Carbon Neutral

Submitted by cvining on

Climate change is all around
Creeping on us, makes no sound
Always something else to do
The cars, the wars, a bank or two

The answer: easy! has been found!
Leave that carbon in the ground.
Can we resist these fuels so useful?
And live each day carbon neutral?

Commentary

We all have knives

Submitted by cvining on

Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.

 

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So packed in

Submitted by cvining on

When I played Keokuk one night they were so packed in they couldn't laugh ha ha ha, they had to laugh ho, ho ho

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Tireless service

Submitted by cvining on

...In addition to these changes, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and Chief Executive Officer Stan Deal will retire from the company and Stephanie Pope will lead our BCA business, effective today. I want to thank Stan for his many contributions and dedication since first joining our ranks 38 years ago, and for his tireless service as our BCA leader during an uncommonly difficult period for our company and for our industry.

When the President does it, it's not illegal

Submitted by cvining on

"When the president does it … that means that it is not illegal "

   --Richard Nixon, 1977 interview with David Frost

 

Surely Nixon was not the first to put forward a theory of government  that the President has absolute immunity and is in effect above the law. But Trump, in a brief filed yesterday, has brought the question front and center before the SCOTUS where he argues (as reported by the NYTimes)

“The president cannot function, and the presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the president faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office.”

It's not the first time Trump has raised this point. In a federal appeals court earlier this year federal judge Pan asked a Trump lawyer a very to the point question, and got a disturbing but direct response:   

“I asked you a yes-or-no question,” Judge Pan said. “Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”

(Trump lawyer) Mr. Sauer said his answer was a “qualified yes,” by which he meant no. He explained that prosecution would only be permitted if the president were first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.

Commentary

Not illegal

Submitted by cvining on

When the president does it … that means that it is not illegal

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Citation

1977 interview with David Frost

Simple and wrong

Submitted by cvining on

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

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Citation

1920, Prejudices: Second Series by H. L. Mencken (Henry Louis Mencken), Chapter 4: The Divine Afflatus, Start Page 155, Borzoi: Alfred A. Knopf, New York.(but often attributed to othere as well)

One Funeral At A Time

Submitted by cvining on

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.

[Often paraphrased as "Science progresses one funeral at a time".]

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Citation

Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers. New York: Philosophical library, 1950, p. 33, 97