Monday, February 29, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 29, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 29, 2016



Dolor

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

- Theodore Roethke (1908-63)

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 26, 2016

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Sunday, February 28, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 28, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 28, 2016



"Anyway this isn't quite a hotel. It's a cemetery for people both deceased and on vacation, who still check in daily with work."

- Joshua Cohen, from his novel Book of Numbers.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 25, 2016

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Saturday, February 27, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 27, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 27, 2016



"And we can't really ask literature or the representatives of a literary culture, in or out of the university, to save society. Literature is not an instrument of social change or an instrument of social reform. It is more a mode of human sensations and impressions, which do not reduce very well to societal rules or forms."

- Harold Bloom, literary critic.

[http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2225/the-art-of-criticism-no-1-harold-bloom]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 25, 2016

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Friday, February 26, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 26, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 26, 2016



"If American companies maintain the ability to unlock their customers' data and devices on request, governments other than the United States will demand the same access, and will also be emboldened to demand the same capability from their native companies. The U.S. government, having made the same demands, will have little room to object. The result will be an information environment riddled with vulnerabilities that could be exploited by even the most repressive or dangerous regimes. That's not a future that the American people or the people of the world deserve."

- from a letter sent to President Obama in May 2015 by representatives of civil liberties groups and technology companies.

[https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/3138--113/Encryption_Letter_to_Obama_final_051915.pdf]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 25, 2016

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Thursday, February 25, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 25, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 25, 2016



"I really hope that when people read this, they won't walk away thinking she is an indulgent, extravagant woman. This is the lifestyle they led. The rich are different."

- Harold Niman, lawyer for Christine McCain, on winning her $175,000 per month in interim spousal support. [Sadly, Mr. Niman's hope is misplaced. -eds.]

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/record-breaking-divorce-ruling-against-maple-leaf-foods-president/article7284629/]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 24, 2016

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Saturday, February 20, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 20, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 20, 2016



"This isn't about security versus privacy. This is about surveillance versus security. The FBI wants Apple to compromise our security to give it a tiny bit more surveillance power -- and we should say 'No.'"

- Nate Cardozo, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on Federal Bureau of Investigation demands that Apple help them break into an iPhone that belonged to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino massacre.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 18, 2016

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Friday, February 19, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 19, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 19, 2016



"That's why the last thing any commander should need to worry about is the grades he is getting from some plush-bottomed Pentagon bureaucrat for political correctness or social experiments -- or providing gluten-free MREs."

- Ted Cruz, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, declares celiac disease un-American. [MRE is the military acronym for "Meals Ready to Eat."]

[http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/16/politics/ted-cruz-military-speech-gluten-free/index.html]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 18, 2016

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Thursday, February 18, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 18, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 18, 2016



"To leave that metaphor, let us grieve at what twitter has become. A stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second-guess, to leap to conclusions and be offended - worse, to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know. It's as nasty and unwholesome a characteristic as can be imagined. It doesn't matter whether they think they're defending women, men, transgender people, Muslims, humanists ... the ghastliness is absolutely the same. It makes sensible people want to take an absolutely opposite point of view. I've heard people shriek their secularism in such a way as to make me want instantly to become an evangelical Christian."

- Stephen Fry, actor, writer, and TV host, on why he is leaving Twitter.

[http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/peedinthepool/]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 17, 2016

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Sunday, February 14, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 14, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 14, 2016



"If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one's outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountainside in fog, but I would rather by far die on a mountainside than in bed. What sort of man would live where there is no daring? Is life itself so dear that we should blame one for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?"

- Charles A. Lindbergh, Journal entry (26 August 1938); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)

Submitted by: Kelly Groves
Jan. 22, 2016

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Saturday, February 13, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 13, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 13, 2016



"I'm not crowd-funding, or offering personal postcards from the road, and all that ridiculousness. I'm not knocking those who do that. But it seems like we're made to become monkeys so our art can pay the rent."

- Jason Collett, musician.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 10, 2016

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Friday, February 12, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 12, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 12, 2016



"We have re-evaluated the costs of studying here and increased tuition for international students to better reflect the enormous value of a degree from the University of Waterloo."

- Nick Manning, the University of Waterloo's director of media relations, tells a nose-stretcher about why the institution is raising tuition fees in 2016.

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Feb. 10, 2016

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Thursday, February 11, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 11, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 11, 2016



"I expected David Bowie's death to make me nostalgic, but not this way.

"Like many people, I spent the days after his passing relistening to Bowie records I hadn't played in years. One night, it felt time to revisit Low, his 1977 plunge into Berlin weirdness. I plugged in my swanky new wireless boombox, called up the album on a streaming service and, as I'd done numerous times before, prepared to be enveloped by sound. Instead, I was swallowed up in a digital nightmare. Whether it was the wireless connection or some other technical gremlin, it took what felt like an entire day at Coachella for the music to start up, and when it finally did, the connection cut in and out, the volume lurching from soft to loud each track.

"Finally, in frustration, I returned to a now-archaic ritual: I went to the shelves, pulled out my copy of Low on CD, slid it into the player and - boom! - listened to the album straight through, with zero issues and lusher sound. As it was playing, I couldn't help but wonder: When and why did the CD become public sonic enemy Number One, the most reviled audio format since quad? Why, again, are we abandoning these things?"

- David Browne, from his article In Defense of the CD.

[http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/in-defense-of-the-cd-20160204]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 10, 2016

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Friday, February 5, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 5, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 5, 2016



12. Awesomeness clause. Six Shooter and Artist agree to be cool. Plus, Six Shooter agrees to replace the guns in their logo with maracas on all Danny Michel promotional materials, whenever possible.

- from the contract between Danny Michel, singer-songwriter, and Six Shooter Records. [Danny doesn't like guns. -eds.]

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BBWipOtp6Uo/]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 4, 2016

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Thursday, February 4, 2016

Quotation of the day for February 4, 2016

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Quotation of the Day for February 4, 2016



"And a fellow who I helped write two books about psychology and psychiatry was a renowned psychiatrist in London called Robin Skynner said something very interesting to me. He said, "If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people's behavior." And when you're around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what's going to upset them next. And that's why I've been warned recently don't to go to most university campuses because the political correctness has been taken from being a good idea, which is let's not be mean in particular to people who are not able to look after themselves very well -- that's a good idea -- to the point where any kind of criticism or any individual or group could be labeled cruel."

- John Cleese, comedian.

[http://bigthink.com/videos/john-cleese-on-political-correctness]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Feb. 3, 2016

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