Speaker For The Diodes

QotD

2012-02-11T09:35:42Z

"There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility." -- Lyndon Johnson (b. 1908-08-27, d. 1973-01-22; US President 1963-1969)

QotD

2012-02-10T09:35:48Z

"So, after watching 15 debates, I can't help but ask myself, 'Is this the only time in their lives they are allowed talk about sex?' and 'Why do guys with no access to my lady junk spend more time talking about it than guys that do?'" -- Lizz Winstead, "The Dumbest Things GOP Candidates Have Said About Sex", 2012-01-12

QotD

2012-02-09T09:35:52Z

"Immortality is for suckers. If even a few of my words outlive me by even one hour, then I have cheated death." -- F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre (d. 2010-06-25)

[To anyone celebrating Mawlid an-Nabi / Mevlid-i Serif, may you have a joyous holiay! And to anyone who celebrated it on Saturday -- whoops, I only just noticed that there are two different dates for it, but I hope it was good.]

Today is:
Gregorian: 2012 February 9
Julian: 2012 January 27
Hebrew: 5772 Shevat 16
Islamic: 1433 Rabi'al-Awwal 16
Persian: 1390 Bahman 20
Mayan Long Count: 0.0.0.0.12.19.19.2.4
Bahá'í: 1 9 Badí' Mulk Jamál
Indian: 1933 Magha 20

QotD

2012-02-08T09:35:58Z

"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease." -- John Muir

[I guess one benefit of trying to mention Jewish holidays the morning before they start instead of the morning in the middle of the holiday, is that when I'm a day late because my calendar file got stale, I still land it during the holiday ... though I'm not Jewish, I'll probably eat extra fruit today -- the New Year for Trees -- just from the power of suggestion, since it will have crossed my mind after editing my QotD file with this oversight.]

QotD

2012-02-07T09:36:02Z

"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody." -- from an article by Stephanie Pappas about a study linking low IQ and conservative beliefs to prejudice, 2012-01-28 (note that the article is somewhat more cautious than its headline)

QotD

2012-02-06T09:36:07Z

"No matter how much anti-choicers wish otherwise, it's not feasible to create an approach to women's health that separates good girl concerns from bad girl concerns." -- Amanda Marcotte, "Susan G. Komen's Act of Cowardice", Slate, 2012-01-31

QotD

2012-02-05T09:36:12Z

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2009-01-25:

"For ten years we've been waging this war [against copyright violators]. Artists have not gotten any more money, businesses have not gotten any more profit, and our kids have been turned into criminals." -- Larry Lessig, Stanford Law Professor, on "The Colbert Report"
[ http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/01/larry-lessig-colbert-report]

(submitted to the mailing list by Kelly Groves)

QotD

2012-02-04T09:36:17Z

"One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. ... All you need to do is to be curious, receptive, eager for experience. And there's one strange thing: when you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else." -- Eleanor Roosevelt (b. 1884-10-11, d. 1962-11-07), You Learn by Living (1960)

QotD

2012-02-03T09:36:22Z

"When the shadows come a'crawling,
And the darkness grows too deep,
Remember what I taught you:
Laugh three times and the monsters sleep.
-- from "And the Monsters" by cadhla

QotD

2012-02-02T09:36:27Z

[Today's quotation is dedicated to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.]

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." -- Benjamin Franklin

[I don't think my faith needs this "help" from the government. Apparently a bunch of legislators up in PA have less faith.]

Happy Groundhog Day! (And for folks who celebrate it, I hope you have or had a good Imbolc, depending on whether you celebrate Imbolc on the first or second of Fabruary.)</p>

QotD

2012-02-01T09:36:31Z

"History is orphan. It can speak, but cannot hear. It can give, but cannot take. Its wounds and tragedies can be read and known, but cannot be avoided or cured." -- Kedar Joshi

QotD

2012-01-31T09:36:36Z

"If this [political rally in SC] is a joke, then they are saying our whole campaign-finance system is a joke!" -- either Stephen Colbert or Stephen Colbert (I'm not sure which, maybe both at the same time), responding to charges that his short-lived Presidential campaign -- and by extension the existence and actions of the Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow Super Pac -- was a joke. (Quoted here and here -- IIRC he said it on his show, but I don't recall which day.)

QotD

2012-01-30T09:36:41Z

"A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted -- in the air.
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.
A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest -- at the command -- of his head." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (b. 1882-01-30, d. 1945-04-12, President of the USA 1933-03-04 to 1945-04-12), 1939-10-26

QotD

2012-01-29T09:36:47Z

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-03-18:

"One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours--all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy." -- William Faulkner, writer.

(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)

QotD

2012-01-28T09:36:51Z

"A lot of the media have made fun of Gingrich for this plan. The irony is they're doing it for the wrong reason. A Moon base is being likened to science fiction, just some silly fluff. But that's grossly unfair.

"Space exploration is an issue that's important. It's vital to our nation for a host of reasons, but it is also costly in every sense of the word. If we go, we should go for the right reasons, and we should do it the right way. If we go, we must go to stay. The budget for this can't be set up on political election cycles, it must be based on the real constraints of engineering and technology, and far more importantly it must be based on a commitment to the future. If we do this, we must invest in the long haul."

-- Phil Plait, 2012-01-27 [thanks to moominmuppet for linking to it]

QotD

2012-01-27T09:36:56Z

"Can you find the chaos theory that makes poets out of people,
Can you find the simple sequence that commands us to explore?
Can you find the cold equation that builds castles, raises steeples,
Leaves our heads filled full of numbers while our minds cry out for more?

-- from "The Moon Alone", by Seanan McGuire (posted 2008-12-20)

And on the subject of being driven to explore and to create large things (for the quoted verse, at least) ... a moment to honor the memory of a few who died in such pursuits:
1967-01-27 Apollo I fire kills Grissom, White and Chaffe
1986-01-28 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion kills Scobee, Smith, McNair, Resnick, Jarvis, Onizuka and McAuliffe
2003-02-01 Space Shuttle Columbia burns up on reentry, killing Brown, Husband, Clark, Chawla, Anderson, McCool, and Ramon.
At a ceremony yesterday, President Obama said, "The loss of these pioneers is felt every day by their family, friends, and colleagues, but we take comfort in the knowledge that their spirit will continue to inspire us to new heights."

QotD

2012-01-26T09:37:01Z

"And high-tech companies -- stop messing with us on your treadmill of upgrades while making the old stuff obsolete. It may be that any software company that didn't routinely upgrade its product would go out of business. But what if the rest of the world worked this way? Oh, I lost a sock. I need to get a whole new wardrobe because the replacement sock is version 2.0.1, and the stores now only sell version 2.0.3." -- Jamie Hyneman (of MythBusters), "7 Tech Headaches -- and How to Fix Them", Popular Mechanics", February 2008 (quoted text appears on third page of the web version) [thanks to perspicuity for the link]

QotD

2012-01-25T09:37:06Z

"I Murder hate by field and flood,
Tho' glory's name may screen us;
In wars at home I'll spend my blood,
Life-giving wars of Venus:
The deities that I adore
Are social Peace and Plenty;
I'm better pleased to make one more,
Than be the death of twenty.
-- from Lines written on windows of the Globe Tavern, Dumfries by Robert Burns (b. 1759-01-25, d. 1796-07-21)

QotD

2012-01-24T09:37:10Z

"I'm very well aquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
-- from "Mr. Bad Example" by Warren Zevon (b. 1947-01-24, d. 2003-09-07) and Jorge Calderón

QotD

2012-01-23T09:37:16Z

Llewellyn: "Never feel bad about anything you write. Art does not apologize."

Millicent Mudd: "So if I write, in literary form, that my mom is a poopyhead..."

Llewellyn: "Art does not apologize. Cheeky little girls are quite another matter."

-- from Ozy and Millie by Dana Simpson, 2005-10-14

[Happy New Year to everyone celebrating the start of the Year of the Dragon!]

QotD

2012-01-22T09:37:21Z

From the Quotation of the day mailing list 2010-01-03:

"I just wish that in the heat of battle, about which Bell writes with passion but an absolute lack of variety, I hadn't had to keep running to the Oxford English Dictionary to look up 'widdershins,' 'osnaburg' and 'barracoon,' words that stop us dead in our tracks and make us feel like we're playing Scrabble with Yosemite Sam." -- Robert Goolrick, in the Washington Post, December 12, 2009, reviewing Madison Smartt Bell's Devil's Dream.

[ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/11/AR2009121103510.html]

(submitted to the mailing list by Thomas J. Newlin)

QotD

2012-01-21T09:37:26Z

"A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water." -- Carl Reiner

[I think it's pretty. But how pretty depends on whether i need to drive (or walk) in it.]

QotD

2012-01-20T09:37:31Z

"It isn't as if random crazy people on the street are granted 'they said it so that's good enough to print' privileges by our elite newspapers. Powerful connected people are.

"The 'liberal media' used to be called the 'establishment media' back before conservatives started to seriously work the refs."

-- Atrios, 2012-01-12

"Atrios Johnson is Correct..The Establishment Media was NEVER 'Liberal'

"Thats why when people came along who were, they were separated out and called, 'Muckrakers'..."

-- duane V, comment to above, same day

QotD

2012-01-19T09:37:35Z

"I don't want to be one of the boys. I simply want to live in a world where my voice and work are not devalued because I'm not a boy." -- @ColleenDoran, 2012-01-11 [thanks to the friend who retweeted it (no more specific, because that friend's tweets aren't public)]

QotD

2012-01-18T09:37:40Z

"[SOPA/PIPA] mandates that every broadband provider in the country must build the very security hole DNSSEC is designed to fix into its system as a feature. To put this in terms the non-technically inclined PIPA supporter can understand, this ranks up there with Doofenshmirtz (from Phineas and Ferb) building a self-destruct button into every -inator. He doesn't intend for it to ruin his plans, but it always does. Similarly, no matter how much the IP Mafia insist that they only intend to use the PIPA tools on foreign websites, it doesn't matter. At some point, the hacker equivalent of Perry the Platypus is going to come along and push the self destruct button. At which point, it is a little too late for PIPA supporters to say 'whoops! Sorry we left a gaping security hole for hackers to take down the power grid. But at least we stopped several dozen tweens from illegally downloading a preview copy of Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part II.'" -- Harold Feld, 2012-01-17