RelentlesslyOptimistic

Certainty

"As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place."
-Rabbi Sheila Peltz, on her visit to Auschwitz

From:  Bohemian Mama - Making the World Safe for Dissent.

the opposite of talking is waiting to talk

This NY Times article touches briefly on the subject in the headline, which is that  callers to tech support are monitored while on hold. It's mostly about the growing business of tracking customer service and tech support workers to measure their ability to interact with customers, defuse aggression, etc. The line below, sadly, shows a great deal of insight into our culture, which may be why more of these jobs monitoring others are also being outsourced to other countries.

To do the job, Ms. Rea and her colleagues need an aptitude for listening, a rare commodity in a culture where the opposite of talking is waiting to talk.

 

Only Connect

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect... -E.M. Forster, Howards End

William James

"I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride."
--William James

Via William Gibson

George Will On Democracy In Iraq

“Iraq is just three people away from democratic success. Unfortunately, the three are George Washington, James Madison, and John Marshall.”

Via The American Conservative

Politics and Hope

This article serves to remind us that politics goes through cycles, and while things seem particularly bad now, the ascendancy of the idiotocracy will end. I gotta say, too, that it's encouraging to see that Joe McCarthy, the man who gave "witch hunt" a bad name, made the cover of Time Magazine. It makes this year's "Person of the Year" cover easier to take.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics By Richard Hofstadter,  Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 77-86.

"How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.…What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence.…The laws of probability would dictate that part of…[the] decisions would serve the country’s interest."

Senator [Joseph] McCarthy, speaking in June 1951 about the parlous [sic] situation of the United States.

Via Dave Does The Blog

They hate us for our Freedom Food

In Passing....

"When he said he wouldn't recommend French wine out of protest I was like, fine, and I'll have a side of freedom fries to go with that. But then when he said that real mulled wine had pineapple and maraschino cherries in it I was like, dude, go on hating the French. Because they all hate you for what you've done to vin chaud."
--A girl talking to another girl at Andronico's.

and

Octopus cannon targets McDonalds in southern France
SETE, France (AFP) - Armed with a high-pressure hose and a bucket of octopi, hundreds of protestors in this Mediterranean town pelted a McDonalds restaurant due to open this week with the slimy seafood. (Via jwz)

I SO wish there were photos of the octopus cannon!

Missouri Legislator: Poll Tax good, Liberals=Terrorists, and that's from an urban district

Makes  You Proud To Be From Missouri, Doesn't It?

Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis, as quoted in the New York Times.

"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go. I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go."

..

..
From her campaign web site:

"Over 1 million Missourians are now on Medicaid - that's more than the number of kids in our public schools"

"Even with the expansion of Medicaid, one out of six Missourians are without any insurance"

From a St. Louis Today election listing for Davis

"The state could go a long way to help poor people by putting a limit on how much people can collect from a malpractice lawsuit"

"The only way to have a fair tax is to have a flat tax or a  poll tax"

Her district, #19, is from St. Charles County, a fairly wealthy county outside of St. Louis.

Via Talking Points Memo

Rumsfeld Quotes Again

Rumsfeld on soldier who asked about armor:

Bush, Rumsfeld Try to Soothe Angry U.S. Troops.

Rumsfeld said on Thursday Wilson would be contacted.

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing."

Via Fanatical Apathy

On growing up: Is this wisdom, or is it what I want to hear? Or both?

Humans have evolved to their relatively high state by retaining the immature characteristics of their ancestors. Humans are the most advanced of mammals -- although a case could be made for the dolphins -- because they seldom grow up.

Behavioral traits such as curiosity about the world, flexibility of response, and playfulness are common to practically all young mammals but are usually rapidly lost with the onset of maturity in all but humans.

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

Via idiolect.org.uk

Mark Twain on War and Religion

Link: Rubicon: Death in Iraq, Day 630.

This is hardly the first time in human history that bloody militarism has marched under the flag of false patriotism. Mark Twain caught the zealous tone in his 1905 short story "The War Prayer":

    It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, … in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

The minister then calls upon his tribal god to smite the evil enemy:

    "O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it—for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

Twain never published the story; it was found in his papers after he died. That's not surprising. Biting satire of hypocrites has rarely been on the best-seller list in this country—and in the heat of battle, any battle, the Rovian attack dogs cry heresy and treason.

Wipe that grin off your face you terrorist scum

This story from Needlenose about government requirements that people not smile in photographs in order to enable computerized identification of faces brought to mind this quote:
"The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway."
    Bernard Avishai

"When it comes to some U.S. government photos, smiling is frowned upon.

"The subject's expression should be neutral [non-smiling] with both eyes open, and mouth closed," says a rule cited in the rejection of a visa photograph of a tooth-showing person from Cleveland. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services explained that "no expression" is the standard for such photos."

Whenever a computerized system requires its human users to comply with its peculiar needs (instead of the other way around) there's a good bet the system is, to put it in technical terms, a pile of crap."

Link: Wipe that grin off your face you terrorist scum | Needlenose.