neal umphred dot com - Page 51 of 52 - a blog about ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere

palestinian prisoners restart talks with palestinian representatives

April 26, 2018July 21, 2013

FROM TODAY’S SEATTLE TIMES (July 21, 2003) comes a piece titled “Israel OKs freeing some prisoners to restart talks” (page A4). Got that: Palestinian prisoners restart talks with Palestinian representatives. Now, prepositional phrases (like “to restart talks”) work best when they are placed as close as possible to the word that they are modifying. [Continue reading]

helen thomas vs kennedy johnson nixon ford carter reagan bush bush clinton and obama

May 8, 2020July 21, 2013

WHO WAS THE DEAN of the White House press corps? “What made Helen the dean of the White House press corps was not just the length of her tenure, but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account,” said an incredibly (oblivious? [Continue reading]

john ford and woody allen and stanley kubrick (and clint eastwood)

May 9, 2018July 21, 2013

TWO OF MY FAVORITE DIRECTORS are John Ford and Woody Allen. For the former, think Harry Carey and Henry Fonda and John Wayne. Men’s and women’s men. For the latter, think Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow and Diane Wiest and Mira Sorvino and Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz. Men’s [Continue reading]

can liberals be cheerleaders for conservatives with guns yes we can can!

May 8, 2020July 20, 2013

IF YOU LIKE WEIRD NEWS ARTICLES that allow you to infer a helluva lot more than the article actually says, today’s Seattle Times (July 20, 2013) did not disappoint! This is the bizarre headline: “Sorry, hunters: Shooting down drones is not OK with FAA.” [Continue reading]

to trade or not to trade

March 24, 2020July 19, 2013

TO TRADE OR NOT TO TRADE, that is the question. Today’s Seattle Times (July 19, 2003) has a piece titled “Mariners Tough Spot: To Trade Or Not?” by the paper’s regular baseball reporter, Larry Stone (page C1): the Seattle Mariners, may NOT make any trades in the foreseeable future. [Continue reading]

looks like we will be needing more snowdens

May 9, 2018July 19, 2013

FROM TODAY’S SEATTLE TIMES (July 19, 2013) and a piece titled “U.S. Officials says NSA taking steps to stop leaks” (page A2): an AP article acknowledges that “The information revealed [by Edward Snowden] that the agency was gathering millions of US phone records and intercepting some US Internet traffic.” [Continue reading]

for want of a hyphen (“I want hyphen”)

January 18, 2021July 19, 2013

FROM TODAY’S SEATTLE TIMES (July 19, 2013) and a piece titled “Gun-rights group sues city over emails allegedly withheld”: An organization called Washington Cease Fire is described as “an anti-gun violence group.” Technically, this is correct: the hyphen is necessary to link “anti” with “gun.” [Continue reading]

a neal defines rant post

May 9, 2018July 19, 2013

A SUGGESTION MADE TO ME by one of the few early readers of this blog (a friend, natch) that I explain exactly what a “rant” is. That was brought on by my having two categories on this website with that word in their title: “Neal’s Rants (Really Political” and “Neal’s Rants (Not-So-Political).” [Continue reading]

what’s a “buck lunch”? (or, whats a buck lunch)

April 26, 2018July 19, 2013

I TOOK BERNI to her morning coffee at a nearby Starbucks she wakes up five days a week with that place’s caffeine and a book before going to work. On the way back home, I drove past a local chain restaurant. [Continue reading]

FAVORITE QUOTES

"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” – Frank Zappa

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." – James Baldwin

"If women learned to read there seemed to be a possibility that some day some good man might come home and find his wife reading, and the dinner not ready—and nothing could be imagined more horrible than that! That seems to be the haunting fear of mankind—that the advancement of women will sometime, someway, someplace, interfere with some man’s comfort." – Nellie L. McClung

"What people call the Christmas spirit [is] a kind of dream or hope we carry with us from childhood. But as adults ... we're imbued by the pragmatic routines of life, which makes it difficult for us to regard anything with childlike wonder. But, you know, it's alright for us to try. We put on silly hats and drape trees with sparkly lights and wrap gifts in garish paper and that's good for us. It's not only alright for us to allow children the transient experience of innocence and joy, it's our responsibility." – Lance Sweets

"When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." – Anonymous

"‘What saves a man is to take a step ... then another step." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"The old dreams were good dreams. They didn't work out, but I'm glad I had them.'" – Robert Kincaid

"Fascists in a democracy demand the right of free speech, but once in power will absolutely, definitively, not grant it to anyone other than themselves. That's their trick and they know it perfectly well." – William Gibson

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" – Carl Sagan

"Extraordinary conservatism keeps us extraordinarily ignorant.” – Avi Loeb

"If you value the wrong things, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you're going to end up in the wrong place. If you ask the wrong questions, it doesn't matter how much data you collect, your answers will be meaningless." – Mark Manson

"You are better off trying something and having it not work and learning from that than not doing anything at all." – Mark Zuckerberg

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That's why it's important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are." – Maya Angelou.

"Sometimes fear needs fearing more than the things we fear." – Elizabeth Bligh

"If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you see the cost of hiring an amateur." – Nealism

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. We should, therefore, claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant." – Karl Popper

“A state of skepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision.” – Edward Gibbon

"Time is a created thing. To say, ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.’” ~ Lao Tzu

"So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old." – John Stuart Mill

"Clearly, any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have length, breadth, thickness, and duration." – H.G. Wells

“When you speak truth to power, power fights back." – Alexandria Octavia-Cortez

"Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind." – Virginia Woolf

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." –Albert Einstein

"Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it." – M. Scott Peck

"The future has a way of arriving unannounced." – George F. Will

"Right now, I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before." – Steven Wright

“How did it get so late so soon?” ― Dr. Seuss

"While all acronyms are initialisms, most initialisms are not acronyms." – Q (lol)

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble—it's what you know that just ain't so." – Mark Twain

"I don't trust anybody I'm not close enough to kill." – Kelly Burkhardt

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.” – Philip K. Dick

"I have lived with many Zen masters, all of them cats." – Eckhart Tolle