Category Archives: Quote

The no-fly list — a list of people so dangerous they are not allowed to fly yet so innocent we can’t arrest them — and the less dangerous “watch list” contain a combined 1 million names representing the identities and aliases of an estimated 400,000 people. There aren’t that many terrorists out there; if there were, we would be feeling their effects.

— "The TSA's useless photo ID rules" by Bruce Schneier in the LA Times

Mr. Tow, a former chief executive of Citizens Communications, and Century Communications, said he decided to fund journalism for two reasons: he was worried about the industry, and, as a native of Brooklyn and a graduate of Columbia, he was annoyed that an Internet institute at Harvard seemed to dominate new media.

— "Philanthropist Giving Millions to Two Schools of Journalism" in the New York Times. Berkman continues to serve as an inspiration to others!

Beyond the station gates, a priest dreams of a vineyard. A car bursts into flame. An ancient sign in a boarded-up window opposite the platform reads “Wrestling Weight.” A stuffed bear mans a betting window in a struggling OTB parlor. The dead lie in rows uncounted, and the living mourn and wait and work and love and strum guitars on the front stoop, annoying the neighbors.

There are 24 stops on the New York City subway system past which you can ride no farther. For those who get off somewhere else — almost everyone — the end is just a sign on the train.

— The Curious World of the Last Stop in the New York Times

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

— John McCain's web site. The amount of official vitriol spewing from the McCain camp would be comical if it wasn't so disturbing.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

— "How Obama Became Acting President" by Frank Rich

There’s a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers—holders of power, not its critics. An independent mind is independent of all allegiances, and elite schools, which get a large percentage of their budget from alumni giving, are strongly invested in fostering institutional loyalty. […] The college career office has little to say to students not interested in law, medicine, or business, and elite universities are not going to do anything to discourage the large percentage of their graduates who take their degrees to Wall Street.

— "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" by William Deresiewicz

The moral of the story is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around.

— Kurt Vonnegut (via Matt)

So I was talking to one of the nurses. What brought most of these patients here? Smoking and drinking, was the short answer. Reminded me of what a doctor friend told me many years ago. “Without tobacco and alcohol, you could close half the hospitals.” We can’t get rid of stuff that’ll kill us in the long run. But we can choose not to indulge them.

— Doc Searls

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples minds, imagine themselves into other peoples places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

— J.K. Rowling, an excerpt from the commencement address (video) she delivered a few hours ago here at Harvard.

[Richard Feynman] must have noticed my mood, because he suddenly stopped the story and asked, “Hey, what’s the matter?”

I hesitated. “I’m sad because you’re going to die.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “that bugs me sometimes too. But not so much as you think.” And after a few more steps, “When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you’ve told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway.”

— Danny Hillis writes about Richard Feynman's time at Thinking Machines, working with him on some of the first massively parallel computer systems.

As people like Jessica Yellin, Katie Couric, Phil Donahue and Scott McClellan are making clear, these media outlets are controlled propaganda arms of the Government, of the political establishment generally. For many people, that isn’t a new revelation, but the fact that it’s becoming clearer by the day — from unimpeachable sources on the inside — is nonetheless quite significant.

— Glenn Greenwald on how Scott McClellan's new book is forcing the media to confront accusations of corruption that they have long ignored

Even if you haven’t seen the movie by now, you’ve probably seen the pointy-headed crystal skull, and in this movie we all learn exactly where that skull came from: outer space. (Or another dimension, but same thing, right?) Unfortunately, every Indiana Jones movie so far has been about the power of religious artifacts. Not only are the skull’s powers nebulous (it stops ants? It makes you go crazy if you look at it? It’s a magnet?), thereby making it a terrible MacGuffin, it calls into question the God-given power of every artifact Indy’s ever seen in action. Were the Shankara stones space rocks? Was the Ark radioactive? Was the Holy Grail a life-extending alien beverage container? Everything we know has been cast into doubt — now imagine how Indy feels, after spending a lifetime chasing this stuff.

— "You Are Now Leaving Indiana" from Television Without Pity

If girls and young women ruptured their A.C.L.’s at just twice the rate of boys and young men, it would be notable. Three times the rate would be astounding. But some researchers believe that in sports that both sexes play, and with similar rules — soccer, basketball, volleyball — female athletes rupture their A.C.L.’s at rates as high as five times that of males.

— "The Uneven Playing Field," a New York Times Magazine investigation of sports injuries. What's scary is that no one can figure out why A.C.L.s snap.

I would join in their jubilation, but frankly I’m tired of being right all the time. It was fun for a while, but now it’s just depressing.

— Mark Pilgrim on Microsoft's decision to shut down their "PlaysForSure" music store, leaving their customers with music that no longer plays for anything.