no. 720

“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”


Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th US President

no. 719

case 225

The Three Most Terrifying Words

The nun Hwídah was eating lunch with her clan when a senior monk approached, seeking her aid with a production issue. Not wishing to disturb the others, the senior monk bent down to whisper in Hwídah’s ear.
“Ah,” said Hwídah, rising from the table. “The three most terrifying words.” Immediately she departed with the senior monk.
A novice who witnessed this exchange happened upon the senior monk that evening. The novice asked, “What were those ‘three most terrifying words’?”
The senior monk replied, “Possible race condition.”
The novice thought a moment and said brightly, “Tell Hwídah that those cannot be the ‘three most terrifying words’, for the words ‘Definite race condition’ would be even more terrifying!”
The senior monk laughed and continued on his way.

That night the novice fell into long, terrible nightmares from which he was unable to wake. After what seemed like an eternity he came to his senses, twisted up inside his own bedsheets.
Tossing off the mangled covers, the novice found himself alone in the middle of a featureless desert. An empty sedative bottle lay on the sand nearby. Tied to it was a tightly-folded map of the whole world: all its continents and its mountains and its many, many deserts.
Inside one desert was a tiny red dot, pointed to by a tiny red arrow, next to which was some tiny red text in Hwídah’s handwriting which read, “Possibly your location”.


The Codeless Code
Fables and Köans for the Software Engineer

no. 718

 

“You are a Shit Spotter. It's satisfying work. ... We have observed that most of the trouble in the world has been caused by ten to twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus…The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right. 

— William Burroughs

no. 717

 DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book-- your latest-- in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say-- I'm getting-- I'm going to buy an envelope.

KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then?

KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

(Source: NOW on PBS, David Brancaccio interviews Kurt Vonnegut discussing his then newly published Book: A Man Without a Country https://amzn.to/3sEBU1I)

no. 715

“Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. 

Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.”

~ Bertrand Russell

no. 714

 All conservative ideologies justify existing inequities as the natural order of things, inevitable outcomes of human nature. If the very rich are naturally so much more capable than the rest of us, why must they be provided with so many artificial privileges under the law, so many bailouts, subsidies and other special considerations - at our expense? Their "naturally superior talents" include unprincipled and illegal subterfuge such as price-fixing, stock manipulation, insider training, fraud, tax evasion, the legal enforcement of unfair competition, ecological spoliation, harmful products and unsafe work conditions. One might expect naturally superior people not to act in such rapacious and venal ways. Differences in talent and capacity as might exist between individuals do not excuse the crimes and injustices that are endemic to the corporate business system. ~Michael Parenti 

(Book: Blackshirts and Reds https://amzn.to/3cIDgEe)

(Art: Illustration by Jon Krause)

Stolen from Facebook

no. 713

 

“I like your Christ.  Your Christians?  Not so much.” 

Ghandi

no. 712

 "Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, but won't give you the key, that lock is not there for your benefit."

Doctorow’s First Law (Cory Doctorow)

no. 711

 “ Heat is such a daunting problem in part because the most effective, efficient coping mechanism for humans - doing nothing - is incompatible with capitalism. “

Ed Burmilla of Gin and Tacos

no. 710

 

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

Joseph Campbell 

no. 709

 “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.“

Anatole France

no. 708

“Women’s total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.”

Gloria Steinem

no. 707

 

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

no. 706

 “America’s immense heritage of idealistic ability is squandered by a system which divides all power between the prejudices of the ignorant many and the ruthlessness of the plutocratic few.”

— Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Russell's America: His Transatlantic Travels and Writings A Documented Account, Volume One 1896-1945, Part II. British and American Nationalism, p. 234

no. 705

 

Happy birthday Anthony Bourdain.

Your honesty, wit and humor are missed. 

“Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride." 

 Anthony Bourdain

no. 704

 “There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves”

Ray Bradbury 

no. 703

 

People have said that the MAGA Evangelical Church has hijacked Jesus but I don't believe that's true.

They have hijacked the word Christian. 

Jesus is of no use to them.

John Pavlovitz

no. 702

"The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given."

— Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Ch. XV: The Value of Philosophy, p. 141 

no. 701

"All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy." 

 — Bertrand Russell, The Science to Save Us from Science, The New York Times Magazine (19 March 1950)

no. 700

“Andrew is gay,” Tilda said, “and Jeff is a great guy.”

“Andrew didn’t know this before he married Eve?”

“He says not. He says it was God’s way of making sure there was a Nadine.”

from Faking It, by Jennifer Crusie