05:25 am - QotD
"I have an immediate distrust of anyone who lobbies for the
elimination of a field of study, any field of study. What are they
afraid of?" -- Linda Featheringill,
2012-05-03 [thanks to
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
realinterrobang
for
quoting it ealier]
"I have an immediate distrust of anyone who lobbies for the
elimination of a field of study, any field of study. What are they
afraid of?" -- Linda Featheringill,
2012-05-03 [thanks to
realinterrobang
for
quoting it ealier]
"Our nurses worked so hard the last time on [President Obama's] campaign. They worked for months. I mean, people left their homes. They were excited. You know, they actually believed in his candidacy. They thought that he meant what he said when he actually supported single payer. And all we needed to do was get him there.
"But we made a tremendous mistake. I mean, as a country, as the nurses, everyone. And that is he said, 'You need to push me.' Well, no one pushed him, except for the right, and except for Wall Street. We didn't push Barack Obama. In fact, we had the liberal groups who were yelling at anyone who stepped out of line to get in line.
"So now we're in a situation that we, in part, helped create. That's the dilemma here. You can't solve the problem without changing the way you do your own work. And so this isn't about Barack Obama. We are in a process of figuring out if we're even going to endorse legislators this year, because it's so bad."
-- RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, on the PBS television program Moyers & Company, 2012-05-11
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-08-08:
"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil." -- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008.
(submitted to the mailing list by Chari Anang)
Perhaps I'm easily amused, but ...
Perrine has a pretty narrow definition of "safety" at my mother's house: basically, my bedroom. If she's frightened of anything except the vacuum cleaner, that's where she wants to run to. (The vacuum, of course, she's running away from when it's being used in that room.) The thing she mostly runs away from is the dog, Pepper. And if Pepper is between her and "safety", she'll run literally under Pepper's nose to get there (making me doubt how truly frightened she is of Pepper, as opposed to just being "Ewwww, a do-o-o-og" at her).
I let Pepper out for her midnight "please don't poop in the house while we're asleep" run, and Perrine decided to explore the back porch while the door was open. Usually something else scares her back inside (like a falling leaf, for example) before Pepper returns, but a couple of times she's heard Pepper running toward the house and scooted in through the door ahead of the dog -- once by less than a foot. This time, Pepper came back much more quietly than usual (probably because she was carrying a "prize" that must've fallen out of some neighbour's garbage a few days ago -- *sigh*, dogs), and I was surprised to see Pepper appear in the kitchen before the grey-tabby-blur had sped past.
So I went into the family room to try to figure out where Perrine was, and she was slinking back in looking downright sheepish at having been caught too far from the door to zip back in ahead of the dog. (Heh, cats.)
In other pet-related trivia, Pepper startled me on Friday when she, The World's Most Disobedient Dog, asked me for permission before going through an open door. She clearly wanted to go out, because she zipped right past when I nodded at her, but since when does she stop and ask?
A little less relatedly, Friday morning I had a strange dream which included, near the end, my opening a closet door to find, in front of the closet's contents, a ghostly couple in 19th Century agricultural garb -- y'know, white and grey, translucent ghosts -- who seemed unaware of my presence ... and at their feet, four solid-looking, living-colour corgis, smiling little doggy-smiles up at me, obviously seeing me. And I said to them, "Dear God, I hope you're ghost-doggies, 'cause I don't want to think about having four more real dogs zooming around this place." (I woke up in the pocess of trying to figure out how Pepper would react to ghost-dogs.)
Completely unrelated to pet-stuff ... Mom and Sheepie and I went to the Greek Festival at St. Sophia's in DC. Nice except for being too loud; a bit crowded; enjoyed the food, of course. I was worried about the noise, since my ears had been bothering me the day before (hyperacusis leading to headache and Inability To Cope), after shopping with Mom. So as soon as we got indoors (echo central) at the festival, for the buffet, I put in my earplugs. It was still plenty uncomfortable (and the noise that made it through sensitized me enough that I had to leave them in when we went back to thhe outdoor part of the festival), but I was still fit to drive home when we left and was never driven to the point of tears by the sound, so it looks like putting in the earplugs as soon as I notice things are loud, instead of waiting until it's really bothering me, makes a big difference.
And though it took a few repetitions to register, the voice of a friend I hadn't seen in [an embarassingly long time] calling my name did make it through the earplugs, and while our conversation was brief we got to exchange email addresses and thus be back in touch, so yay!
(Another win for the day: one of the vendors there had χαλλουμι (my absolute favourite cheese, but a little hard to find sometimes)!
Speaking of people not seen in a long time ... last weekend, at the Green Man Festival, shortly before we went on stage, a child I'd never met before, who had just found out who I was, hugged me and said, "Thank you for making it possible for me to exist!" Awwwwww! I introduced his parents to each other. And I hadn't seen either of them in a very, very long time. They're still cute, and now I know that their kids are cute too.
I saw other people I hadn't seen in a while at the Green Man Festival, but no others I'd not-seen for quite that long. (It was good seeing the rest of you, too!)
I have got to get better and staying in contact with people, and seeing the ones I am in contact with.
And while I'm thinking of seeing-people-I-too-seldom-see ... I don't think I can afford to properly attend Balticon, but I'll at least be ghosting the lobby on at least a couple days of it, and might manage to buy a day-membership for one day, maybe. (Uh, looking at the rates just now, if I can afford a day-membership, Monday's the only day that's going to happen. *sigh*) I'll be there Monday for sure, and will try to be around at least one other day as well.
"Our neighbors out back are having what I hope to god is a karaoke party, because otherwise they've hired the worst singer EVER." -- @Redshift42, 2012-05-12
"I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry." -- Yusuf Islam [né Steven Demetre Georgiou, better known as Cat Stevens] (b. 1948-07-21)
"We have learned, a little late no doubt, that for states as for individuals real wealth consists not in acquiring or invading the domains of others, but in developing one's own. We have learned that all extensions of territory, all usurpations, by force or by fraud, which have long been connected by prejudice with the idea of 'rank,' of 'hegemony,' of 'political stability,' of 'superiority' in the order of the Powers, are only the cruel jests of political lunacy, false estimates of power, and that their real effect is to increase the difficulty of administration and to diminish the happiness and security of the governed for the passing interest or for the vanity of those who govern..." -- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (better known simply as Tallyrand; b. 1754-02-02, d. 1838-05-17)
"[...] when Steele says, 'I think that's an important opportunity for us' in reference to reaching out to the gay and pro-choice crowd, he steps in it anyway. How? By calling these groups 'opportunities' to freshen and rehab their brand, not as groups of humans to include, help and/or serve. He might as well have just come out and said, 'These people can help our image'... the very same people they used to use as fodder guaranteed to incite their pitchfork and torch carriers." -- ExGrifter, 2009-02-01
"So it turns out the real danger of dressing androgynously is the possibility of your kid growing up to get elected president of the U.S. four times in a row." -- J.F. Sargent, 2012-04-24, "5 Gender Stereotypes That Used To Be the Exact Opposite", Cracked.com
"The way we vote is not some abstract thing about you like
our hair color or our shoe size - it is a moral decision, part of
the way that we choose to treat the people around us. And that's
the only real important choice we ever get to make. We deserve to
be judged for it. So when we make choices that hurt people, then
they are not obligated to be polite to us, or to pretend that we
are better than what we are. We make our choices, and if the
consequences are heavy, we pick them up and we carry them our
fucking selves." --
![[info] - personal](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarp,
2011-03-18
"To make one me you just add
Half of mom and half of dad
That is what I once believed
But I know now that I was wrong
I got so much more from you mom
Than just half a set of genes
I got nutrients and transcription factors
and nearly everything that matters
plus my prenatal environment (transplacental inheritance)
mRNA, mitochondria,
That back in the day once belonged to ya (theyre cytoplasmic)
and I just want to thank for supplying them
[...]"
-- Adam Cole, "A Biologist's Mother's Day
Song", (
YouTube,
CD Baby)
(a) Thanks to
drglam
for linking
to this earlier (uh, about two years earlier), and (b) Go
listen to the whole thing. Especially if you're even the tiniest
bit of a science geek (which I think covers the majority of my
friends).
"To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose" -- infographic pioneer, first female member of the Royal Statistical Society, author, and administrator, Florence Nightingale (b. 1820-05-12, d. 1910-08-13) ... who also had some impact on the profession of nursing.
A quick reminder: The Homespun Ceilidh Band will be performing on Mothers Day -- this Sunday, 2012-05-13 -- at the Green Man Festival in Greenbelt, MD. We're hoping that a bunch of the drummers at the festival will hang around for the end of our set. (We're the last act scheduled for the day. So make sure you come early so you can see the rest of the festival first.)
Bring your mother! If you're a mother, bring your kids!
"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it." -- Richard P. Feynman (b. 1918-04-11, d. 1988-02-15)
"All models are wrong, but some models are useful."
-- George Box [
thanks to
tdj for
pointing it out]
"When an archer misses the mark he turns and looks for the fault within himself. Failure to hit the bull's eye is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim improve yourself." -- Gilbert Arland
[To anyone celebrating Lag BaOmer tonight/tomorrow, have a good holiday!]
"If you ever find yourself raising log(anything)^e or taking the pi-th root of anything, set down the marker and back away from the whiteboard; something has gone horribly wrong." -- Randall Munroe, xkcd, 2012-04-25
"The problem with those who choose received Authority over fact and logic is how they choose which part of Authority to obey. The Bible famously contradicts itself at many points (I have never understood why any Christian would choose the Old Testament over the New), and the Koran can be read as a wonderfully compassionate and humanistic document. Which suggests that the problem of fundamentalism lies not with authority, but with ourselves." -- Molly Ivins (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-05-03:
"I will boldly announce that it is my considered opinion that the human race is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams. These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter." -- Noel Coward, in a 1936 letter. Quoted in The Letters of Noel Coward, edited by Barry Day.
(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)
"Household tasks are easier and quicker when they are done by
somebody else." -- James Thorpe
[thanks to
blueeowyn]
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