Distempered

"Yet as we heap praise and money on tech leader Apple, and generate billions in advertising revenue..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:43:19 -0400

“Yet as we heap praise and money on tech leader Apple, and generate billions in advertising revenue for Google and Facebook, we’re not getting back as much as we’re giving. Yes, these companies provide quality products and much-desired entertainment. They deserve a sizable profit. But while they’re making unprecedented profits, they’re creating little more than low-wage positions, investing minimally in the country that funded their growth, and making a mockery of the tax laws that are supposed to pay for the next generation’s education.”

- Paul Buchheit

"I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions. I will be satisfied if the federation of..."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:49:05 -0400

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions. I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

- Edward Snowden

"The liberal education needed for the students of today and tomorrow, I suggest, should include a..."

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:13:17 -0400

“The liberal education needed for the students of today and tomorrow, I suggest, should include a common core of studies for all its students. That would have many advantages, for it would create an intellectual communion among students and teachers that does not now exist and would encourage the idea that learning and knowledge are good things in themselves. It would also affirm that some questions are of fundamental importance to everyone, regardless of his origins and personal plans, that we must all think about our values, responsibilities, and our relationships with one another and with the society in which we live. The core I would propose would include the study of the literature, philosophy, and history (in which I include the history of the arts and sciences) of our culture from its origins. It would be a study that tries to meet the past on its own terms, examining it critically but also respectfully, always keeping alive the possibility that the past may contain wisdom that can be useful to us today. It would be a study that was consciously and deliberately moral and civic in its purposes, eager to examine the values discussed, private and public, personal and political. Such an education would show the modern student times and worlds where the common understanding was quite different from his own—where it was believed that man has capacities and a nature that are different from those of the other animals, that his nature is gregarious and that his flourishing requires an ordered beneficent society, that his nature can reach its highest perfection only by living a good life in a well-ordered society.”

- Donald Kagan

"But I get this feeling—It is a feeling that our emotions, while wonderful, are transpiring in a..."

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 01:13:38 -0400

“But I get this feeling—It is a feeling that our emotions, while wonderful, are transpiring in a vacuum, and I think it boils down to the fact that we’re middle class. You see, when you’re middle class, you have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.”

- Douglas Coupland, Generation X

"Marketing is essentially about feeding the poop back to diners fast enough to make them think..."

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 01:08:11 -0400

“Marketing is essentially about feeding the poop back to diners fast enough to make them think they’re still getting real food. It’s not creation, really, but theft, and no one ever feels good about stealing.”

- Douglas Coupland, Generation X

"I shiver and pull the blanket tight around myself, for I am colder than I had realized, and I wonder..."

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 01:04:51 -0400

“I shiver and pull the blanket tight around myself, for I am colder than I had realized, and I wonder that all things seem to be from hell these days: dates, jobs, parties, weather… Could the situation be that we no longer believe in that particular place? Or maybe we were all promised heaven within our lifetimes, and what we ended up with can’t help but suffer in comparison.”

- Douglas Coupland, Generation X

"I’d always assumed that those people who live in those fancy houses in the suburbs were..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:36:31 -0400

“I’d always assumed that those people who live in those fancy houses in the suburbs were financially better off than I was, and only once I’d joined them did I come to understand that it’s all just a much more sophisticated and elaborate way of being broke.”

- Jonathan Tropper, How to Talk to a Widower

"Sitting in a darkened movie theater smack in the middle of a workday makes you feel like life is a..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:32:36 -0400

“Sitting in a darkened movie theater smack in the middle of a workday makes you feel like life is a class that you’re cutting.”

- Jonathan Tropper, How to Talk to a Widower

"As someone who thinks about religion very little — I reject the label atheist because defining me in..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:22:51 -0400

“As someone who thinks about religion very little — I reject the label atheist because defining me in terms of the things I don’t believe would require an infinite list of nouns — I see no necessary contradiction between religion and science. By which I mean that if I were a deist, I would claim no better example of the skill and ingenuity of The Creator than in the laws of nature that allowed for the magnificent story of the origin and evolution of life on Earth, and their overwhelmingly beautiful expression in our tree of life. I am not a deist, philosopher or theologian, so I will make no further comment on the origin of the laws of nature that permitted life to evolve. I simply don’t know; perhaps someday we will find out. But be in no doubt that laws they are, and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is as precise and well tested as Einstein’s theories of relativity.”

- Brian Cox

"Don’t you ever get a tattoo, understand? All it says is that you ain’t open to change."

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:40:23 -0400

“Don’t you ever get a tattoo, understand? All it says is that you ain’t open to change.”

- Nami Mun, Miles From Nowhere

"I had left her when she needed me most, and in the end, she died, in a car, completely alone with..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:36:58 -0400

“I had left her when she needed me most, and in the end, she died, in a car, completely alone with nothing but the sound of metal crushing her. I couldn’t grieve for her, not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t deserve to. I looked at Mr. McCommon, his hands smothering his face, his chest flinching. He had no idea that grief was a reward. That it only came to those who were loyal, to those who loved more than they were capable of.”

- Nami Mun, Miles From Nowhere

"In the absence of climate change, extreme heat waves in Europe, Russia, and the United States, for..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:58:39 -0400

“In the absence of climate change, extreme heat waves in Europe, Russia, and the United States, for example, would be expected to occur only once every several hundred years. Observations indicate a tenfold increase in the surface area of the planet experiencing extreme heat since the 1950s.”

- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

"No nation will be immune to the impacts of climate change. However, the distribution of impacts is..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:54:44 -0400

“No nation will be immune to the impacts of climate change.
However, the distribution of impacts is likely to be inherently
unequal and tilted against many of the world’s poorest regions,
which have the least economic, institutional, scientific, and technical capacity to cope and adapt.”

- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

"Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:30:55 -0400

“Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.”

- Garrett Hardin

"It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:28:27 -0400

“It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”

- Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I Leave You

"You never know when it will be the last time you’ll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:26:18 -0400

“You never know when it will be the last time you’ll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there’s always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you’d never stop grieving.”

- Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I Leave You

"Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are selfish and unkind, and the majority of our thoughts, at..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 02:00:17 -0400

“Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are selfish and unkind, and the majority of our thoughts, at any given time, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. We don’t share our thoughts, we share carefully sanitized, watered-down versions of them, Hollywood adaptations of those thoughts dumbed down for the PG-13 crowd.”

- Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I Leave You

"Even under the best of circumstances, there’s just something so damn tragic about growing up."

Wed, 15 May 2013 01:54:55 -0400

“Even under the best of circumstances, there’s just something so damn tragic about growing up.”

- Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I Leave You

"A demand for money, of all the winds blowing down on love, was the coldest and the most uprooting."

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:16:47 -0400

“A demand for money, of all the winds blowing down on love, was the coldest and the most uprooting.”

- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

"Love, she believed, should arrive all at once with thunder and lightning—a whirlwind from the skies..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:14:11 -0400

“Love, she believed, should arrive all at once with thunder and lightning—a whirlwind from the skies that affects life, turns it every which way, wrests resolutions away like leaves, and plunges the entire heart into an abyss.”

- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary