liveonearth: (Default)
 “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” 

—Frederick Douglass

liveonearth: (Default)
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity.
- John Muir
liveonearth: (business dance)

What's distinctive about Sanders is not (or not simply) that he's an ideological purist who refuses to think pragmatically but that he just doesn't know or care very much about the details of how the world works, how to affect concrete change, and what the possible unintended consequences of major changes is likely to be. He'd rather rally the troops and give a rousing speech.
--Damon Linker in the Week, here:
http://theweek.com/articles/617065/bernie-sanders-hollow-aspirational-politics

I share this quote because I disagree.  I think that Bernie sees the writing on the wall, that this crash will either happen sooner and in an intentional way, or later in an even more devastating way.  Take apart the banks, or watch them take us apart.  Re-establish human decency or take care of just yourself.  This crossroads leads one way, the other way is inconceivable.  You just can't change directions when there is so much momentum.  Not without a crash.  Bernie knows that many people will die in the process, that poor people will loose the game, and that over generations rich people will be able to relocate to wherever they need to go to survive and propagate.  Idiocracy will come to pass if tRump is any indication of wealthy breeding.

I thought since the beginning that this polarity between tRump and Bernie is representative of the deepest cultural fissure in this nation.  It has been fascinating to watch it play out.

To assert that Bernie doesn't know how the world works is a pretty low blow.  He knows.  His heart broke a long time ago.  Now he's trying to do something to change it.  I appreciate his efforts and I wish that he'd team up with my old buddy Ron Paul (he's not too old) and connect the political circle.  If anybody knows what's going on, it's these old dudes.

liveonearth: (flower and bird)

Action and reaction, ebb and flow,

trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living.

Out of our over-confidence, fear;

out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope.

And out of hope, progress.

~ Bruce Fairchild Barton

liveonearth: (Witch_reads_by_fire)
There is no poverty so great
as that of the prosperous,
no wrechedness so dismal
as affluence.
Wealth is poison.
There is no misery to compare
with that which exists
where technology has been
a total success.

--Thomas Merton, Catholic monk
liveonearth: (Kiva)

There is a great deal of difference
between loss, change, and transformation.
A loss is a step backward;
a change is an opportunity;
transformation is a step forward.
The common denominator in these three realities
is the fact that one must
give up something.
It is possible for both loss and change to lead to transformation,
but it is not possible for transformation to occur unless
something is lost and something is changed.

–Anthony Padovano

liveonearth: (Chill Bitches Buddha)
Without deviation from the norm,
progress is not possible.

-Frank Zappa
liveonearth: (Tempest in a Teapot)
If you want to build a ship,
don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the wood and give orders.
Instead, teach them to yearn
for the vast and endless sea.

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
liveonearth: (mad scientist's union)
Science is not sick. It never has been. Science is how we can reveal the secrets of the universe. It is a slow, iterative, arduous process. It makes mistakes but it is self-correcting. That doesn’t mean that the mistakes don’t sometimes stick around for centuries. Sometimes it takes new technologies, discoveries, or theories (all of which are of course themselves part of science) to make progress. Fundamental laws of nature will perhaps keep us from ever discovering certain things, say, what happens when you approach the speed of light, leaving them for theoretical consideration only. But however severe the errors, provided our species doesn’t become extinct through cataclysmic cosmic events or self-inflicted destruction, science has the potential to correct them.

---the Devil's Neuroscientist (alter ego of Sam Schwartzkopf)
in a 12/10/14 blogpost entitled: Why all research findings are false
https://devilsneuroscientist.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/why-all-research-findings-are-false/

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