Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 29, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 29, 2012



"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

- Frederic Bastiat, French writer and economist, quoted by Bill Moyers.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/money-throws-democracy-ov_b_1276769.html]

Submitted by: Reddy, Michael
Feb. 15, 2012

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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 28, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 28, 2012



Q: You've long argued for the decriminalization of marijuana. Do you smoke weed?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Why do you ask a question, then act surprised when I give an answer? Do you think I lie to people?

Q: I thought you might explain why you support decriminalizing it but don't smoke it.

A: Do you think I've ever had an abortion? I don't play poker on the Internet, either.

- Barney Frank, from an interview with the retiring Massachusetts Congressman.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/magazine/the-not-so-retiring-barney-frank.html]

Submitted by: Ofer Inbar
Jan. 25, 2012

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Monday, February 27, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 27, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 27, 2012



"It is the duty of governments to protect their citizens from harm. It is not government's task to protect its citizens' sensitivities, however justifiable and acute, from peacefully expressed views, however bizarre."

- William Saunderson-Meyer, "A sudden, suspect French antipathy to denialism", on a proposed French law that would make it a criminal offence to deny the Armenian genocide.

[http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/williamsaundersonmeyer/2012/01/21/a-sudden-suspect-french-antipathy-to-denialism%E2%80%A8/]

Submitted by: Kanthan Pillay
Jan. 23, 2012

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Sunday, February 26, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 26, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 26, 2012



"Knowing how seriously aspiring writers of fiction can take advice from more established writers of fiction, I'm generally reluctant to say more than: If you wish to learn to write fiction, it helps if you've read a lot of it before you begin to try. And that in any case, you'll likely need to spend a lot of time discovering how to try, and then a lot more time trying. I don't really remember anything very specific about learning to drive, other than a neat trick for parallel parking, and learning to write fiction is a lot like that (except for no terrified instructor in the passenger seat, though in a way we each provide one of those as well)."

- William Gibson, from the introduction to his 2012 essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor.



Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 23, 2012

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Saturday, February 25, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 25, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 25, 2012



"Again I ask the reader to note the warnings I gave in that year, twenty years ago. Is there anything to add to that preface now? Nothing except my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: 'I told you so. You _damned_ fools.' (The italics are mine.)"

- H. G. Wells, in the Preface to the 1941 edition of The War In The Air (first published in 1908, and republished 1921).

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 23, 2012

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Friday, February 24, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 24, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 24, 2012



"The rise of digital profiling and personalization has spawned a new industrial jargon that reflects potentially grave social divisions and privacy issues. Marketers divide people into targets and waste. They also use words like anonymous and personal in unrecognizable ways that distort and drain them of their traditional meanings. If a company can follow your behavior in the digital environment-an environment that potentially includes your mobile phone and television set-its claim that you are "anonymous" is meaningless. That is particularly true when firms intermittently add off-line information such as shopping patterns and the value of your house to their online data and then simply strip the name and address to make it "anonymous." It matters little if your name is John Smith, Yesh Mispar, or 3211466. The persistence of information about you will lead firms to act based on what they know, share, and care about you, whether you know it is happening or not."

- Joseph Turow, University of Pennsylvania professor, from his 2012 book, The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth. Excerpted in A Guide to the Digital Advertising Industry That's Watching Your Every Click.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/a-guide-to-the-digital-advertising-industry-thats-watching-your-every-click/252667/]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 22, 2012

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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 23, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 23, 2012



"His footwork was impeccable."

- Kobe Bryant, basketball player, on martial arts star Bruce Lee. Bryant was talking about Lee's prowess at dancing the cha-cha, evidenced by Lee's victory as 1958 Crown Colony Cha Cha Champion of Hong Kong. From an interview in I Am Bruce Lee, a 2012 documentary on Lee by Pete McCormack.

[http://www.bruceleefoundation.com/index.cfm/pid/10384]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Feb. 8, 2012

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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 22, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 22, 2012



"btw, as noted in the article, many of the people at these Fed meetings are still in top policy making positions. This shows that the U.S. economy still produces good-paying jobs for people without skills."

- Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

[http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/is-there-anything-that-an-economist-can-do-to-get-fired-why-are-we-paying-these-peoples-pensions]

Submitted by: Gene Spafford
Jan. 13, 2012

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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 21, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 21, 2012



Guten Abend, Herr Beethoven
With these words I've interwoven inspiration from Moonlight
Since you parted much has changed but your melodies remain
Like flamingos in full flight
Please forgive me and be assured I'm only using all your chords
To illustrate that nothing's ever new

- Charlie Winston, from his song The Great Conversation.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 3, 2012

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Monday, February 20, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 20, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 20, 2012



"When Wells was young, the antithesis between science and reaction was not false. Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view. Back in the nineteen-hundreds it was a wonderful experience for a boy to discover H. G. Wells. There you were, in a world of pedants, clergymen and golfers, with your future employers exhorting you to 'get on or get out,' your parents systematically warping your sexual life, and your dull-witted schoolmasters sniggering over their Latin tags; and here was this wonderful man who could tell you about the inhabitants of the planets and the bottom of the sea, and who knew that the future was not going to be what respectable people imagined. A decade or so before aeroplanes were technically feasible Wells knew that within a little while men would be able to fly. He knew that because he himself wanted to be able to fly, and therefore felt sure that research in that direction would continue. On the other hand, even when I was a little boy, at a time when the Wright brothers had actually lifted their machine off the ground for fifty-nine seconds, the generally accepted opinion was that if God had meant us to fly He would have given us wings. Up to 1914 Wells was in the main a true prophet. In physical details his vision of the new world has been fulfilled to a surprising extent."

- George Orwell, "Wells, Hitler and the World State", Horizon, August 1941.

Submitted by: Dan Meltz
Feb. 11, 2012

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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 19, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 19, 2012



Still, Falardeau wasn't immune to small bursts of joy Tuesday. When his film was named early in the day, he screamed and jumped into his producer's arms, he said. "But I didn't cry! Write that down: I didn't cry!"

- Philippe Falardeau, Quebec director, whose film 'Monsieur Lazhar' received an Oscar nomination Tuesday for best foreign-language film. Quoted by Guy Dixon in the article Jumps and screams for Monsieur Lazhar.

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/awards/academy-awards/jumps-and-screams-for-monsieur-lazhar/article2313606/]

Submitted by: Lynn Kisilenko
Jan. 24, 2012

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Saturday, February 18, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 18, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 18, 2012



"I see evil."

- Judy Brady, activist, describing what she thinks when she sees the pink ribbon symbolizing breast-cancer awareness. Brady makes the comment in the new documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc., produced by Canada's National Film Board.

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Feb. 3, 2012

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Friday, February 17, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 17, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 17, 2012



"I presented [that information] there as a rapid illustration of the underlying principle that Facebook causes people to do *ecological* harm by collaboratively destroying one another's privacy. The point is that by sharing with our actual friends through a web intermediary who can store and mine everything, we *harm* people by destroying their privacy *for* them. It's not the sharing that's bad, it's the technological design of giving it all to someone in the middle. That is at once outstandingly stupid and overwhelmingly dangerous."

- Eben Moglen, Columbia law professor and privacy advocate, responding to a post by Dan Tynan of IT World about Facebook's face recognition technology. Moglen likens Facebook to a 'man in the middle' attack on user data.

[http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/247344/facebooks-man-middle-attack-our-data]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Feb. 7, 2012

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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 16, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 16, 2012



"We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is in this sense, a sort of hospital. A night and a forenoon is as much confinement to those wards as I can stand. I am aware that I recover some sanity, which I had lost, almost the instant that I come abroad."

- Henry David Thoreau, in his journal, Dec. 29, 1856.

Submitted by: Kathleen Magone
Jan. 25, 2012

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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 15, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 15, 2012



"There is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with a money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers."

- Theodore Roosevelt

Submitted by: Reddy, Michael
Jan. 13, 2012

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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 14, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 14, 2012



"Without feelings, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine."

- Anais Nin, in Delta of Venus.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Dec. 2, 2009

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Monday, February 13, 2012

Quotation of the day for February 13, 2012

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Quotation of the Day for February 13, 2012



"It's easy to do and cheaper too, if you wear dead man's clothing."

- Benjamin Darvill, musician, aka Son of Dave, on his 1940s clothing look.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3672308/Son-of-Dave-a-suitcase-and-a-harmonica.html]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 3, 2012

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