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