmosphere provides us with oxygen; food,water, and for most of us clothing and shelter are dependent on nature and other people. How can we think of ourselves as independent when our very life, moment to moment, depends upon all this and more?"

- Kevin Griffin
One Breath at a Time
BUDDHISM AND THE TWELVE STEPS

On Religion

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."

On Democracy

“People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.”

- Walter H. Judd

On claiming relativism as a universal

By denying the existence of objective moral truths, [pure relativism] elevates self- assertion as the measure of all things. Social life is reduced to the arbitration of conflicting self-interest — a process in which the most powerful always win. Ultimately, this arbitrary absolutism produces a society ruled by an unholy alliance of utilitarian ethics and the proxy politics of the managerial class.

-Phillip Blond and Adrian Pabst

On Corruption

As the intellect becomes more corrupt, you eventually reach the place where you give up making sophistical appeals to reason at all. Once you've given up belief that there *is* any such thing as an "I ought" that has transcendent authority, "I want" still remains because it never made any claims to transcendence. And so it just becomes a naked struggle for power.


-Mark Shea

On Curiosity

"Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day... we become seekers."

- Peter Matthiessen

On Making Improvements

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new end."

- As We Understood...

On a New Brand of Politics

"It's the kind of partisanship where you're not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea -- even if it's one you never agreed with. That kind of politics is bad for our party, it's bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all."

-Barack Obama