The other night when I came home and learned that "we" had invaded Libya, I ranted (my poor wife). I couldn't really believe it. I ranted because sometimes it's impossible for me to express my dismay thoughtfully; especially when my government has become too stupid to believe. Especially with respect to my gOVERNMENT's response to Libya.
It is hard for me to fathom the belief in the concept of the "United States of American" (a peace loving nation) which now, is involved in THREE Middle Eastern Wars. All of them against Muslim countries (Jerry Falwell is so happy in Heaven), and at least two out of three of them, countries with lots of OIL (Dick Cheney is so happy where ever oil billionaires hang out). Maybe, if we hadn't STARTED two out of three (and some might argue that it's three out of three) of these wars... AND maybe if any of these wars were against any of our geographically nearby neighbors (who might conceivably have actually transgressed against us in any substantive way)..... Just maybe, one or two of these three wars might be justified on some insane level. But really, think about it; probably not even then. There really aren't any good wars anymore.
I've always said; If it's fossil fuels YOU (spelled U SA) want; we should invade Canada and Mexico. Both countries have plenty of fossil fuel energy resources. And we can take those countries easy (I believe that we already have). Those countries are NOT 9,000 to 12,000 miles away. I could WALK to the border of Mexico and/or Canada and shoot as many people as I want to with a hand gun (if I so chose). Compare that to flying a C 137 halfway around the world just to get there; before you get to shoot at somebody. We have spent more than a trillion dollars in the Bush/Cheney/Oil War in Iraq and what do we have to show for it? Libya, apparently. Not counting 5,000 dead American service people, 50, 000 more of our veterans who are now missing some numbers of arms, legs, eyes, faces and other (personally) important body parts. And not to mention (but I will) tens of thousands of not quite sanely functioning human minds and psyches that can and will integrate into a non war society.
I'm at a loss. I thought that I wanted to live out my life in these western Virginian scruffy Appalachian mountains. But I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't really a viable plan for me. My gOVERNMENT seems to be insane. It is embarked on a path to WAR WITHOUT END. It is apparently the official USA Government policy. How many other countries have been at war against non neighboring countries in your life time? There seems to be a downside to being the "only global super power". It's the only power that can't be at peace. The USA is the most war like country in history.
If you think that you will ever see your country not at war, if you think that your children will ever see their country at peace; if you think that your grandchildren will ever see this country not at war; then you are deluded.
I am thinking about moving to.... GOD! I DON'T KNOW WHERE I MIGHT GO!
Monday, March 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
FRACK YOU Isn't just for science fiction anymore.
FRACKING: A NEW "F" WORD ENTERS THE LANGUAGE (OED are you listening?)
I didn't write this one, it's by Chris Bolgiano; (I did add a
few parenthetical observations). This version includes the last sentence that was cut from the column as published by Bay Journal News Service http://bayjournalnewsservice.com/ to avoid offending too many newspaper editors.
A new “f” word has entered our language that has nothing to do with sex but everything to do with exploitation. From New York to Tennessee, above the gassy geological formation called Marcellus shale, people are debating the practice of fracking.
Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from shale. It involves drilling a hole a mile down, then thousands of feet horizontally, and pumping down millions of gallons of water laced with sand, salt and chemicals to crack the shale. Gas is forced up, along with roughly 25 percent of the contaminated wastewater, often hot with radioactivity.
Shale gas fields are called ‘plays’ but developing them is serious business. Since 2005, when Congress approved the so-called Halliburton Loophole to exempt fracking from federal standards for clean water, companies from Oklahoma to Japan have spent millions of dollars to frack rural communities innocent of any knowledge about the practice.
By some estimates, fracking Marcellus and other shales across North America could satisfy our desire for gas for the next 45 years
Fracking is ongoing in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. Now Texas-based Carrizo Company wants to frack Bergton, Va., long famous as one of the most idyllic pastoral communities in the Shenandoah Valley, where I live.
At first the attraction between gas companies and communities is mutual: landowners, often poor, gain income from leases, stores gain business, counties gain tax base. The industry courts communities with assurances that the chemicals used compose only one part per hundred of the fracking fluid, are environmentally friendly, and will be treated at the local sewage plant. (One part per hundred is 10,000 parts per million, the standard used by EPA and the FDA when measuring toxic chemicals).
For global warming worriers, the sexiest aspect is the reduction in greenhouse gases emitted by burning natural gas compared to oil; for others, it’s the fact that gas is domestic, reducing our bondage to hostile foreign countries.
For many, the romance quickly pales. Fracking chemicals include formaldehyde, benzene, and others known to be carcinogenic at [proprietary and unknown levels]. Municipal plants can’t handle fracking wastewater, and it’s stored in open pits until trucked elsewhere. If enough fresh water can’t be sucked from streams on site, trucks haul it in.
Eighteen-wheelers rolling 24/7 pulverize country roads and cause accidents, like the one that spilled 8,000 gallons of toxic materials into a Pennsylvania creek last year. And they emit enough carbon to seriously shrink the greenhouse gas advantage of fracked gas.
Explosions are occurring from causes similar to BP’s Gulf debacle. In early June, a blowout at one of the thousand-plus fracking wells in Pennsylvania spewed flammable gas and polluted water 75-feet high for sixteen hours. One of our most recent local headlines reads, “W.Va. Gas Well Blast Injures 7; Flames Now 40 Feet.”
Fracking’s impact on surface and groundwater outlasts any explosion. People from New York to Texas complain that their wells deteriorated after fracking started nearby. Pennsylvania officials ordered Cabot Gas Corporation to pay fines, plug wells, and install treatment systems in 14 houses where methane contaminated drinking water. [The companies all imply that they're working "way down there" thousands of feet below your wells and springs - no problem! The BP well was MILES down there and all that fluid wants to come up here due to billions of pounds of rock sitting on it.]
New York state officials see fracking as so risky that they imposed far stricter environmental regulations within watersheds that supply ten million people with drinking water. They feared an outright ban would provoke lawsuits from landowners eager to sign leases.
Landowner rights are sacred in Appalachia, but the recent request by a company that transports gas in Pennsylvania to be declared a “utility,” which would give it the power to condemn property for pipelines, puts a new twist on the issue. And what about my right to continue drinking clean water from my well on my property?
The likelihood of leaks of toxic materials into waters is enhanced when drilling occurs in the 100- year flood plain, as is proposed in Bergton. In 40 years here I’ve seen many disastrous floods, and the mountainous Bergton area is always among the hardest hit. A flood would sweep a well pad with containers of chemicals, fuels, and open wastewater pits into the headwaters of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, and ultimately into the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay.
Given the risks, fracking seems to me merely to prolong our addiction to fossil fuel, when renewable energy is within reach: solar panel costs have fallen by half (cheap enough even for me), and offshore wind turbines offer huge energy efficiencies.
But history insists on repeating itself. For centuries, Appalachia has been raped by outside interests wresting iron, timber, and coal from these mountains. Once again, people from elsewhere are taking huge profits and leaving a pittance and a lot of ugly pits behind, while politicians stall efforts to repair the regulatory loophole. They are risking through accident or carelessness the poisoning of water for millions of people, generations into the future. I SAY FRACK'EM.
Chris Bolgiano is the author or editor of five books. This commentary is distributed by Bay Journal News Service
Chris Bolgiano, Mildly Amusing Nature Writer: www.chrisbolgiano.com
I didn't write this one, it's by Chris Bolgiano; (I did add a
A new “f” word has entered our language that has nothing to do with sex but everything to do with exploitation. From New York to Tennessee, above the gassy geological formation called Marcellus shale, people are debating the practice of fracking.
Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from shale. It involves drilling a hole a mile down, then thousands of feet horizontally, and pumping down millions of gallons of water laced with sand, salt and chemicals to crack the shale. Gas is forced up, along with roughly 25 percent of the contaminated wastewater, often hot with radioactivity.
Shale gas fields are called ‘plays’ but developing them is serious business. Since 2005, when Congress approved the so-called Halliburton Loophole to exempt fracking from federal standards for clean water, companies from Oklahoma to Japan have spent millions of dollars to frack rural communities innocent of any knowledge about the practice.
By some estimates, fracking Marcellus and other shales across North America could satisfy our desire for gas for the next 45 years
Fracking is ongoing in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. Now Texas-based Carrizo Company wants to frack Bergton, Va., long famous as one of the most idyllic pastoral communities in the Shenandoah Valley, where I live.
At first the attraction between gas companies and communities is mutual: landowners, often poor, gain income from leases, stores gain business, counties gain tax base. The industry courts communities with assurances that the chemicals used compose only one part per hundred of the fracking fluid, are environmentally friendly, and will be treated at the local sewage plant. (One part per hundred is 10,000 parts per million, the standard used by EPA and the FDA when measuring toxic chemicals).
For global warming worriers, the sexiest aspect is the reduction in greenhouse gases emitted by burning natural gas compared to oil; for others, it’s the fact that gas is domestic, reducing our bondage to hostile foreign countries.
For many, the romance quickly pales. Fracking chemicals include formaldehyde, benzene, and others known to be carcinogenic at [proprietary and unknown levels]. Municipal plants can’t handle fracking wastewater, and it’s stored in open pits until trucked elsewhere. If enough fresh water can’t be sucked from streams on site, trucks haul it in.
Eighteen-wheelers rolling 24/7 pulverize country roads and cause accidents, like the one that spilled 8,000 gallons of toxic materials into a Pennsylvania creek last year. And they emit enough carbon to seriously shrink the greenhouse gas advantage of fracked gas.
Explosions are occurring from causes similar to BP’s Gulf debacle. In early June, a blowout at one of the thousand-plus fracking wells in Pennsylvania spewed flammable gas and polluted water 75-feet high for sixteen hours. One of our most recent local headlines reads, “W.Va. Gas Well Blast Injures 7; Flames Now 40 Feet.”
Fracking’s impact on surface and groundwater outlasts any explosion. People from New York to Texas complain that their wells deteriorated after fracking started nearby. Pennsylvania officials ordered Cabot Gas Corporation to pay fines, plug wells, and install treatment systems in 14 houses where methane contaminated drinking water. [The companies all imply that they're working "way down there" thousands of feet below your wells and springs - no problem! The BP well was MILES down there and all that fluid wants to come up here due to billions of pounds of rock sitting on it.]
New York state officials see fracking as so risky that they imposed far stricter environmental regulations within watersheds that supply ten million people with drinking water. They feared an outright ban would provoke lawsuits from landowners eager to sign leases.
Landowner rights are sacred in Appalachia, but the recent request by a company that transports gas in Pennsylvania to be declared a “utility,” which would give it the power to condemn property for pipelines, puts a new twist on the issue. And what about my right to continue drinking clean water from my well on my property?
The likelihood of leaks of toxic materials into waters is enhanced when drilling occurs in the 100- year flood plain, as is proposed in Bergton. In 40 years here I’ve seen many disastrous floods, and the mountainous Bergton area is always among the hardest hit. A flood would sweep a well pad with containers of chemicals, fuels, and open wastewater pits into the headwaters of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, and ultimately into the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay.
Given the risks, fracking seems to me merely to prolong our addiction to fossil fuel, when renewable energy is within reach: solar panel costs have fallen by half (cheap enough even for me), and offshore wind turbines offer huge energy efficiencies.
But history insists on repeating itself. For centuries, Appalachia has been raped by outside interests wresting iron, timber, and coal from these mountains. Once again, people from elsewhere are taking huge profits and leaving a pittance and a lot of ugly pits behind, while politicians stall efforts to repair the regulatory loophole. They are risking through accident or carelessness the poisoning of water for millions of people, generations into the future. I SAY FRACK'EM.
Chris Bolgiano is the author or editor of five books. This commentary is distributed by Bay Journal News Service
Chris Bolgiano, Mildly Amusing Nature Writer: www.chrisbolgiano.com
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Are you wishing for a level playing field?
Many folks have decried the fact that our Senators and Congressmen (people) have a gold plated health care package that they don't pay for as they consistently vote against the most minimal coverage for the rest of us. It's SO unfair that the playing field isn't level; it's hypocrisy.
It's so unfair! Senators and Congressmen (people) covered by the Congressional health care plan voting against health care plans and now vowing to repeal Obama Care too. It's so hypocritical.
But one brave man is all about removing that hypocrisy. He's Senator Dick Durbin and he's proposing that the Senators and congressmen (and women) give up their packages. Isn't that GREAT?
But these people are millionaires for whom insurance premiums are mere chump change. So now, they can vote away health care for the masses with a clear conscience; it makes no difference to their bottom line (except for the fact that they get "campaign" contribution$ by the millions from the Insurance "Industry" $87 million last year alone).
There's an old black humor sight gag: A boy with one good hand and one crippled hand wishes that both his hands were the same. His wish is granted and he watches in horror as his good hand withers into a twisted stump.
Be careful of what you wish for.
It's so unfair! Senators and Congressmen (people) covered by the Congressional health care plan voting against health care plans and now vowing to repeal Obama Care too. It's so hypocritical.
But one brave man is all about removing that hypocrisy. He's Senator Dick Durbin and he's proposing that the Senators and congressmen (and women) give up their packages. Isn't that GREAT?
But these people are millionaires for whom insurance premiums are mere chump change. So now, they can vote away health care for the masses with a clear conscience; it makes no difference to their bottom line (except for the fact that they get "campaign" contribution$ by the millions from the Insurance "Industry" $87 million last year alone).
There's an old black humor sight gag: A boy with one good hand and one crippled hand wishes that both his hands were the same. His wish is granted and he watches in horror as his good hand withers into a twisted stump.
Be careful of what you wish for.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Is one in five too many? Or just right?
I have heard that one in five people are illiterate. I have heard that one in five people believe that the world is flat. I have heard that one in five people believe that the United States faked the 1969 moon landing. I have heard that one in five people believe that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 BC. OOOOKKKKAY.
Now I read in the Daily News Record*, that one in five people believe that President Obama is a Muslim (please! not that I care, but...).
Are these the same people? If so, I hope that they don't vote. If they do, democracy is doomed.
Thomas Jefferson noted that an informed public is requisite for good government. That's why he defended news papers even while he was being attacked in them. Our news papers (and all news media) apparently aren't doing enough to dispel the misinformation flooding our consciousness.
If you can write anything you want on the Internet and then get all your information there, shouldn't you consider the source? If someone [read fOX nEWS] makes money in direct proportion to how outrageous their words are, then their business model will be: "Say anything; call yourself 'NEWS'".
* I always say Daily News Wrecker - but in their defense; they printed this pretty much unchanged [In Virginia, all you have to do is quote Thomas Jefferson and you'll get printed. Plus it never hurts to praise the First Amendment when writing to a news paper....] I guess that I'm a whore too {not that I have anything against prostitutes...}.
Now I read in the Daily News Record*, that one in five people believe that President Obama is a Muslim (please! not that I care, but...).
Are these the same people? If so, I hope that they don't vote. If they do, democracy is doomed.
Thomas Jefferson noted that an informed public is requisite for good government. That's why he defended news papers even while he was being attacked in them. Our news papers (and all news media) apparently aren't doing enough to dispel the misinformation flooding our consciousness.
If you can write anything you want on the Internet and then get all your information there, shouldn't you consider the source? If someone [read fOX nEWS] makes money in direct proportion to how outrageous their words are, then their business model will be: "Say anything; call yourself 'NEWS'".
* I always say Daily News Wrecker - but in their defense; they printed this pretty much unchanged [In Virginia, all you have to do is quote Thomas Jefferson and you'll get printed. Plus it never hurts to praise the First Amendment when writing to a news paper....] I guess that I'm a whore too {not that I have anything against prostitutes...}.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
"Original Stupidity"; can we improve on it?
Along with the belief in Original Stupidity, there is an antithetical, almost universal and erroneous belief in: "Things have pretty much always been the way they are now". "Things" being the weather and trees and soil and rivers and estuaries, you know, the planet. If your world "historical" perspective only goes back a few thousand years, why would you think otherwise? (Although, cramming all those dinosaurs, trilobites, and saber-toothed tigers into a few thousand years might, if you had an analytical bent, suggest that change is a rapid rule, rather than the exception. But then again, if you believe that the universe turns 6025 years old this October 23rd, just how analytical are you?) Anyway, the weather (and those other things) has undoubtedly changed rather rapidly on quite a few occasions (maybe not rapidly enough to explain the dinosaurs on a Biblical scale) and that has led to some very hard times in Europe and ultimately in the USA, that were made just a little harder by the Catholic Church. Why even say "Catholic" Church? It was the only one around in those early second millenuim days, they, the cHURCH, having murdered pretty much any and all people of other faiths. I say Catholic because just saying "the church" implies that the THOUSANDS of offshoot sects that have followed since Martin Luther haven't unlearned anything about rampant arrogant Authoritarianism in the last few hundred years. That's not so. A few have. Actually, some have embraced a bit of the humility that the scriptures are always talking about. Now before you begin to think that I'm liberal about some Christian religions; just remember that I am certain that anyone who has the temerity to proselytize for THEIR faith is a hypocrite. Where's the humility in that? There are 7 billion of us, not one having ever demonstrably seen gOD. So; "I'm right, you're wrong; and I'm going to save you by flipping you." is humble? I think that the only more egregious hypocrisy is the one inherent in the Bible (the book written by desert sun crazed goat herders far more ignorant than any person you ever met in your life) in The Book of Revelations: It says that there are only a specific number of souls who will ascend to Heaven; 144,000. So If YOU can be very, very good, you can bump someone like Mother Theresa clean off the list! Now that's something to shoot for! Competition makes everything better, all of the time. That's why Capitalism and Christianity are so compatible! I think... So back to the weather.
After an extended warm period leading up to about the year 1000, the Little Ice Age ushered in a period of 700 years or so of cooler weather with way too much rain for the primitive production of grain crops, the staple of agricultural civilization at that time. From 1371 to 1791 there were 100 famines during which many millions died. The hardships caused by spoiled grain in storage must have been exacerbated by the incidence of Ergot fungal infestation of grain produced under overly wet growing conditions. Ergot fungal disease of wheat results in LSD type compounds being produced in the grain. It's not good LSD, it's nasty combinations of similar compounds that if you eat it, not only make you hallucinate that you're dying horribly; they actually do kill you horribly during your trip. The constant starvation regime likely coincided with significant infanticide. Possibly, the stories like Hansel and Gretel and all those lovely Grimm Fairy Tales (and how could those brothers have had a better name?)…resulted in the question: “What are we to do with these starving children?”… all date from these hard times. The Bubonic Plague came along and between 1347 and 1351 some 25 millions died (actually good news for the serfs, as it made their labor something valuable enough for the landed rich to bargin for). In any case, Innocent the 8th (don’t you just love the names chosen by the pOPES?) blamed it all on witches and burned about 50,000 of them. It was a bad time to have a wart on your nose you can bet. As the climate was just starting to straighten out (as in go back to what it had been previously) the Tambora volcano in Indonesia blew so much crap into the atmosphere (some 36 cubic miles of rock dust) that most places around the world had a year with no summer. The Irish, having switched from wheat to potatoes from the Americas, were next hit by another famine; the potato blight, caused by the fungus, Phytopthora infestans. Millions more starved and about a million of the nearly starving emigrated to the U.S.A. And Oh! What a paradise it was! Sixty percent of the Irish children born in Boston during this period didn't live to see their sixth birthday. Adult Irish lived on average just six years after stepping off the boat onto American soil. The worst of the exploitation of the destitute and ignorant immigrants was perpetrated by those Irish folks who had arrived a few years prior to the big famine-caused push. Ah, human nature; you just got to love it. Faith and Begora!
Where did the weather go? Oh yes. So the arguments about Global Warming and/or Climate Change are about whether (HA! WEATHER!) it is rapid or slow, real or imaginary, natural or man caused? All of the above! What does it matter? Who cares? If it is possible to actually do something about it, shouldn't we try? Well yes, if you have children. I don't. I figure that all those folks who are so in denial that they refuse to be inconvenienced by the economic repercussions of any proposed remedial actions, and who have children, are exactly in the same position of those starving, famine-struck people of the "ancient" past. They are going to die. Of course, we're all going to die. Our children are going to die too, but in this case, maybe we'll all get to see them die. Maybe, all of us, more or less; we'll all go together. Regardless of which tenent of Stupidity you adhere to (Original or Current), the fact remains:
“IT HAS NEVER BEEN LIKE THIS BEFORE. WE ARE NOT THAT MUCH SMARTER THAN THE PEOPLE WERE IN THE OLD DAYS.
(we prove that every day that we continue to rationalize the killing of each other’s babies in the various wars that are now the continuous backdrop of scenery in so much of the world [and as if that wasn’t enough, some Presidents believe that it’s always a good idea to start a war 12,000 miles from the Homeland…]). Oh well!
IF YOU THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SAVE US, WHY DON’T YOU BELIEVE IT WHEN THE “TECHNOLOGISTS" TELL YOU THAT HUMAN CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL?
Bad things have happened before, but this is the first time that it has all added up to this moment, right now. Get used to it.
Take a ride in your Hummer if you think it'll make you feel better. Tell your children why you believe that you don't have to care enough about the future to change your ways (maybe the children will have a better grasp of history than you do).
"The optimist believes that this is the best of all
possible worlds; the pessimist fears that this is true."
James branch Cabell. 1879 - 1958
Oh boy, I guess that I’m a hypocrite; if I were a true pessimist, I won't bother to write this stuff. What’s the point?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Digging iron joys
So the good news was that the first four inches were damp. The bad news was that the moisture stopped there. The good news was that I thought that I should put that substantial 6x6 post at least 30 inches deep into the ground; the bad news was that I immediately hit hard blue shale (I had thought that I'd be digging through the "unconsolidated" material of the berm soil packed in back in 1983...). The good news was that I no longer had to go 30 inches deep; 24 would be plenty.... The bad news was that in order to chip through each one inch of hard blue shale you have to thrust down forcefully about thirty times with the digging iron (producing sparks and acrid smelling dust and smoke) - and then (depending on how deep your are) either reach down into the hole with your hand or use the post hole digger about 25 times (a tool that retrieves about 10% of whatever it may be that you're hoping to remove from the hole [especially if you're dealing with loose dirt and rocks], all in diminishing returns down to 1% when you then revert to the hand method - [if you're smart]). The good news was that the bat house pole would be really really well set. The next good news was that I pierced through that layer and hit the original slope "soil". The bad news was that this material (having been scraped down to the subsoil and repeatedly mashed by the bulldozer) was very nearly as impenetrable as the compacted "soil" and blue shale (did I mention that this material had been excavated from the stream bottom where it had been deposited by massive floods in the 1930"s?). Anyway, more bad news was that I wasn't done yet and that I had to go a little deeper in order to determine what would be the best lower layer to secure the base of the pole...
Well, the good news was that I again hit good ole hard blue shale. The bad news was that I then had to chip a square 7X7 inch hole into this layer to hold the bottom of the pole. The good news is that at 32 inches down, the "chipping" of hard blue shale into a precise pocket is a joy for the ages. Then the sun came out and I quit. I came up here and drank an ice cold beer, took a shower and wrote this piece of crap.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
The last of the quotes (but the most recently quoth...)
“Credulity is man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.
Charles Lamb (Elia in the cross word puzzles) 1775 - 1834
Nothing succeeds like success.
Alexander Dumas (elder) 1802 - 1870
To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
Max Beerbohn 1872 - 1956
The optimist declares that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that it is true.
James Branch Cabell 1879 - 1958
Oh Boy! This is one of my all time favorites. How could it be improved on? There is a certain solipsism about the “best of all possible worlds” that has been applied correctly to refute the argument that the perfection of nature proves the existence of God. But this so sweetly turns it all on it’s head, and is cynical too! Are we seeing a pattern here? They are MY favorite quotes.
I get more cynical every day, but it’s never enough.
Lilly Tomlin
Now I am the wiser; for I know that there is not any memory with less satisfaction in it than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
James Branch Cabell
If we resisted, we regret the missed opportunity, if we satisfied the temptation, we may still regret that we did. Sometimes, you just can’t win. This next Cabell quote comes from Jurgen and the scene is a gentleman fondling the sweet young flesh of his mistress:
Worm’s meat! This is the destined food, do what you will, of small white worms. This by and by will be a struggling pale corruption, like seething milk.
Why do I like this? I don’t know. It’s an interesting seduction technique, similar to “we may all be dead tomorrow, so why not?” But mostly, I like the imagery. It has truth. I believe in the adage:
Mother Nature always bats last.
I recall a rabbit that the cat released in the house only to die behind the refrigerator.... You had to be there to appreciate it. So back to biology. I wish that there was a way to put some Larsen cartoons in here; he certainly made some profound observations. We’ll be content with an Aldo Leopold:
The land is one organism. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
This is the one that set my nose to the grindstone with respect to my experience with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and our illustrious Secretary of Natural Resources, Becky Dunlop. Becky was the James Watt (we don’t need to preserve nature, Jesus is coming at the millennium) protégé that George Allen found under a rock somewhere. Becky, was put in charge of the Natural Resources of Virginia. She didn’t believe in Evolution, much less a universe older thant 6600 years (or whatever) Ah! I just found it (among other interesting things) - And I enjoyed my research into the Scopes trial while looking for it. "I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.” - Franklin P. Adams) As calculated by some “Biblical Scholar”, the age of the Universe is calculated from October 23, 4004 BC. To her, coal was a “renewable resource” since God had “POOF” made it all on the third or fourth day or whatever. Now, I’ve got nothing against letting people believe whatever they want. But you don’t put the guy on the street shouting at God in charge of policy either. Oh, man it was hard those four years. Becky didn’t believe in acid precipitation (it interfered with God fearing Christian business people maximizing their profits, and those Capitalistic profits are as dear to the Christian heart as the Gospels... so Pat Robertson tells us). Stop me, the nightmare is over. There will always be what appear to be insurmountable obstacles and powerful forces to oppose.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
The rest of these quotes have been selected by me without the aide of Bartlett. They’ve been gleaned mostly from my own reading and it may not be possible to reference them as easily as those that have preceeded. I also have to drop most of the birth and death dates. Most of the authors are still living as of this writing but I don’t necessarily know which ones.
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot 1888 - 1965
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery
Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger.
Gordon R. Dickson
Compared to what? From now on whenever anyone says something to me, that’s what I’m going to say. - Lucy
Charles Shultz
Let me make myself perfectly clear...
Richard Milhouse Nixon
You knew what was coming every time Dick said this. Later, at the funeral of Charles De Gaulle:
This is a great day for France!
You have to wonder how those “idiom sensitive” translators handled that. Then again, there is that “French language” thing. I used to have a copy of a letter sent to Jaques Chirac, President of France from the Prime Minister of New Zealand. It was a wonderful send up of the French neuroses about their culture and language. It was a hoot. I think I saw it in Harper's.
If Lincoln were alive today, he’d roll over in his grave.
Gerald Ford
Maybe we should not have humored them... When they asked to live on reservations. Maybe we should have said, “No come join us. Be citizens along with the rest of us."
Ronald Reagon [speaking of Native Americans]
That one takes my breath away. Just because he had Aldzhimers, doesn’t mean he wasn’t an idiot as well. More Reagonisms:
[Malapropism repeated nine times in one speech, early in his administration]
The United States has much to offer the third world war.
This kind of weapon [thermonuclear] can’t help but have an effect on the population as a whole.
There is today in the US as much forest as there was when Washington was at Valley Forge.
When you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.
I don’t believe a tree is a tree and if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.
Which is it Ron? Man, this can get depressing, this was the president of the United States and he’s still revered as a Great Man.! Was it I who asked if we ever remember quotes we don’t like? I didn’t think to ask why we like them. Certainly, anything that makes those you don’t respect less powerful should be remembered and quoted. You can quote me.
America’s lands may be ravaged as a result of the actions of the environmentalists.
James Watt taught Becky Dunlop the appointee of George Allen as Secretary of Natural Resources of Virginia, my former boss, everything she knows:
[exposure to dioxin] is usually not disabling, but may be fatal.
Dow Chemical Spokesperson
On a lighter note, thank God we’ve got Yogi Berra:
A nickel ain’t worth a dime any more.
It’s like deja vu all over again.
Nobody goes there anymore it’s too crowded.
You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.
The similarities between me and my father are different.
Dale Berra
That’s what you think, Dale.
I believe that we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change.
Dan Quayle
John Stuart Mill would have noted:
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people... it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
Harlan Ellison
Someone once told me that if you have to swallow a toad, it’s best not to look at it too long. If you have to swallow two toads, it’s best to swallow the biggest one first. If you have to swallow more than two, you need to reevaluate what you’re doing.
Charles Hawkins
Some quotes are worth repeating.
B. Keith Fowler (commenting on these quotes I put on the bulletin board.)
When a man falls into his anecdotage, it’s a sign for him to retire.
Disraeli again
It’s time for me to retire from quoting quotes, so I’ll list some of my own adages. They’re not likely to become part of our collective consciousness or mental short cuts, but they seemed appropriate when I coined them.
Forget truth and beauty; for most people happiness is having someone else to blame.
Everything takes two hands except for those things that take three.
Bureaucracy will make liars of us all.
When you’re really, really, mad at something, you beat the piss out of it with your binoculars.
A person’s self satisfaction is proportional to his ignorance.
I’ve lived my life so far with long periods of consummate self-satisfied smugness (You’ve figured this out from this essay), but it’s been punctuated with episodes of abject humility (when reality reared its ugly head). I’ve certainly learned more from my errors than my successes. So like Socrates, I accept the fact of my ignorance; I just try to forget it now and again. So ignorance of ignorance is bliss. It sure worked for George W. Bush.
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages may be preserved by quotation.
Benjamin Disraeli
Compiled by R. W. Bolgiano, December, 2000
Edited; January, 2010
Charles Lamb (Elia in the cross word puzzles) 1775 - 1834
Nothing succeeds like success.
Alexander Dumas (elder) 1802 - 1870
To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
Max Beerbohn 1872 - 1956
The optimist declares that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that it is true.
James Branch Cabell 1879 - 1958
Oh Boy! This is one of my all time favorites. How could it be improved on? There is a certain solipsism about the “best of all possible worlds” that has been applied correctly to refute the argument that the perfection of nature proves the existence of God. But this so sweetly turns it all on it’s head, and is cynical too! Are we seeing a pattern here? They are MY favorite quotes.
I get more cynical every day, but it’s never enough.
Lilly Tomlin
Now I am the wiser; for I know that there is not any memory with less satisfaction in it than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
James Branch Cabell
If we resisted, we regret the missed opportunity, if we satisfied the temptation, we may still regret that we did. Sometimes, you just can’t win. This next Cabell quote comes from Jurgen and the scene is a gentleman fondling the sweet young flesh of his mistress:
Worm’s meat! This is the destined food, do what you will, of small white worms. This by and by will be a struggling pale corruption, like seething milk.
Why do I like this? I don’t know. It’s an interesting seduction technique, similar to “we may all be dead tomorrow, so why not?” But mostly, I like the imagery. It has truth. I believe in the adage:
Mother Nature always bats last.
I recall a rabbit that the cat released in the house only to die behind the refrigerator.... You had to be there to appreciate it. So back to biology. I wish that there was a way to put some Larsen cartoons in here; he certainly made some profound observations. We’ll be content with an Aldo Leopold:
The land is one organism. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
This is the one that set my nose to the grindstone with respect to my experience with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and our illustrious Secretary of Natural Resources, Becky Dunlop. Becky was the James Watt (we don’t need to preserve nature, Jesus is coming at the millennium) protégé that George Allen found under a rock somewhere. Becky, was put in charge of the Natural Resources of Virginia. She didn’t believe in Evolution, much less a universe older thant 6600 years (or whatever) Ah! I just found it (among other interesting things) - And I enjoyed my research into the Scopes trial while looking for it. "I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.” - Franklin P. Adams) As calculated by some “Biblical Scholar”, the age of the Universe is calculated from October 23, 4004 BC. To her, coal was a “renewable resource” since God had “POOF” made it all on the third or fourth day or whatever. Now, I’ve got nothing against letting people believe whatever they want. But you don’t put the guy on the street shouting at God in charge of policy either. Oh, man it was hard those four years. Becky didn’t believe in acid precipitation (it interfered with God fearing Christian business people maximizing their profits, and those Capitalistic profits are as dear to the Christian heart as the Gospels... so Pat Robertson tells us). Stop me, the nightmare is over. There will always be what appear to be insurmountable obstacles and powerful forces to oppose.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
The rest of these quotes have been selected by me without the aide of Bartlett. They’ve been gleaned mostly from my own reading and it may not be possible to reference them as easily as those that have preceeded. I also have to drop most of the birth and death dates. Most of the authors are still living as of this writing but I don’t necessarily know which ones.
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot 1888 - 1965
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery
Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger.
Gordon R. Dickson
Compared to what? From now on whenever anyone says something to me, that’s what I’m going to say. - Lucy
Charles Shultz
Let me make myself perfectly clear...
Richard Milhouse Nixon
You knew what was coming every time Dick said this. Later, at the funeral of Charles De Gaulle:
This is a great day for France!
You have to wonder how those “idiom sensitive” translators handled that. Then again, there is that “French language” thing. I used to have a copy of a letter sent to Jaques Chirac, President of France from the Prime Minister of New Zealand. It was a wonderful send up of the French neuroses about their culture and language. It was a hoot. I think I saw it in Harper's.
If Lincoln were alive today, he’d roll over in his grave.
Gerald Ford
Maybe we should not have humored them... When they asked to live on reservations. Maybe we should have said, “No come join us. Be citizens along with the rest of us."
Ronald Reagon [speaking of Native Americans]
That one takes my breath away. Just because he had Aldzhimers, doesn’t mean he wasn’t an idiot as well. More Reagonisms:
[Malapropism repeated nine times in one speech, early in his administration]
The United States has much to offer the third world war.
This kind of weapon [thermonuclear] can’t help but have an effect on the population as a whole.
There is today in the US as much forest as there was when Washington was at Valley Forge.
When you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.
I don’t believe a tree is a tree and if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.
Which is it Ron? Man, this can get depressing, this was the president of the United States and he’s still revered as a Great Man.! Was it I who asked if we ever remember quotes we don’t like? I didn’t think to ask why we like them. Certainly, anything that makes those you don’t respect less powerful should be remembered and quoted. You can quote me.
America’s lands may be ravaged as a result of the actions of the environmentalists.
James Watt taught Becky Dunlop the appointee of George Allen as Secretary of Natural Resources of Virginia, my former boss, everything she knows:
[exposure to dioxin] is usually not disabling, but may be fatal.
Dow Chemical Spokesperson
On a lighter note, thank God we’ve got Yogi Berra:
A nickel ain’t worth a dime any more.
It’s like deja vu all over again.
Nobody goes there anymore it’s too crowded.
You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.
The similarities between me and my father are different.
Dale Berra
That’s what you think, Dale.
I believe that we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change.
Dan Quayle
John Stuart Mill would have noted:
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people... it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
Harlan Ellison
Someone once told me that if you have to swallow a toad, it’s best not to look at it too long. If you have to swallow two toads, it’s best to swallow the biggest one first. If you have to swallow more than two, you need to reevaluate what you’re doing.
Charles Hawkins
Some quotes are worth repeating.
B. Keith Fowler (commenting on these quotes I put on the bulletin board.)
When a man falls into his anecdotage, it’s a sign for him to retire.
Disraeli again
It’s time for me to retire from quoting quotes, so I’ll list some of my own adages. They’re not likely to become part of our collective consciousness or mental short cuts, but they seemed appropriate when I coined them.
Forget truth and beauty; for most people happiness is having someone else to blame.
Everything takes two hands except for those things that take three.
Bureaucracy will make liars of us all.
When you’re really, really, mad at something, you beat the piss out of it with your binoculars.
A person’s self satisfaction is proportional to his ignorance.
I’ve lived my life so far with long periods of consummate self-satisfied smugness (You’ve figured this out from this essay), but it’s been punctuated with episodes of abject humility (when reality reared its ugly head). I’ve certainly learned more from my errors than my successes. So like Socrates, I accept the fact of my ignorance; I just try to forget it now and again. So ignorance of ignorance is bliss. It sure worked for George W. Bush.
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages may be preserved by quotation.
Benjamin Disraeli
Compiled by R. W. Bolgiano, December, 2000
Edited; January, 2010
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