Jesse and Celine's Anniversary, and Other Miscellany
Jesse and Celine met 28 years ago today, June 16, 1994. When I watch those films I just think over and over, "thank goodness they found each other, thank goodness they found each other." Well maybe not when I watch the third film.
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Dalai Lama- "How you perceive life as a whole plays a role in your attitude to suffering. If you see suffering as negative and to be avoided at all costs and in some sense as a sign of failure, this will add a sense of anxiety and intolerance when you encounter difficult circumstances, a feeling of being overwhelmed. But if you accept that suffering is a natural part of existence, this will help you withstand life’s adversities."
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Now THAT'S a chapter title.
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Woody Allen- "If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse."
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Happy Father's Day from a very sane guy.
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There's a new daily Trump gaffe that is again more stupid than anything Joe Biden ever said, or any of our other 44 presidents. With thousands of people dying every week he said:
"If we stop testing right now, we'll have very few cases, if any."
You know, like how nobody ever got pregnant before there were pregnancy tests!
This is not an isolated comment, or taken out of context. Previously he said, "When you test, you have a case."
Many similar examples. You can assume it was why he was against testing to begin with, left it to governors... why he didn't want the boat to dock that had all the cases... more cases equals him looking bad, the worst possible thing. Worse than all those new lightbulbs that he says make him look orange. Uh huh.
I was going to say that he doesn't understand the nuance, but this doesn't come close to nuance... that when you test you DISCOVER a case! Whether you test or not, you have the same number of cases, but one way you know it (and can help prevent more cases) and in one way you don't. Again, he's said some variation, several times, that without the test, you don't have a case.
Years before Trump ran for president, back when he was just known for being a gawdy con man that nobody took seriously, one of his college professors is on record as saying that Donald Trump was the stupidest student that he ever had. Apparently he used to say it all the time. Maybe a good thing for him that he's not around to discover that we thought he ought to be president!
Hey, I just had an idea! Maybe if the press stops reporting how stupid Trump is (by playing footage of him saying the stupidest things anyone ever heard) he won't be stupid anymore! If an ostrich can succefully avoid danger by sticking its head in the sand, then this scheme is just crazy enough to work!
June 16, 2020
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Bill Burr- "I am so pro-swine flu. I want it. We need a plague. It's got to happen; don't be afraid. It's only going to kill the weak."
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In the George Stephanopoulos interview Trump says that something Kamala Harris said was absurd, but she's down in the polls, so she needs to say it, and he would have said it too. Everything that Trump says goes through that filter- "This is ridiculous, but this is the situation I'm in, so true/false, right/wrong, I'm going to say it anyway." In a previous interview he says that he does tell the truth, when he can, i.e. he lies. So if he tells the truth, that is proof that he lies.
June 16, 2019
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In Martin Scorsese's new Bob Dylan documentary, Bob accounts asking Sam Shepard, "Hey Sam, how do you write all those plays?" He should have asked Bob, "I don't know Bob, how do you write all those songs?" Bob loves those kind of questions, right??? But Sam's answer to him was a knockout, "It's like I commune with the dead."
June 16, 2019
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Many people hate celebrities expressing political opinions... which is odd, because if we know that about them, they must have expressed their own political opinion.
June 16, 2017
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What's the big deal about the white lady who pretended to be a black lady? Go back far enough and we're all black. Go back further and we're all fish. Go back further and we're all some trilobite or something. Go back further and we're all... chemistry. I guess that's why they say the first person was Atom. What was I saying again?
June 16, 2015
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In scientific studies, when people are exposed to pictures of people frowning or smiling it lowers or elevates their mood, respectively. You're thinking "big whoop," but here's the thing- those pictures also lower or elevate people's moods when they are flashed too quickly for the person to be conscious of them. Now that's something!
June 16, 2013
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The cats eat the dog food and the dog eats the cat food. The grass is always greener, I suppose.
June 16, 2013
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During a wave of anti-German hysteria that swept the nation around the time of WW1, sauerkraut was renamed Liberty Cabbage.
June 16, 2012
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John Adams, in a letter to his son John Quincy Adams, on this day in 1816- "Government has no right to hurt a hair on the head of an Atheist for his Opinions. Let him have a care of his Practices."
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Abraham Lincoln delivered his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois on this day in 1858
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."
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In a gross miscarriage of justice, on this day in 1944, 14-year-old George Junius Stinney Jr., became the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century, after being convicted in a two-hour trial for the rape and murder of two teenage white girls. He was friends with people who are still alive and only in their 70's.
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Scottish Philosopher and economist, Adam Smith, was born on this day in 1723.
"The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer."
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Joyce Carol Oates was born on this day in 1938:
"How can people still be superstitious, still believe in nonsense and astrology and grotesque demonic religions of every kind, every fundamentalist religion crowding us on all sides? How can we have these phenomena and say that science and education have not failed? That’s embarrassing."
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The Ultimate Warrior was born on this day in 1959. The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton was in the middle of its 6 week run at #1 on the Billboard chart.
"DIG YOUR CLAWS INTO MY ORGANS! STRETCH INTO MY TENDONS! BURY YOUR ANCHORS INTO MY BONES FOR THE POWER OF THE WARRIOR WILL ALWAYS PREVAIL!"
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Director of Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray, left us on this day in 1979, 24 years after the untimely death of James Dean, 3 years after the untimely death of Sal Mineo, and 2 years before the untimely death of Natalie Wood.
“Film recognises neither time nor space, only the limits of man’s imagination.”
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Daniel Ellsberg left us on this day in 2023, an example of moral courage for us all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/us/daniel-ellsberg-dead.html
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Other notable birthdays- Stan Laurel (1890), Tupac Shakur (1971), George Reeves (1959), Vilmos Zsigmond (1930)
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Another notable deathday- Tony Gwynn (2014)
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From Skeptic Magazine
Top 10 myths of popular psychology.
Myth #2: It’s Better to Express Anger Than to Hold it in
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Never has my disbelief ever been more suspended...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obuV1KrvEYo
June 16, 2011
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I'm researching whether or not fish feel pain. Some studies suggest that fish possess a very primitive cerebral cortex without the parts responsible for the feeling of pain- so their body responds to pain (cause of their nociceptors) but they have no conscious corresponding feeling. The contrary view is that that's bullshit. I tend to agree with the latter view. Here's a good overview if you're interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_fish
June 16, 2013
Postscript, and what about scallops? They have no brain or central nervous system.
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In scientific studies, when people are exposed to pictures of people frowning or smiling it lowers or elevates their mood, respectively. You're thinking "big whoop," but here's the thing- those pictures also lower or elevate people's moods when they are flashed too quickly for the person to be conscious of them. Now that's something!
June 16, 2017
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Adam Smith again- "No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable."
True, but define miserable.
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Joe Strummer:
I don't have any other message than don't forget you're alive. 'Cause sometimes when you walk around the city and you're in a bad mood, you can think, hey, wait a minute, we're alive! We don't know what the next second will bring and what a fantastic thing this is.
This can get easily forgotten in the routine of life, and that's something I'm trying to bring to my attention at all times.
Don't forget you're alive. We're not dead, you know. This is the greatest thing.
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Norm MacDonald- "Horses must love that they're the go-to animal if you want to say that a guy has a huge cock. I bet giraffes have huge cocks, I'm sure of it. But let's face it, no one's ever going to say, "That guy is hung like a giraffe." Unless his cock is yellow and has brown spots on it. In which case, who cares how fucking big his cock is, he only has weeks to live."
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Charles Bukowski, from the poem “For The Foxes”
and beware those who
only take
instructions from their
God
for they have
failed completely to live their own
lives.
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Sun Tzu- "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes."
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Leo Tolstoy, Path of Life- "An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life—becoming a better person."
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Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential- "It was from Dimitri's fertile mind that much of what I'd come to know as Mario speak had originated. Brainy, paranoid, famously prone to sulking, he both amused and appalled his co-workers with his many misadventures, his affected mannerisms and his tendency to encounter tragicomic disaster. Fond of hyperbole and dramatic over-statement, Dimitri had distinguished himself after a particularly unpleasant breakup with a girlfriend by shaving his head completely bald. This would have been, in itself, a rather bold statement of self-loathing and grief, but Dimitri pushed matters to the extreme; the story went that he had no sooner revealed his snow-white skull to the world than he went to the beach, got drunk and sat there, roasting his never-before-exposed-to-the-sun scalp to the July ultraviolets. When he returned to work the next day, not only was he jarringly bald, but his head was a bright strawberry-red, blistered and oozing skullcap of misery. No one talked to him until his hair grew back."
Skullcap of misery, haha.
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From Cracked: Colin Quinn made half of a “guy walks into a bar joke” in 2016, bravely skewering those affected by racism, sexism, ableism and transphobia: “A featureless, colorless, nonsectarian, non-gender specific person of indeterminate origin… walks into a bar.” He then trailed off into a diatribe about how icky New York City is. Thank you for your service, sir!
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Feynman- Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention.
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Socrates- "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers."
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Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines- "Some desert seeds lie dormant for decades. Some desert rodents only stir from their burrows at night.The weltwitchia, a spectacular, strap-leaved plant of the Namib Desert, lives for thousands of years on its daily diet of morning mist. But migratory animals must move - or be ready to move."
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J.G. Hamman- "When I rest my feet my mind also ceases to function."
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Jung- "The fool is the precursor to the savior."
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Horace- "Smooth out with wine the worries of a wrinkled brow."
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Albert Einstein:
"Past is dead
Future is uncertain;
Present is all you have,
So eat, drink and live merry."
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Addendum
SOCRATES quotes
"Every action has its pleasures and its price."
"What a strange thing that which men call
pleasure seems to be, and how astonishing the relation it has with what is thought to be its opposite, namely pain! A man cannot have both at the same time. Yet if he pursues and catches the one, he is almost always bound to catch the other also, like two creatures with one head."
"He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have."
Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.
If you want to be wrong then follow the masses.
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Smart people learn from everything and everyone. Average people from their experiences. Stupid people already have all the answers.
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.”
The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.
It is better to suffer an injustice than to commit one.
No one can teach, if by teaching we mean the transmission of knowledge, in any mechanical fashion, from one person to another. The most that can be done is that one person who is more knowledgeable than another can, by asking a series of questions, stimulate the other to think, and so cause him to learn for himself.”
Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.
The mind is everything; what you think you become
The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.
Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they’re fools, and fools who think they are wise.
Nothing is to be preferred before justice.
What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?
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ARISTOTLE
“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”
“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”
"It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
“The law is reason, free from passion.”
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”
“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”
“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” (Stealing from the master.)
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
“Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.”
“Life is only meaningful when we are striving for a goal.”
"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.”
“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
"What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.”
“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
“Greatness of spirit is accompanied by simplicity and sincerity.”
“Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.”
“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.”
"A person’s life persuades better than his word.”
"All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge.”
“Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.”
“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.”
“No democracy can exist unless each of its citizens is as capable of outrage at injustice to another as he is of outrage at unjustice to himself.”
“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind."
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