August 19th, 2007 | Published in Business, Economics, Quotes
Instead, and almost uniquely among developed nations, Americans took none of the productivity gains in additional leisure. We decided to work and buy and have instead.
–Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (2006), p. 236
August 18th, 2007 | Published in Quotes, Politics, Religion
The religious and political Right gets the public meaning of religion mostly wrong—preferring to focus only on sexual and cultural issues while ignoring the weightier matters of justice. And the secular Left doesn’t seem to get the meaning and promise of faith for politics at all—mistakenly dismissing spiritually as irrelevant to social change.
–Jim Wallis, God’s Politics (2005), p. 3-4
August 17th, 2007 | Published in Internet, Links, Art and Design
This website has an interesting design. Making changes would be pretty difficult, though.
(HT: Abraham P.)
August 16th, 2007 | Published in Biology, Health, Quotes, Religion
An idea of health that does not generously and gracefully accommodate the fact of death is obviously incomplete. The crudest manifestation of modern medicine is its routine, stubborn, and finally cruel resistance to death. This comes of the refusal to accept it not only as part of health, which it demonstrably is, but also as a great mystery both in itself and as a part of the mystery that surrounds us all our lives.
–Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000), p. 146
August 15th, 2007 | Published in Science, Quotes, Culture
It’s all right not to believe in luck and omens. Nobody believes in them. But it doesn’t do any good to take chances with them and no one takes chances. Cannery Row, like every place else, is not superstitious but will not walk under a ladder or open an umbrella in the house.
–John Steinbeck, Cannery Row (1945), p. 143
August 14th, 2007 | Published in Education, Quotes, Humor and Satire
Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found out.
–Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1955), p. 77
August 13th, 2007 | Published in History, Quotes, Culture, Humor and Satire
Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry, “We will not be dictated to,” and proceeded to become stenographers.
–G. K. Chesterton (on feminism)
(I am told this is cited from Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Sheed and Ward, 1943), p. 205, but I have not confirmed this.)
August 12th, 2007 | Published in Nature, Quotes
An earthquake is such fun when it is over. It is so exhilarating to reflect that you are not, as you well might be, lying dead under a heap of ruins.
–George Orwell, Burmese Days (1934), p. 182