Quotation of the day for December 31, 2004

"We thought we'd be able to get a pair of dwarfs, but it was
prohibitively expensive. You'd think that you'd be able to get
them for half price, but no."

- Eric Idle on the production problems of recreating the Black
Knight scene on the Broadway stage for "Spamalot", the musical
version of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Quoted in The
New Yorker, December 20 & 27, 2004, p 173.

Submitted by: John S. Karabaic
Dec. 22, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 30, 2004

Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being
"colorblind." Nobody else does.

- Ursula K. LeGuin, from her essay "Earthsea in Clorox".
[http://trashotron.com/agony/columns/2004/12-15-04.htm]

Submitted by: Sean Gugler
Dec. 21, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 29, 2004

"I'm designed intelligently? As far as I can see, I was
designed by an idiot. My parts are neither interchangeable nor
replaceable. I could use a new ankle right now, and almost
everything I do injures my back. Some of my internal organs are
useless, and can even kill me. My risk-calculation engine is
useless. I am afraid to eat beef, but have no problem
catapulting myself down tree-lined roads on my motorcycle. My
judgment is so bad I can be convinced to send my life savings to
a complete stranger with just one phone call.

"The final stake in the heart of intelligent design is that there
are people we might otherwise consider intelligent, who, in the
face of all this, maintain we are functioning as intended."

- Eric Dietiker, Twain Harte, California

[The submitter notes: This rather intriguing take on the issue
was found in letter's section of the December Wired (print
edition).

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/2004/12/on_evolution_an.html]

Submitted by: Barry Ritholtz
Dec. 10, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 28, 2004

"It's bad civic hygiene to build an infrastructure that can be
used to facilitate a police state."

- Bruce Schneier, cto of Counterpane Internet Security,
"Fingerprinting Visitors Won't Offer Security", Newsday.com,
2004-01-14.

[http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpsch143625202jan14,0,1880923.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines]

[http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/newsday/526526091.html?did=526526091&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&date=Jan+14%2C+2004&author=Bruce+Schneier.&desc=Fingerprinting+Visitors+Won%27t+Offer+Security]

Submitted by: dglenn
Dec. 15, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 27, 2004

"Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither
elemental nor sideral. Thoughts create a new heaven, a new
firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow.
When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new
heaven, as it were and from it the work that he desires to
create flows into him. For such is the immensity of man that he
is greater than heaven and earth."

- Paracelsus (1493-1541).

Paracelsus was the pseudonym of Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus
Bombastus von Hohenheim.

Submitted by: dglenn
Dec. 6, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 26, 2004

"Be studious, stay in school and stay away from the military. I
mean it."

- U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Russell Slay, giving instructions to his
5 year old son, Walker. These instructions were sent in a
letter shortly before Stf. Sgt. Slay was killed in Iraq. He
was one of twelve soldiers from Texas killed in November 2004.

[Quoted in the Houston Chronicle,
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/iraq/2910111]

Submitted by: Mike McGuffin
Dec. 10, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 25, 2004

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgment
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus

- Jackson Browne, from his song The Rebel Jesus

[Happy holidays from quotationoftheday! -eds.]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Dec. 23, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 24, 2004

"Well, that's what happens in Canada when there's no hockey:
guys have more time to hang out, talk about their feelings. The
next thing you know, they're in love with each other. I've got
nothing against it, but I'd rather be playing hockey."

- locked-out hockey player Brett Hull, responding to Amy
Poehler's question of what he thinks of the pending gay
marriage law in Canada. Weekend Update, _Saturday Night Live_,
11 Dec 2004

Submitted by: D. Joseph Creighton
Dec. 14, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 23, 2004

"There are always unexpected dangers in deaccessioning. An extra
copy of Descartes' _Geometry_, which Trinity [College] had set
aside for sale, turned out to have Isaac Newton's critical
remarks scattered throughout the margins. The most spectacular
example involved not Cambridge, however, but Gottingen University
in Germany. The university library had once owned two copies of
Newton's _Principia_, so they decided to sell the dirty one, all
marked up by some previous owner. Only after the duplicate was
released did someone discover that the critic who messed up the
pages was none other than Newton's rival, Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz. That copy of the _Principia_ is now one of the great
treasures of the Bodmeriana Collection in the outskirts of
Geneva."

- Owen Gingerich, _The Book Nobody Read_, p. 26.

Submitted by: Chris Doherty
Dec. 10, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 22, 2004

I distrust the perpetually busy; always have. The frenetic ones
spinning in tight little circles like poisoned rats. The slower
ones, grinding away their fourscore and ten in righteousness and
pain. They are the soul-eaters.

....

Ah, but here's the rub: Idleness is not just a psychological
necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human
being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space
as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a
free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure
out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to
consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By
giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves)
its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All
manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. Not for
nothing did our mothers grow suspicious when we had "too much
time on our hands." They knew we might be up to something. And
not for nothing did we whisper to each other, when we were up to
something, "Quick, look busy."

- Mark Slouka, "Quitting the Paint Factory", Harper's Magazine,
November 2004.

[http://web.ionsys.com/~remedy/Quitting%20The%20Paint%20Factory.htm]

[The submitter notes: the full essay is long, but quite worth reading]

Submitted by: Chris Doherty
Dec. 14, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 21, 2004

"Inspiring story of lone policeman's attempt to restore the
meaning of Christmas to some Europeans caught up in holiday
commercialism."

- alternate TV listing for the movie _Die Hard_ submitted by
Jeremy Surbrook to _Seattle Times_ TV columnist Kay McFadden's
"Twisted Christmas" contest.

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002121601&zsection_id=2002113064&slug=kay17&date=20041217]

Submitted by: Jeffrey L. Copeland
Dec. 17, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 20, 2004

"You're not paying us for our time. You're paying us for the
thousands of Saturday nights we stayed home to learn all this
stuff."

- Robert Stephens, "Chief Inspector" of electronic retailer Best
Buy's in-home service arm, "Geek Squad". Quoted in The Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, 9 December 2004.

[http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/203022_geeks09.html?dpfrom=thead]

Submitted by: Jeffrey L. Copeland
Dec. 9, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 19, 2004

"You know, the salt water and the atmosphere, the damp climate is
very corrosive on submarines."

- former Canadian Defence Minister David Collenette, explaining
how used British submarines purchased by Canada were damaged
while in storage.

[http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/12/14/collenette-submarines041214.html]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Dec. 14, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 18, 2004

"America's female gymnasts were like spunky little fire hydrants
with chipmunk cheeks, and they were all just a teeny bit
interchangeable, like those Hilary/Lindsay/Amanda teen starlets.
But why were they all wearing a thousand clunky barrettes,
gallons of blue eye shadow, and disco glitter in their hair? Did
someone open a big purse and shake it over their heads? Or
before each event, did they just spray themselves with glue and
roll on the floor of a subway?

"The gymnasts also faced a great, villainous rival worthy of a
silent film: the towering, starved Russian, 25-year-old Svetlana
Khorkina. Khorkina always blamed her failures on international
prejudice or deliberate sabotage: She was like Isabella
Rossellini or Charlotte Rampling scoffing at the bouncy cast of a
Disney flick about suburban cheerleaders. Khorkina dared to be a
grandly sore loser, like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction or 101
Dalmatians, and I kept waiting for her to light up a cigarette
while she was on the parallel bars."

- Libby Gelman-Waxner, discussing the Olympics in "Premiere"
magazine, November 2004

Submitted by: joel k. thomas
Dec. 16, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 17, 2004

"We will be held accountable for all the permitted pleasures we
failed to enjoy."

- from the Talmud Yerushalmi

Submitted by: NLI
Dec. 6, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 16, 2004

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have
not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do."

- Tommy G. Thompson, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human
Services, announcing his resignation on Dec. 3, 2004.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/04/politics/04health.html]

Submitted by: Manavendra Thakur
Dec. 11, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 15, 2004

"The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion
that it has taken place."

- G.B. Shaw

Submitted by: Jeannette Cezanne
Nov. 17, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 14, 2004

To understand the Iraqi resistance, I suggest reading the
Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott. He wrote: "Breathes there a man,
with soul so dead, who never to himself has said, this is mine
own, my native land."

- Helen Thomas, columnist and former White House correspondent.

[http://thomas.king-online.com/Thomas_20041112/index.php]

Submitted by: Reddy, Sharon
Nov. 15, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 13, 2004

"You only learn to be a better writer by writing. I don't know
much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling
the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work
and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your
personal life, to be a writer."

- Doris Lessing

Submitted by: Jeannette Cezanne
Dec. 6, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 12, 2004

"Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another
country dressed as if you've come to mow its lawns."

- David Sedaris, from Me Talk Pretty One Day

Submitted by: Kathleen Magone
Dec. 8, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 11, 2004

"Laqueur's most recent book, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of
Masturbation, shares with Making Sex the same startling initial
premise: that something we take for granted, something that goes
without saying, something that simply seems part of being human
has in fact a history, and a fascinating, conflicted, momentous
history at that. Small wonder then that he seemed a person whose
writings and lecture would enliven the semester for the
undergraduates in History and Literature. In fact he did enliven
the semester, but a strange thing happened along the way: there
was a tremendous outbreak of the jitters. Panic set in not among
the students--a large number of whom must have come of age
watching _There's Something About Mary_ --but among the core of
instructors who lead the seminars and conduct the tutorials.
Though sophisticated and highly trained, when they were faced
with the prospect of discussing the history of masturbation with
the students, many of them blanched. Coprophagia wouldn't have
fazed them at all, sodomy wouldn't have slowed them down, incest
would have actively interested them--but masturbation: please,
anything but that."

- Stephen Greenblatt, on the problems caused when he invited
friend and former colleague Thomas Laqueur to speak at a forum
for Harvard's undergraduate History and Literature program.

[We wonder how many of you will get this through your spam
filters. -eds.]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Jun. 2, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 10, 2004

"E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering
what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool
out onto the screen."

- R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an
online school for business writing.

[http://news.com.com/What+corporate+America+cant+build+a+sentence/2100-1030_3-5481494.html]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Dec. 8, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 9, 2004

"Comparing male rats to men makes a very good model. Things
that give us erections give them erections."

- Dr. James Pfaus of Concordia University, who is testing a drug
called PT-141 on rats. The drug is delivered as a nasal spray
and is intended to induce erections. Quoted in the Winter 2004
issue of Toro.

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Dec. 8, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 8, 2004

We mortals are composed of two great schools
Enlightened knaves or else religious fools.

- Tenth century Syrian poet Abuk `Ala al Ma'arri, quoted in
Leaving Islam.

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Apr. 29, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 7, 2004

"Everyone with a little imagination can think up alternative
worlds. He who would be politically relevant must continually
ask himself which of these worlds are possible."

- from The Homeless Mind by Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and
Hansfried Kellner. (Vintage Books, 1974)

Submitted by: NLI
Dec. 6, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 6, 2004

Pity could be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we

- Poet William Blake, from "The Human Abstract," in Songs of
Experience.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Jul. 2, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 5, 2004

"There is nothing in man's plight that his vision, if he cared
to cultivate it, could not alleviate. The challenge is to see
what could be done, and then to have the heart and the
resolution to attempt it."

- Diplomat and historian George Kennan, writing in 1993.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Apr. 29, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 4, 2004

"Libraries are as Forrests, in which not only tall Cedars and
Oaks are to be found, but Bushes too and dwarfish Shrubs; and as
in Apothecaries Shops all sorts of Drugs are permitted to be, so
may all sort of Books be in a Library: And as they out of Vipers
and Scorpions, and poisoning Vegetables, extract often wholesome
Medicaments, for the Life of Mankind; so out of whatsoever Book,
good Instructions and Examples may be acquired."

- William Drummond, in The Works of William Drummond of
Hawthornden (1711).

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Apr. 8, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 3, 2004

"This busy working of nature wholly independent of the earth and
seeming to go on in a strain of time not reckoned by our
reckoning of days and years but simpler and as if correcting the
preoccupation of the world by being preoccupied with and
appealing to and dated to the day of judgment was like a new
witness to God and filled me with delightful fear."

- Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, recalling first seeing the
Northern Lights.

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Apr. 29, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 2, 2004

Last Thursday morning, Natalia Dimitruk, an interpreter for the
deaf on the Ukraine's official state UT-1 television, disregarded
the anchor's report on Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich's
"victory" and, in her small inset on the screen, began to sign
something else altogether.

"The results announced by the Central Electoral Commission are
rigged," she said in the sign language used in the former Soviet
states. "Do not believe them."

She went on to declare that Viktor A. Yushchenko, the opposition
leader, was the country's new president. "I am very disappointed
by the fact that I had to interpret lies," she went on. "I will
not do it any more. I do not know if you will see me again."

- from a New York Times (on-line) article by Steven Lee Meyers.

[www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/international/29media.ready.html]

Submitted by: Nick Puketza
Nov. 29, 2004

Quotation of the day for December 1, 2004

"Much of the pleasure which the first survey of the world
affords, is exhausted before we are conscious of our own
felicity, or able to compare our condition with some other
possibles state. We have therefore few traces of the joy of our
earliest discoveries; yet we all remember a time when Nature had
so many untasted gratifications, that every excursion gave
delight which can now be felt no longer, when the noise of a
torrent, the rustle of a wood, the song of birds, or the play of
lambs, had the power to fill the attention, and suspend all
perception of the course of time."

- Samuel Johnson

[For Sebastian Thornton, born 22 Nov 2004.]

[qotd sends its congratulations to our founding editor on the
birth of his first child. -eds.]

Submitted by: Duncan Thornton
Nov. 29, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 30, 2004

"Surely, if we can produce in such abundance in order to destroy
our enemies, we can produce in equal abundance in order to
provide food, clothing, and shelter for our children."

- Tommy Douglas (1904-1986), Canadian socialist politician, in a
radio speech delivered during World War II. Douglas was a
Member of Parliament, and won five consecutive elections as
Premier of Saskatchewan.

As announced November 29, 2004, Canadians voted Tommy Douglas,
known as the "father of Medicare," the Greatest Canadian of all
time following a nationwide contest. Outside Canada, Douglas
is better known as the grandfather of actor Keifer Sutherland.

[http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Nov. 30, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 29, 2004

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use
as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how
to use my telephone."

- Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of the C++ programming language.

Submitted by: dglenn
Oct. 27, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 28, 2004

"Do not pack heavy food items in your checked luggage. Foods
such as fruitcake may cause the airport screening machines to
alarm, thus slowing down the security process."

- from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration "2004
Holiday Season Travel Tips".

[http://www.tsa.gov/public/display?theme=183&content=09000519800e12f4]

Submitted by: Ann Jones
Nov. 23, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 27, 2004

"On Veterans' Day in America, the movie _Saving Private Ryan_ was
dumped by over 60 ABC affiliates and why? Well, apparently, it's
against family values. And so a whole bunch of family values
groups, they got together and they decided because they didn't
want to watch this movie then nobody should be allowed to watch
this movie.

"So they lobbied the FCC and they threatened to boycott any
channel that would dare air this film. And it worked: the movie
was censored in one-third of the country. And why? Because
these people know it is immoral to celebrate Veterans' Day by
watching a war movie if -- get this -- it contains violence,
swearing, or taking the Lord's name in vain.

"None of which, of course, happened in World War II.

"No, because in World War II, people were too busy getting killed
trying to protect America from the type of person that would
definitely tell you what you can and cannot watch. According to
these people, everyone would be much better off celebrating
Veterans' Day by just staying at home and watching another
episode of _Touched By An Angel_.

"Thanks to family values, when it comes to freedom and personal
choice, the wheels are off the bus in America. And let's face it:
it was a pretty short bus to begin with."

- Rick Mercer, _Rick Mercer's Monday Report_, 23 Nov 2004
http://www.cbc.ca/mondayreport/

Submitted by: D. Joseph Creighton
Nov. 23, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 26, 2004

"Perhaps it is a handicap, in writing about the relationship
between men and women, to be conclusive. To be aghast and muddled
and fascinated is at least a good start."

- Rosemary Dinnage

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Aug. 12, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 25, 2004

"Just because it is technically possible to provide misleading
information, doesn't mean you should."

- Gerry McGovern
[http://www.gerrymcgovern.com]

Submitted by: Duffy O'Craven
Nov. 21, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 23, 2004

"What we really need instead of smart classrooms is smart teachers
and smart learners."

- Howard J. Strauss, technology-outreach coordinator at Princeton
University. Quoted in "When Good Technology Means Bad
Teaching", The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 12, 2004).

[http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i12/12a03101.htm]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Nov. 22, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 22, 2004

"The point about verbs is that they commit the speaker. Verbs
cement sentences to their meaning so it's not surprising that
politicians tend to mistrust them."

- John Humphrys, a British political journalist and the author of
a new book, "Lost for Words," about the demise of the English
language. Among other politicians, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair came under attack by Humphrys because of Blair's
"apparent fear of verbs."

[http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=6827888]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Nov. 16, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 21, 2004

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament],
'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures,
will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly
apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such
a question."

- Charles Babbage, computing pioneer.

[http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html]

Submitted by: dglenn
Nov. 8, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 20, 2004

"Have you ever looked at an ape?" Dr. Bramble said. "They have no
buns."

- from a New York Times article by John Noble Wilford, quoting
Dr. Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah on what _really_
separates us from the apes.

[Even Couch Potatoes May Have Been Born to Run,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/health/17cnd-run.html]

Submitted by: Greg Kimberly
Nov. 17, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 19, 2004

"After looking at it a second time, there's nothing to indicate
that the seller isn't willing to give up this cheese sandwich to
the highest bidder."

- Hani Durzy, spokesman for eBay, referring to half of a 10-year-
old grilled cheese sandwich whose owner claimed bore the image
of the Virgin Mary. The item drew bids as high as $22,000
before eBay pulled the item hours before the online auction
was supposed to have ended, claiming the sandwich broke its
policy, which "does not allow listings that are intended as
jokes." On November 16, the Web site allowed bidding to
resume, with the top offer reaching over $16,000. Bidding is
scheduled to end November 22.

[http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/11/16/ebay.sandwich.ap/]

Submitted by: Bob Bruhin
Nov. 17, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 18, 2004

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents,
more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some
great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach
their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron."

- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Submitted by: nonesuch
Nov. 9, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 17, 2004

"This would not be a time to violate that policy."

- Dale Ingram, spokesman for Acxiom Corporation. Acxiom
distributed a memo to employees who work in a building
overlooking the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock,
Arkansas. The memo reminds deer-hunting employees of its policy
forbidding weapons on company property in advance of the visit
of 4 present and former U.S. Presidents to the library.

[http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=6827730]

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Nov. 16, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 16, 2004

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero falsely charged
with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures a
class hated for their abominations, people called Christians by
the populace. Christus [Christ], from whom the name had its
origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of
Tiberius [AD 14-37] at the hands of one of our procurators,
Pontius Pilate. But the pernicious superstition, repressed for a
time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief
originated, but through the city of Rome also."

- Cornelius Tacitus AD 52-54, Annals 15.44.

Submitted by: Gordon Joly
Nov. 13, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 15, 2004

"We came here to say to all of you that apathy isn't it. We can
do something. OK, so Flower Power didn't work. So what. We
start again."

- John Lennon, onstage in Ann Arbor, 1971.

Submitted by: John Philbin
Nov. 6, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 14, 2004

"No one ever says to Van Gogh, 'paint Starry Night again, man!'"

- singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell, from a concert recording, on
the demands of fans.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Nov. 1, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 13, 2004

I was shocked at how easy it was to go there. I was thinking we
would have to go through some security -- that the CIA would
have to do some check on me. I found that all you have to do is
buy a plane ticket, land and get off the plane and say, "I am
here to see Baghdad". The officials in Iraq asked "Are you with
some NGO? Are you with the Red Cross? You must be with the UN,
you have dreadlocks." I was like, "No, I'm a tourist." They kind
of looked around and said, "I don't know if we have a stamp for
a tourist visa". They asked a couple of people and they came
back and they stamped my passport and said, "Go in man, you're
the first tourist we had here since the war started."

- hip-hop artist Michael Franti, from an August 2004 interview
about his June 2004 trip to Iraq and Israel.

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Nov. 10, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 12, 2004

"To await a computerized Shakespeare is to wait for Godot."

- Margaret Boden, from "The Creative Mind" (1990).

Submitted by: Gordon Joly
Nov. 11, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 11, 2004

Seeking protection from a salvo of screaming rockets, I had
flung myself through the doorway of a ruined stone hut -- to
find it already occupied by a grey-clad German paratrooper.

He was sitting on the floor, his left hand clasping a shattered
stump where his right arm had been severed just below the elbow.
Dark gore was grouting between his fingers and spreading in a
black pool about his outthrust legs. Most dreadful was a great
gash in his side from which protruded a glistening dark mass
that must have been his liver.

Above this wreckage, his eyes on mine were large and luminous.
When he spoke, the sound was barely louder than a whisper.

"Vasser ... Please giff ... vasser."

I had no water. My water bottle was full of issue rum, which I
knew would have been the death of him.

I shook my head and then I thought, "Oh, hell, he's going
anyway. What harm?" I held the water bottle to his lips and he
swallowed in spasmodic gulps until I took it from him and drank
deeply myself.

So, the two of us got drunk together and, in a little
while, he died.

- writer Farley Mowat, recalling his service as an infantry
lieutenant with the Canadian Army in Italy during the Second
World War.

[qotd commemorates Remembrance Day. -eds.]

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Nov. 11, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 10, 2004

"A master aims at economy of operations, not proliferation."

- Roger Zelazny, in _A Night in the Lonesome October_.

Submitted by: Kelly Rollefson
Oct. 24, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 9, 2004

"Before today, people here and abroad could blame the Bush
administration. After today, it is the American people who are
responsible."

- Frank Mitchell, of Columbus, Ohio, writing to the editor of
The New York Times, Nov. 4, 2004 regarding the election of
U.S. President George W. Bush to a second term.

Submitted by: Manavendra Thakur
Nov. 5, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 8, 2004

"How can you love a man who drinks white wine
I go all the way for a Cabernet
That's Sauvignon not Blanc
A thousand dollar bottle of Chardonnay
No way I'll touch that plonk
Even if he's handsome, writes good songs and has the time
I could never love a man who drinks white wine."

- Carolyn Mark, from "The Wine Song", on her album The Pros and
Cons of Collaboration.

Submitted by: Mike Krawchuk
Oct. 31, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 7, 2004

"Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first
time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a
part of it, I'll never know what the listener gets, what the
listener feels, and that's too bad."

- John Coltrane (American jazz saxophonist, 1926-1967)

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Nov. 2, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 6, 2004

"It is the fools and the knaves that make the wheels of the
world turn. They are the world; those few who have sense or
honesty sneak up and down single, but never go in herds."

- George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, in Political, Moral and
Miscellaneous Reflections.

Submitted by: Terry Labach
Nov. 3, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 5, 2004

"Facing it--always facing it--that's the way to get through."

- Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Typhoon.

Submitted by: Michael Reddy
Nov. 5, 2004

Quotation of the day for November 4, 2004

"... So if you want to have gay sex or visit a library, this
might be the last day for you to do so. Personally, I'm going to
kill two birds with one stone."

- Ed Helms of The Daily Show, anticipating the election of George
W. Bush to a second term as U.S. President.

Submitted by: David Kramer
Nov. 4, 2004