On Advertising Advertising cvining

The advertising industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories that are based on just the opposite.

Quote Author
Citation

Making the Future: Occupations, Interventions, Empire and Resistance

Always do the wrong thing

Submitted by cvining on

This is the most tactless speech I have ever heard. The Germans are really a stupid people. They always do the wrong thing.

Quote Author
Citation

On hearing a speech by German foreign minister Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau at negotiations for what became the Treaty of Versailles 1919

Never in doubt cvining

Frequently in error, never in doubt (said of cosmologists...)

Citation

Many variations of this can be found, and Zel'dovich may not be the first

Twenty seconds cvining

If Landau would have been here he would have stopped you after twenty seconds

I don't want to be your friend anymore

Submitted by cvining on

I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this

Quote Author
Citation

Then President Trump to Vice President Pence on Jan 5, 2021, asking Pence to violate the constitution and declare Trump winner of the 2020 US Presidential election 

Sheep, Wolves and Sheep Dogs

"There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves and sheep dogs."

As spoken by Chris Kyle's father in the Clint Eastwood directed film "American Sniper" (2014), said to be "loosely based" on the real live story of Christopher Scott Kyle 1974-2013. The real Kyle was a highly decorated Navy SEAL sniper who served four tours in Iraq with over 150 confirmed kills. A hero in any sense of the word. 

I don't know anything about Kyle except the portrayal in the film and the Wikipedia page about him. And I mean no disrespect, but based on the narrative in the film Kyle is just as messed up, just as much a butcher as the Iraqi portrayed in the film who used a drill and amputations to terrorize. Kyle's weapon is a bullet, from up to a mile away.

Let's revisit that quote from early the the film:

Wayne Kyle: [to his sons] There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to believe that evil doesn't exist in the world, and if it ever darkened their doorstep, they wouldn't know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep.

Wayne Kyle: Then you've got predators who use violence to prey on the weak. They're the wolves.

Wayne Kyle: And then there are those blessed with the gift of aggression, an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed who live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdog.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/quotes?item=qt2359001

Chris Kyle has been raised to be an aggressor. He's acclimated to killing and guns as a child, he finds ordinary life unsatisfying and joins the SEALS because he's "looking to be of service" and "likes to fight".

cvining

Tags

Commentary
Reality and drugs cvining

Reality is for those who can't handle drugs

Quote Author
Citation

Scrawled on a bathroom stall wall in my dorm circa 1976

The lowest white man cvining

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

Quote Author
Citation

In Tennessee, an off-the-cuff observation he made to a young staffer, Bill Moyers.

The Galaxy Song

Submitted by cvining on

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,

And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40, 000 miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

Quote Author
Citation

by Eric Idle (lyrics) and John Du Prez (music) is a part of the 1983 Monty Python movie, The Meaning of Life.