May 2013
2 posts
“Here’s what I know about the realm of possibility— it is always expanding, it is...”
– ― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility
“Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered...”
– Robert Anton Wilson
April 2013
7 posts
“The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see...”
– Terry Tempest Williams, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert
What rights should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev get and why... →
Glenn Greenwald: The Obama DOJ says it intends to question the Boston bombing suspect “extensively” without first Mirandizing him
Needless to say, Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a result, as Bazelon noted, not many people will care what is done to him, just like few people care what happens to the accused terrorists at Guantanamo, or Bagram, or in...
“The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves, but they...”
– Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
“People fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do...”
– Heraclitus (535-475 BC)
March 2013
5 posts
“…when we go to war in any form, we inevitably take on traits of the people...”
– IAN EBRIGHT
WatchAaron Huey: America’s native prisoners of war
A long time ago, a series of events was set in motion by a people who look like me, by wasichu, eager to take the land and the water and the gold in the hills. Those events led to a domino effect that has yet to end.
From Starbucks to Microsoft: a sampling of what US... →
Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us →
must read
“The problem is if they think they [the citizens] are not doing anything that’s...”
– William Binney, National Security Agency
February 2013
3 posts
“Dear reader, traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are...”
– Richard Buckminster Fuller, Cosmography: A Posthumous Scenario For The Future Of Humanity
6 tags
“When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate. Since I’ve been...”
– Richard Buckminster Fuller, Only Integrity Is Going to Count: Integrity Day, Los Angeles February 26, 1983
“But to conquer and destroy them will mean nothing less than the complete...”
– Thomas Clayton Wolfe (1900-1938), You Cant Go Home Again
“Lisa, vampires are make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and eskimos.”
– Homer Simpson
January 2013
3 posts
1 tag
“A learned man came to me once.
He said, “I know the way, —...”
– Stephen Crane (The Black Riders and Other Lines)
December 2012
10 posts
2 tags
“Lot of water under the bridge, Lot of other stuff too
Don’t get up...”
– Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed
4 tags
“Ours is the age which is proud of machines which think and suspicious of men who...”
– H. M. Jones
4 tags
“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels. It...”
– Michael Crichton
6 tags
AMERICAN CHILDREN AND FOREIGN CHILDREN →
But when the deaths occur as a result of some drone strike, bomb, or sanctions at the hands of the U.S. government, everything seems to shut down within Americans. Sympathy and empathy disappear. People don’t want to hear the details. They do their best to shut out any discussion of the episode. The attitude is always, “Regrettable, but now it’s time to move on.”
Why the difference?
[]…the...
5 tags
Joystick Warfare Hell: The Suffering of an... →
Much has been made of the devastating impact American drones have on civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One soldier’s story shows that it can also adversely affect the lives of those who operate the remote-controlled weapons. Former service member Brandon Bryant is still haunted by images of the injured and dying.
5 tags
“The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to...”
– Edward Abbey
3 tags
“The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those...”
– Michael Parenti
2 tags
“So no, I’m not too big on religion…and not very fond of politics or...”
– William P. Young (The Shack)
1 tag
“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving...”
– Julian Barnes (Flaubert’s Parrot)
October 2012
8 posts
2 tags
“Perhaps the awareness of a man behind the curtain is the awareness not of...”
– anonymous internet comment
4 tags
“There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been,...”
– Neil Postman
3 tags
“I don’t believe there’s any problem in this country, no matter how...”
– - George Carlin, Brain Droppings
3 tags
“These wretches see the glint of the despot’s treasures and are bedazzled...”
– Étienne de la Boétie, 1550, [The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude]
6 tags
5 tags
1 tag
5 tags
September 2012
7 posts
5 tags
“The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of...”
– Arthur Koestler, Darkness At Noon
7 tags
6 tags
4 tags
Reichstag fire →
6 tags
“In the language of patriotism, these people are traitors. The older ruling elite - and I came out of the working class - they were certainly no friends to working men and women, frankly, but they cared about the sustenance of the nation. The new ruling elite is global… [and] in the language of business, is quite willing to ‘harvest’ the nation. That’s why...
4 tags
“Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as...”
– Rabindranath Tagore
4 tags
“There’s an old saying: ‘He who plays with fire sometimes throws...”
– Perry Mason
August 2012
16 posts
4 tags
3 tags
The placebo effect and the power of belief
Michael Brooks, a writer of an article in New Scientist magazine, took part in a “placebo” experiment in which he was told that a computer screen would indicate whether electric shocks would be mild when a green light showed up or a red light would indicate when the shock would be “more severe”. After about fifteen minutes, the experiment ended with what he thought were a...
1 tag
“Per lumen scientiae viam invenient populi”
– (Through the light of knowledge the people will find a way.)
4 tags
“Mythology: the body of a primitive people’s beliefs, concerning its...”
– Ambrose Bierce
3 tags
“To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be...”
– Voltaire 