amy g. dala

Jul 24 2008 ∞

“The collection of ne’er do wells, clueless dolts, political
hacks, and oh, let’s just be blunt and call them what they are —
total Idiots — expands into an ever larger circle.

“While the Republic burns due to the unsavory combination of
incompetence, ideological rigidity, and crony capitalism, the
fools and assclowns seem ever more determined to avoid any
personal responsibility for the damages they have wrought.
Instead, they flail about blindly, blaming everything and
everyone — except their own horrific negligence.

“This is financial incompetence writ on a scale far grander than
anything seen for centuries.”

- Barry Ritholtz, money manager, on the current market calamity.

Jul 22 2008 ∞

“ I remember an edition of Face the Music when Joseph Cooper played a single note on the piano, which Joyce Grenfell correctly identified as the beginning of Debussy’s piano prelude La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin. How did she know from a single note? Was it a lucky guess, or a memory of something half-heard at a rehearsal? Was Debussy’s riff so deeply imprinted that the merest hint caused it to emerge fully formed in the conscious mind? Whoever works out the answer to that will never be out of the top 10.

— Richard Coles on the best musical motifs of all time | Music | The Guardian

Jul 12 2008 ∞

“There ain’t nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow line and dead armadillos.”
- Jim Hightower

Jul 10 2008 ∞

“ in the introduction to his book /Rethinking Life and Death/, Peter Singer notes the results of a survey of pediatricians finding 40 percent agreed with all of the following statements: 1. Abortion is morally permissible after twenty-four weeks if the fetus is abnormal. 2. There is no moral difference between the abortion of a fetus and the active termination of the life of a newborn infant when both have the same gestational age [that is, the same age dating from conception] and suffer from the same defects. 3.There are no circumstances in which it is morally permissible to take active steps to terminate the life of an infant with severe defects. As Singer notes, the fact of premature infants makes these three statements logically incompatible.

— The Uncredible Hallq » stupidity

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“ Whenever I see that there is a new Alice Munro story, my heart starts to pound in pleasurable anxiety. I know that I am going to be subjected to something abruptly terrible and gropingly yet pitilessly survived; that I’m going to feel the jolting lurches of life, like a train derailing, right up my spine; and that I’m going to see all this with two eyes, one myopic, seeing each event so close up it’s completely blurry, and one presbyopic, seeing it set into the shrunken continent of an entire lifetime viewed from an eagle’s eye.

— AmbivaBlog: A**holier Than Thou

Jul 08 2008 ∞

“ I think that the real religion is about the understanding that if we can only still our egos for a few seconds, we might have a chance of experiencing something that is divine in nature. But in order to do that, we have to slice away at our egos and try to get them down to a manageable size, and then still work some practiced light meditation. So real religion is about reducing our egos, whereas all the churches are interested in is egotistical activities, like getting as many members and raising as much money and becoming as important and high-profile and influential as possible. All of which are egotistical attitudes. So how can you have an egotistical organization trying to teach a non-egotistical ideal? It makes no sense, unless you regard religion as crowd control. What I think most organized religion—simply crowd control.

— John Cleese | The A.V. Club

Jul 07 2008 ∞

“ So why do women leave science, engineering, and technology careers? The answer comes in five parts. First and foremost, the hostility of the workplace culture drives them out. If machismo is on the run in most U.S. corporate settings, then this is its Alamo—a last holdout of redoubled intensity. Second is the dispiriting sense of isolation that comes when a woman is the only female on her team or at her rank—a problem exacerbated for others when she in turn leaves. Third, there is a strong disconnect between women’s preferred work rhythms and the risky “diving catch” and “firefighting” behavior that is recognized and rewarded in these male-dominated fields. Two more factors round out the set. “Extreme jobs,” with their long workweeks and punishing travel schedules, are particularly prevalent in science, engineering, and technology companies. (See “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek,” HBR December 2006.) Because women in two-income families still bear the brunt of household management, few are able to sustain those pressures. Finally, many women we surveyed bemoaned the “mystery” around career advancement. Isolated and lacking sponsors, they cannot discern the pathway that will allow them to make steady progress upward. The result is that women tend to find themselves shunted into roles as executors or helpers—without ever understanding why—while men occupy the more illustrious creator and producer roles.

— Stopping the Exodus of Women in Science

Jun 24 2008 ∞

“ The First Rule Of Google Trends Is You Don’t Talk About Google Trends

— Mr. Google, Tear Down This Google Trends Wall!

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“Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.” - John Stuart Mill

Jun 17 2008 ∞