Quote of the day

"Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nobokov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both." - Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin

Quote of the day

"The truth is that neither federal nor state governments have ever mounted a campaign to intern the free-market faithful or blacklist the hardworking proletarians in the Chicago futures pits. However, they have used force over the years to break up strikes, imprison labor organizers, keep minorities from voting, round up people of Japanese descent, and disrupt antiwar movements. Today, though, it suits the resurgent Right to imagine itself as the real victim of state persecution, which no doubt enhances its aura as a dissident movement taking on a merciless establishment." - Thomas Frank, Pity the Billionaire

Trivia of the day

Question: What was the first typewritten manuscript submitted for publication?

Answer: Life on the Mississippi (1883) by Mark Twain

Twain receives the credit for having dictated the book to a secretary, although this is not so much a verified fact as a claim found to be the most plausible case for first such use of the typewriter.

[Source - The Disappearing Spoon: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements by Sam Kean]

Quote of the day

"Extreme inequality, it turns out, creates a class of people who are alarmingly detached from reality — and simultaneously gives these people great power." - Paul Krugman, "Paranoia of the Plutocrats"

Quote of the day

"The conservative capacity for driving nails into their own palms may well be limitless." - Charles Pierce

Quote of the day

"Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things." - Michael Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Quote of the day

"Clearly he was the cause of the stories that had arisen recently in the more extremely abhorrent sectors of the tabloid press about there being 'Something Nasty in the Woodshead.' The stories had, of course, been offensive and callously insensitive and had largely been ignored by everybody in the country except for those very few millions who were keen on offensive and callously insensitive things." - Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Quote of the day

"Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what [one] does not believe." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

Quote of the day

"With cold weather it is inevitable that the American right wing, which has a poor grasp of science and math (along with economics, American history, and current events), will claim this to be evidence against global warming." - Ron Chusid

Quote of the day

"No law has a right to discourage the practice of truth. A man ought to speak the truth on every occasion, a duty can never be criminal, what is not criminal cannot be injurious." - Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Declaration of Rights"

Quote of the day

"You’re an aggressive bully and an arrogant idiot!" - Mike Weinstein, speaking to Bill O'Reilly

Weinstein was responding to O'Reilly having called soldiers who wish to have their First Amendment rights protected by having the military adhere to church/state separation cowards.

How do more people not realize what a horrible joke Fox News is?

The Daily Show
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Update:

The Daily Show
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Quote of the day

"If your newspaper is going to publish a weekly column by Karl Rove, you have already crossed whatever conceptual boundary might stop you from publishing Suzanne Somers." - Jonathan Chait

My most recent discount book buys

All for a dollar, courtesy of the local library book sale:

That Hideous Strength (pb) by C.S. Lewis

A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons (pb) by Robert Sapolsky

How the Mind Works (hc) by Steven Pinker

Zero History (hc) by William Gibson

Storms of my Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (hc) by James Hansen

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (hc) by Jon Krakauer

That Hideous Strength completes for me Lewis's Space Trilogy, having long years ago read my copy of the first installment and purchased book 2 in a previous installment of Discount Book Buying. Although I'm happy to obtain a copy of Storms of my Grandchildren in pristine condition, it does dishearten me that this former library copy of a book on such an important subject looks as though it was has never been checked out.

And in tribute to libraries everywhere, a word from author Neil Gaiman on their greatness.

Quote of the day

"Bear in mind that the measure of a man is the worth of the things he cares about." - Marcus Aurelius, The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations

I still remember standing in a Barnes & Noble bookstore about nine years ago, flipping through this book and coming across this quote, thinking it fantastic. I would put The Meditations on my must read list of philosophy texts.

Excerpt of the day

From The Church of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology by John Sweeney

I used to be a war reporter. From Algeria, Bosnia and Chechnya to Zimbabwe I have been shelled, shot at, bombed, arrested, threatened and a Serb devotee of Slobodan Milosevic once stuck two sticks of dynamite up my nose. But never, ever, in all my times in all those wars have I felt under such harrowing psychological pressure as I did inside the brainwashing section of the Church of Scientology's exhibition, 'Psychiatry: The Industry of Death' on Sunset Boulevard in LA in the spring of 2007.

I previously wrote about the incident Sweeney is referencing, here.

Baleful quote of the day

"I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange." - Michael Grunwald

Grunwald is a reporter for Time magazine. His tweet is indicative of a pervasive rot in an American press corps which identifies not with the role of journalism in maintaining/creating an informed public citizenry, but with disseminating and reverberating the images that the national security state would like the public to believe.

Baleful quote of the day

"Our NSA stories have been published and discussed in countless countries around the world, where they have sparked shock, indignation and demands for investigation. So revealingly, it is only American journalists - and them alone - who have decided to focus their intrepid journalistic attention not on the extremist and legally dubious surveillance behavior of the US government and serial deceit by its top officials, but on those who revealed all of that to the world." - Glenn Greenwald, e-mail response to Walter Pincus

Quote of the day

"How strange it is to reflect that [Emile Zola's book La Terre] is true. But it is. You have to confess it at last. Then you are aware of a grudge against him. Because he has exposed those odious French people to you? No; but because he has exposed your own people to you. You were asleep, and had forgotten; he has waked you up. You owe him a grudge - and will keep it." - Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

Quote of the day

"I continue to wonder precisely what Constitution of which nation [President Obama] taught back in his days in law school." - Charles Pierce

Balanced scales of justice is so pre 9/11

If you work for the CIA and torture someone to death, you can get a promotion. If you have access to classified info revealing mass domestic surveillance of United States citizens and reveal it, you can go to prison.

Pierce, cutting to the bone

Charles Pierce, responding to an interview with two of the chiefs of the Washington DC insider pseudo-news site Politico

IC: You don't think there is any public calling to be perhaps boring if pensions are being stolen?

JH: I don't know. Maybe if I lived on Long Island, it wouldn't be that boring.

Fk you, you smug little prick. People are being ground up like corn meal out in the country but all's well with the world because Chris Matthews has your private number.

Today's discount book buys

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in our Time (hc) by Jonathan Weiner for $1.00.

Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming (hc) by Chris Mooney for $1.00.

Baudolino (hc) by Umberto Eco for $1.00.

Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (hc) by George Monbiot for $1.00.

These are all former library books; the only one that appears to have ever been checked out and/or read is The Beak of the Finch, the other three look more or less brand new (with Storm World looking like it has never even been opened before.)

Our nation should be ashamed

From Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, in the New York Times

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial. 

Yeah, sure the Bill of Rights says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, but no one expects that to apply to Muslims with Muslim sounding names, do they?

North Carolina Republicans versus the United States Constitution

From a bill proposed by N.C. Republicans:

SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

From the U.S. Constitution, which, contrary to the ideological wishful thinking of Republican theocrats, asserts:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof [Amendment 1] ... No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. [Amendment 14]

Section 2 of the proposed bill is a call for nullification, something that I considered settled by the Civil War, giving some indication as to how radical the current incarnation of the Republican party has become.

"Survival seeds ... also known as seeds"

Quote of the day

"[S]trange indeed though this may seem, the Istari, being clad in bodies of Middle-earth, might even as Men and Elves fall away from their purposes, and do evil, forgetting the good in the search for power to effect it." - J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales

One might consider this quote a companion to my previous post referencing the work of Tolkien.

Baleful quote of the day

"The man whom the [Obama] administration has put up to head the CIA would not say whether or not the president of the United States has the power to order the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen within the borders of the United States .. And the [Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation] hearing, remarkably, went on as though nothing untoward had happened." - Charles Pierce

Quote of the day

"I know it is fashionable to argue that MSNBC is just the flip-side of Fox News, but that only appears to be the case if you focus on partisanship. If you focus on whether or not viewers are better or worse informed after watching The Rachel Maddow Show versus The O'Reilly Factor the differences between the two networks is obvious. Maddow explains how things work. O'Reilly inflames people's passions. Maddow presents things that ought to scare her audience, like the way corporations are using Republicans to write legislation verbatim per their instructions, while O'Reilly is telling his audience that liberals want to ruin their Christmas celebration." - Booman Tribune

Reality versus media conservative's deranged perception of reality

Reality

As the right wing continues to rage and sputter about Obama being a socialist and a Marxist who hates capitalism and wants to bring the entire American economy to its knees, Bloomberg News reports that corporate profits have been higher than at any time since WW2 under Obama

Media Conservative "reality"

I think Obama sees himself as correcting historic wrongs in this country, as delivering the fruits of the labor of other people to people who he believes have historically been put upon. I think there’s a lot of perverse thinking that goes on in his mind, radical left-wing thinking. He was indoctrinated with Marx and Alinksy propaganda.

That link has even more hysterical ravings (e.g. President Obama is "hollowing out our military") equally disconnected from reality.

I never cease to be amazed at how many media conservatives appear to be genuinely deranged when it comes to politics.

Quote of the day

"... [U]nderstand the arguments of those who are called enemy." - Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence"

Via Glenn Greenwald

A culture of impunity

In another of the seemingly never-ending examples demonstrating how the rich and powerful are held to a different standard of justice than ordinary citizens - and why one simply needs to read Glenn Greenwald's Liberty and Justice for Some - liar for unprovoked war (called the supreme crime by the Nuremberg commission) and torture Condoleezza Rice will become a part of CBS news.

Perhaps if Rice had lied about adultery or cheated at bicycle racing our society might have found some outrage at her actions, rather than financial and social reward for them.

Blog sabbatical

As you may have noticed, my blogging output has decreased quite a bit as of late and, given my work schedule for the next four or five months, it will likely not increase any time soon.

I will keep putting up posts when the inclination strikes me and the time is available, however. [I still intend to catch up on my backlog of book reviews and Book of the Year picks eventually.]

In the meanwhile, the blogs in the Blog Roll on the left cover just about anything I'd have to say anyways.

Quote of the day

"The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary." - Ben Franklin, in handwritten note to his Constitutional Convention speech prayer proposal

A word about Wool

Two months ago, while checking the Kindle Daily Deal, I came across the Wool Omnibus for the first time. Having not heard of the author, nor the five book series before, I was weary of spending two dollars on it, yet found myself intrigued by the description of this sci-fi series

The first Wool story was released as a standalone short in July of 2011. Due to reviewer demand, the rest of the story was released over the next six months. My thanks go out to those reviewers who clamored for more. Without you, none of this would exist. Your demand created this as much as I did.

This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

After a few minutes of internet browsing I learned that the author, Hugh Howey, self-published these books and that their sales were driven primarily by word-of-mouth. I was further impressed by the virtually universal rave reviews of the book from readers and that in less than a year the film rights were secured by 20th Century Fox, with Ridley Scott having expressed interest in making the film.

So I bought it and began reading. And I was hooked. Over the next two days I spent every free moment I had reading the omnibus.

The story begins with mankind living in an underground silo where the only punishment for those who wish to go outside is to be allowed to go outside. No one seems to know exactly why mankind is living in an underground silo. I won't say much more than that about the plot as I do not wish to spoil the experience in the slightest. But I believe that if you read to the end of the first short story, you will be compelled to read the rest of the series.

Speaking more generally about the writing, the sort of sci-fi world that Howey has created reminds me of the work of Asimov; and reading this self-published, serialized and word-of-mouth promoted work gave me the sort of pleasure that I imagine the early fans of pulp science fiction magazine derived from the sense discovering and being a part of the start of new careers and great works.

After finishing the omnibus I immediately purchased First Shift - Legacy, the first book in a trilogy of Wool prequels. I swallowed that in a few days and then eagerly awaited the publication of the second prequel, Second Shift - Order, which I got the day it became available. As you can probably guess, I am long since finished with that one and am now waiting in anticipation of the third book, which Howey expects to hopefully have out by the start of February. And then it will be onto Wool 9 (which is 14% done, according to Howey's website as of December 16).

I highly recommend giving these works a shot: and for those who do not wish to spend 6 dollars on a work from a little known author, then I would note that the original Wool 1 can be read for free.

 I dare you to try it and see if you can resist the urge to continue reading further.

Quote of the day

"She almost spoke like a super villain, like Dr Doom." - Ken Levine, commenting on the certainty with which Ayn Rand held her beliefs

Levine is the designer of Bioshock, a critically acclaimed video game that takes place in an Objectivist dystopia inspired by Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. He has stated that the game is "a cautionary tale about wholesale, unquestioning belief in something."

"War on terror"

If this is how you fight "terror," then perhaps one need look for another path.

Also:

While Israeli officials are quick to rattle off the numbers of projectiles fired from Gaza, rarely do they tell you what they fire into Gaza, what the effects of this fire is and what the fallout from it is.

For example, in 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 where women or children, and the injury of 468 Palestinians, of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follows: 57 percent, or 310, were caused by Israeli aircraft missile fire; 28 percent, or 150, where from Israeli live ammunition; 11 percent, or 59, were from Israeli tank shells; while another 3 percent, or 18, were from Israeli mortar fire.

Through September 2012, Israeli weaponry caused 55 Palestinian deaths and 257 injuries. Among these 312 casualties, 61, or roughly 20 percent, were children and 28 were female. 209 of these casualties came as a result of Israeli Air Force missiles, 69 from live ammunition fire, and 18 from tank shells. It is important to note that these figures do not represent a totality of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza but rather only Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza which cause casualties. The total number of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza is bound to be significantly larger.

For context, consider this: more Palestinians were killed in Gaza yesterday than Israelis have been killed by projectile fire from Gaza in the past three years.

Excerpt of the day

From The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum

"What do you know?"

"Well, that is hard to tell," replied Jack. "For although I feel that I know a tremendous lot, I am not yet aware how much there is in the world to find out about. It will take me a little time to discover whether I am very wise or very foolish."

Quote of the day

"Based on what is known, what is most disturbing about the whole Petraeus scandal is not the sexual activities that it revealed, but the wildly out-of-control government surveillance powers which enabled these revelations. What requires investigation here is not Petraeus and Allen and their various sexual partners but the FBI and the whole sprawling, unaccountable surveillance system that has been built." - Glenn Greenwald

Quote of the day

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer lives are based on the labors of other people, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving." - Albert Einstein, The Quotable Einstein

Quote of the day

"Modern Republicans are devotees of faith-based analysis on every front." - Paul Krugman

A lost opportunity

As Dean Baker says

It is remarkable that the Democrats have not been harsher in holding Romney in contempt for his comments [making fun of efforts to mitigate global warming] in these final days leading up to the election. Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot.

Imagine a world where we had not seen the Sept. 11 attacks and a Democratic challenger to President Bush's reelection in 2004 had mocked the money that Bush had spent on defenses against terrorism. If the country had then been hit by a terrorist attack in the week before the election would the Republicans be shy about going after their challenger's bad sense of humor?

But instead both parties quietly agreed not to make an issue out of the biggest issue facing mankind.

A satirical take on the War on Terror (among other things)

An author, Mr. J.M. Porup, sent me an e-mail alerting I that he has a new book out - The United States of Air: A Satire that Mocks the War on Terror - which will be free until November 5. [I just purchased my free Kindle copy as I type this.] He described it as a "a vicious satiric smackdown of the War on Terror, War on Drugs, NSA spying, and above all American hypocrisy" inspired by the sort of civil liberties infringements that Glenn Greenwald blogs about regularly.

An interview with the author can be read, here.

Update for the New American Newspeak Dictionary

Today's update to the New American Newspeak Dictionary is:

Disposition matrix: a secret process of deliberation to sort who the president wants to secretly kill, secretly rendition, or secretly put in prison indefinitely without charges.

Via the Washington Post (h/t Glenn Greenwald)

What he said

If I had written a post today, I would have wished it to be this one.

The reality is that people who work themselves into a lather over deficits while ignoring the very real problem of climate change don't care a whit about the fate of future generations. They're simply demagoguing a largely soluble non-issue to create an excuse for handing social insurance programs over to Wall Street, and for shredding what little is left of discretionary spending in order to ensure a cheap, desperate labor force with low tax rates for the wealthy.

It really is sad that between tepid, no-backbone Democrats and lunatic Republicans we've gone so far backwards on this issue.

For the first time since 1988, presidential candidates did not mention the issue of climate change during debates.

Even as the world has seen 331 consecutive months with global temperatures over the 20th century average, even as extreme weather gets more intense and expensive, even as the Arctic sees unprecedented melt of sea ice, and even as scientists issue dire warnings about an approaching climate “tipping point,” the issue got no mention at all within three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate.

If you wish to familiarize yourself with the villains and fools who through a combination of greed, ideologically motivated ignorance, and intellectual dishonesty are determined to doom future generations to a planet less livable with less diversity of life, the Frontline episode "Climate of Doubt" is an excellent starting point.

(The biggest villian, to me, in that program is liar-for-hire Fred Singer, who looks the interviewer in the face and lies with a smirk. Over decades now he has been on the wrong side of the science of global warming, second hand cigarette smoke, Ozone layer depletion and cancer, and acid rain while he was taking money from institutions which profited from the deleterious effects their product had on the public and environment.)

If we didn't live in a Kabuki democracy in which a narrow set of issues is marginally debated by our political duopoly, the issue of climate change would have gotten national attention. But instead of allowing third party candidates have their voices heard, they are arrested and put in shackles.

What upsets Kirsten Powers (D-Fox News)

Kirsten Powers gets upset when a Democratic presidential campaign points out its Republican opposition is lying.

She seems less upset to provide legitimacy to the pretense that Fox News is objective ("fair and balanced") when in reality it is a network dedicated to conservative movement lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theory.

Update: From the Daily Howler: "The other side keeps saying things which are false. We refuse to say what is true. Result? That script will work again in 08. It will work due to people like Powers."

A poignant Sunday strip ...

... was this Sunday's Doonesbury.

Obama administration Words vs. Actions: transparency edition

The Words:

"I will also hold myself as president to a new standard of openness.... Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency." - Barack Obama, Welcoming speech to Senior staff (Jan. 2009)

"This administration has been the most transparent ever." - White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew

The Actions:

"The Obama administration has charged more people (six) under the Espionage Act for the alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined." - Peter Van Buren

"As a candidate for President, Obama criticized the Bush administration for using the state secrets privilege more than any previous administration to shut down lawsuits alleging government misconduct. But in every state secrets case that it inherited from the Bush administration, Obama’s Justice Department has continued to assert the privilege. Can you explain why Obama now supports using the privilege in the very cases in which he ostensibly opposed its use previously?" - Elizabeth Goitein

Pop fiction I like

A regular reader may recall that I am no fan of popular fiction. In the post just linked I might have been remiss in failing to note that it isn't just that I categorically dislike popular fiction or believe that it can not be enjoyed (though I do abhor most of it) but that it frustrates me that people mistake such work for real (i.e. great) literature. So I thought I might take a moment to spotlight some pop fiction that I did enjoy.

Namely: Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. While I am aware that this isn't on the level of Dostoevsky or Dickens I did find all three of these books thoroughly enjoyable, for several reasons. First of all, in all three books I could identify with the politics of the author and his fixation on right wing extremism. The second and third books in the series deal with what would be my political fantasy: having a government that violates civil liberties in the name of national security be held to account.

Secondly, as a lifelong fan of the medium of comic books, I appreciated the way that the main character of the series comes across as a super-heroine, with abilities that far surpass that of a normal human being. (This is more apparent in the second and third books.)

And perhaps it has something to do with the genre, because the next most pop fiction success that I can think of that I've enjoyed has been the work of James Ellroy, also a writer of detective fiction (think film noir.)

Quote of the day

"Political passions, aroused everywhere, demand their victims." - Albert Einstein, The Quotable Einstein