John Kozubik - john@kozubik.com - http://www.kozubik.com


This file contains a log of my reading, quotes taken from the readings that I consider
important, and my own commentary on the works.

I suspect that this file, more than any other work I produce or have produced, gives
a detailed and intimate glimpse of my own life and thought.

Quotations and passages taken from the works are single indented, and my own comments
are double indented.

This file is not complete - as I re-read books I may add or subtract comments.  More
importantly, new entries to this file may appear at any location in the file, to
reflect the ORIGINAL date that I read the book (but did not record any thoughts of it).

Legend:

*	noteworthy
G	general
S	specific
!       anti, or refuting

c       communism
(fs)	freedom of speech
(cl)	civil liberties
(gr)	gun rights
(egr)	economic growth rates


06/2000
Our Oriental Heritage
Will Durant

(this book is part of my permanent collection)

		This is the first volume of the Durant series "The Story of
		Civilization" which I admire deeply.  I suspect that these
		books are written in an accessible enough language and
		with such an easy style that they are not accepted as
		serious entries in the study of history by professional
		historians, but I have been exposed to much more technical
		histories and still consider these a brilliant work of art.

		I organized my study of this book into the categories of
		Egypt, the middle east, India, China, and Japan, and
		supported my reading after I finished with one book on each
		of those five subjects, which are listed below.


07/2000
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson

	"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that
	under the right circumstances he could be the baddest mother-
	fucker in the world.  If I moved to a martial arts monastery in
	China and studied real hard for ten years.  If my family was
	wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge.
	If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to
	wiping out street crime.  If I just dropped out and devoted my
	life to being bad.
	Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven.  In
	a way this is liberating.  Hiro no longer has to worry about
	trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world.  The position
	is taken."
	--p.254, Beginning of Chapter 36

	"high-powered weapons are so sensorily overwhelming that they are
	similar to psychoactive drugs.  Like LSD, which can convince
	people they can fly - causing them to jump out of windows -
	weapons can make people overconfident.  Skewing their tactical
	judgement."
	--p.367, Chapter 55

	"Any informaton system of sufficient complexity will inevitably
	become infected with viruses - viruses generated from within
	itself."
	--p.371, Chapter 56

		and then, in the Acknowledgements:

	"In a nice twist, which I include only because it is pleasingly
	self-referential..."

		Hey, cool Neal!  I read _Godel Escher Bach_ too!  It
		bothers me that the more profound aspect of this book
		is taken, without any reference or acknowledgement,
		from GEB.  Perhaps it was unconscious, as the language
		in the acknowledgement seems to suggest.

		Wonderful book though - very interesting and funny.



08/2000
The Culture of Ancient Egypt
John A. Wilson


09/2000
Caravan: The story of the Middle East
Carleton S. Coon

		This book, in the first few chapters, had an interesting
		introduction to the rise of furnace technology as related
		to baking and smelting in the early bronze age - I found
		it fascinating.


10/2000
A New History of India
Stanley Wolpert


11/2000
Japan: A Short Cultural History
G.B. Sansom


12/2000
The Rise and Splendour of the Chinese Empire
Rene Grousset


01/2001
The Life of Greece
Will Durant

		The second book in the Durant Story of Civilization.

04/2001
Kubrick's 2001 - A Triple Allegory
Leonard F. Wheat

		This was a fascinating and unique treatment of 2001.


04/2001
Faster
James Gleick

		I have little patience for books of punditry extolling the fascinations
		of our soon to be incredibly futuristic lives.  I disliked this book in the
		same way that I have grown to dislike Tofflers _Future Shock_.

		Regardless of the pace of technological innovation, the sun still rises,
		the seasons still come and go, and people still get born young, grow old,
		and die.  These are the fundamental shaping currents of our existence, and
		the ability to telecommute will hardly change their effects upon us.

		Which is not to say I discount the possiblity of some technological
		innovation radically changing what it means to be human and live a human
		life, but I think changes like the introduction of scientifically induced
		immortality, or the meeting of an extra-terrestrial mind, or the living
		of human life in a different star system with drastically different
		planetary and biological rhythms than our own ... these are the changes that
		will produce profound effects on our lives and thought - not the benign
		changes of habit described by Gleick in this book (and Toffler in his).


05/2001
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell

(this book is part of my permanent collection)

		I think that "Mythic Patterns" are a drastically underestimated driving
		force in all of our lives.  I am fascinated with this study as an adjunct
		to psychoanalysis for the purposes of understanding human relationships
		and civilization.

		I record only one or two passages here, as the true number of passages that I have
		marked for myself in this work are far too many to rewrite here.

		Footnote on page 150 has a very nice and concise explanation of Mahayana vs. Hinayana Buddhism.

	"It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight
	truly is desperate."
	--p.23, Myth and Dream

		Is it common for men to more often have inner calls and women to have outer doctrines ?
		Or does no such pattern exist ?

	"The way to become human is to learn to recognize the lineaments of God in all of the wonderful
	modulations of the face of man."
	--p.390, The Hero Today


08/2001
Caesar and Christ
Will Durant

		The third book in the Durant Story of Civilization.


10/2001
Patriot Games
Tom Clancy


11/2001
The Source
James Michener

(This book is part of my permanent collection)

		This book is more than a wonderful work of historical fiction (by the
		master of that art).  It is an enlightening view of the history of the
		Jews.

		I myself am agnostic on the subject of religion, but if I were asked to
		provide some proof of the nobility and tenacity of mankind - some
		example to non-human minds of what humans were capable of, I would display
		the Jewish religion and its history foremost.


12/2001
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond

(This book is part of my permanent collection)

	"..long life expectancy, which in principle should give prospective inventors
	the years necessary to accumulate technical knowledge, as well as the patience
	and security to embark on long development programs yielding delayed rewards."
	--p.247, Chapter: Necessity's Mother

	"The strong individualism of U.S. society allows successful inventors to keep
	earnings for themselves, whereas strong family ties in New Guinea ensure that
	someone who begins to earn money will be joined by a dozen relatives expecting
	to move in and be fed and supported."
	--p.250, Chapter: Necessity's Mother

		Page 413, of the Epilogue (chapter: The Future of Human History as a Science)
		contains what could be very useful as a justification for maintaining multiple
		sovereign nations in the world, and not forming a single world government.
		It describes how the cultural and beurocratic idiosyncracies of certain states
		cause them to not be receptive to certain innovations and inventions at
		certain times.  The specific example given is that of Columbus trying to gain
		financial support for his journey of 1492.  "In fact, precisely because
		Europe was fragmented, Columbus succeeded on his fifth try in persuading
		one of Europe's hundreds of princes to sponsor him."


12/2001
A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking


01/2002
Civilization and Its Discontents
Sigmund Freud

	"We are so made that we can derive intense enjoment only from a contrast and
	very little (enjoyment) from a state of things.  Thus our possibilities of
	happiness are already restricted by our constitution."
	(supported by a quote from Goethe: "nothing is harder to bear than a
	succession of fair days"
	--p.25-26, Chapter: II

	"But whoever, in desperate defiance, sets out upon this path to happiness will
	as a rule attain nothing.  Reality is too strong for him.  He becomes a
	madman..."
	--p.31, Chapter: II

		(speaking of those who escape from their own reality by building "in its stead
		another world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated and
		replaced by others that are in conformity with one's own wishes.")
		(I wonder how applicable this statement is to the present day when these
		alternate realities, in the form of digital worlds, are inhabited by sometimes
		hundreds of thousands of people from across the world)

	"...we are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so
	helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love."
	--p.33, Chapter: II

	"Religion restricts this play of choice and adaptation, since it imposes
	equally on everyone its own path to the acquisition of happiness and protection
	from suffering."
	--p.36, Chapter: II

		This suggests that any (even a non-religious) rigid construct will tend to
		guarantee unhappiness for at least a small portion of the population due to
		their varying constitutions.  However, I suspect there is a threshhold where
		a societal construct becomes so small, basic, and necessary (thou shalt not
		kill) that it must be accepted regardless of the damaging effects it may have
		on the small portion of the population that must butt against it in a
		thwarted pursuit of satisfaction.

	"...this readiness for a universal love of mankind and the world represents the
	highest standpoint which man can reach.  Even at this early stage of the
	discussion I should like to bring forward my two main objections to this view.
	A love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own
	value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are
	worthy of love."
	--p.57, Chapter IV

	"(men are) creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a
	powerful share of aggressiveness.  As a result, their neighbour is for them not
	only a potential helper or sexual objectm but also someone who tempts them to
	satisfy their aggressiveness on him..."
	--p.69, Chapter V

	"And now, I think, the meaning of the evolution of civilization is no longer
	obscure to us.  It must present the struggle between Eros and Death, between
	the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction, as it works itself out
	in the human species."
	"...the evolution of civilization may therefore be simply described as the
	struggle for life of the human species."
	--p.82, Chapter VI

		These past passages from chapter VI have affected me deeply.

	"His aggressiveness is introjected, internalized; it is ... sent back ...
	towards his own ego."
	"...we shall add that even when a person has not actually done the bad thing
	but has only recongnized in himself an intention to do it, he may regard
	himself as guilty."
	--p.84, Chapter: VII

		Perhaps some degree of outward expression of anger, while making us a degree
		less "civilized" causes less guilt to be born upon ourselves..

		Q. How can we raise children to be civilized, but with less tormenting (but
		not less effective) supere egos - with less guilt inflicted upon themselves?
		Q. Why do I personally not feel guilt at imagining the most grotesque and
		anti social behaviors and situations when others clearly do ?  I find myself
		repulsed (and feel almost physical pain) when I imagine the real-world
		outcomes of such behaviors or situations, but not guilt at having imagined
		them.
		Q. Is there a psychoanalytic description of those that clearly have an
		effective conscience, yet do not feel self-inflicted guilt for simply
		having imagined nightmarish situations and actions?

	"Instinctual renunciation no no longer has a completely liberating effect;
	virtuous continence is no longer rewarded with the assurance of love.  A
	threatened external unhappiness - loss of love and punishment on the part of
	the external authority - has been exchanged for a permanent internal
	unhappiness, for the tension of the sense of guilt."
	--p.89, Chapter: VII

		So the initial formation of guilt is based upon conditional love ... but
		resolving this problem presentsa paradox as Freud rejects unconditional love
		(see earlier quotation) and I suspect that I do too - I think that
		unconditional love probably promotes ill-behavior and a lack of discipline.

	"Apart from a constitutional factor which may be supposed to be present, it
	can be said, therefore, that a severe conscience arises from the joint
	operation of two factors: the frustration of instinct, which unleashes
	aggressiveness, and the experience of being loved, which turns the
	aggressiveness inwards..."
	--p.93, Chapter: VII

		So, in answer to an earlier question I posed, the most expedient combination
		to use in the raising of children might be a strict, yet loving parentage that
		still encourages experimentation and does not stifle children intellectually
		or sexually?


01/2002
The Jesus Incident
Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom

		This is one of my favorite works of fiction.  I like it more than most of the
		Dune novels, although certainly not more than Dune itself or Chapterhouse:
		Dune.  I feel that the "point" of the novel and the message that Frank Herbert
		is trying to convey is much clearer in this book than it ever was in the Dune
		series.  Perhaps because the Dune series contains so many points.

	`"What role am I playing?"
	"Ahhhh..."  It was a sigh of beatific grace.  "You play the living challenge."
	Flattery knew that role.  Living challenge.  You made people find the best
	within themselves, a best which they might not suspect they possessed.  But
	some would be destroyed by such a demand.'
	--p.52, Chapter beginning: "Poetry, like consciousness..."

	"The forgotten language of our animal past conveys the necessity for
	challenges.  Not to be challenged is to atrophy.  And the ultimate challenge
	is to overcome entropy, to break through those barriers which enclose and
	isolate life, limiting the energy for work and fulfillment."
	--p.347, Chapter beginning with the above quote

	`"You still refuse to live up to the best of your own humanity," Panille said,
	looking at Oakes.
	"What...what do you mean?"
	"That's all Ship ever asked of us," Panille said.  That's all WorShip was
	meant to be: find our own humanity and live up to it."'
	`"I'm just trying to survive.  What else is there to do?"
	"But you've never really been alive."'
	--p.412, Chapter beginning: "In that hour when the Egyptians died..."


01/2002
Chaos
James Gleick

		I think I will program and implement a lorenzian waterwheel, as described on
		page 27 (chapter titled "The Butterfly Effect".

		A very good description of chaotic boundary conditions is on page 233.  It
		describes it in terms of a pinball machine with two draining chutes.  An
		accompanying diagram on page 235 shows a very telling graphical depiction of
		the chaotic boundary.

	"Of all the possible pathways of disorder, nature favors just a few."
	--p.267, Chapter: The Dynamical Systems Collective

	"By any objective measure, the modern business of "psychopharmacology" - the
	use of drugs to treat everything from anxiety and insomnia to
	schizophrenia itself - has to be judged a failure.  Few patients, if any, are
	cured."
	--p.298, Chapter: Inner Rhythms

		(I thought this an interesting book to find a declaration like that)
		Page 308, of the chapter "Chaos and Beyond" has an interesting attempt to
		debunk the notion of using "metaphorical incarnations" of the concept of
		entropy (and the second law of thermodynamics) in cases such as societal and
		economic decay, etc.  Perhaps the "metaphorical incarnations" are misguided,
		but the behavior of these social systems seems to me to at least suggest the
		concept of entropy.

		At some point during the reading of this book I wondered if any science fiction
		authors had ever considered the notion of immune systems acquiring some degree
		of consciousness, or that consciousness itself arose out of some form of
		immune function.  It is, of course, a fantastical idea, but the pattern
		recognition and communicative functions of an immune system make it at least
		amusing to think about.


02/2002
The Lazarus Effect
Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom

		This book did not fascinate me as much as the first one (_The Jesus Incident_)
		did.  It just seemed like any other decent work of science fiction, but
		nothing profound.  Interestingly, though, I was compelled to note more quotes
		from this book than from the first one, even though I was much more moved
		by the first book...

	"The fearful can be the most dangerous when they gain power.  They become
	demoniac when they see the unpredictable workings of all that life around
	them.  Seeing the strengths as well as the weaknesses, they fasten only on
	the weaknesses."
	--p.22, Chapter beginning with that quote.

		I think this is very, very profound.  I think we are surrounded at all times
		by those that are fearful (and ashamed) of their own weaknesses - they project
		these weaknesses onto those around them without projecting any strengths, and
		thus become fearful and distrusting of everyone.  People who are less fearful
		are the ones most optimistic about the motivations and eventual actions of
		others.

	"Why did every political crisis have the stink of merchants around it?"
	--p.87, Chapter beginning: "A planetwide consciousness died..."

	`The naked man raised his head and called out: "Father forgive them"
	Duque felt it as a curse.  To forgive such a thing was worse than
	demanding revenge.  To be forgiven such an act - that could only be
	more terrible than a curse.'
	--p.89, Chapter beginning: "Consciousness is the Species-God's..."

	`"...I ask you, was it not Ship's purpose to teach us a hard lesson?"
	"What lesson?"
	"That there are some changes that can destroy us.  You speak so glibly of
	a human way of life!  Have you defined what it is to be human?"'
	--p.153, Chapter beginning: "What's so tough about making love to a mute?"

	"Instinct!  How long did it take to extinguish instinct?  Or develop it?
	Which way were humans going?  How strongly were they driven by such inner
	forces?"
	--p.194, Chapter beginning: "Perseverance furthers."

	"At any given moment of history it is the function of associations of
	devoted individuals to undertake tasks which clear-sighted people
	perceive to be necessary, but which nobody else is willing to perform."
	--p.202, Chapter beginning with that quote.

		This passage has affected me deeply.

	`"Someone has lathed onto a basic truth," Keel said.  "Control the food
	supply, control the people."'
	--p.205, Chapter beginning: "At any given moment of..."

	"One measure of humanity lies in the lengths taken to right the
	wrongs perpetrated against others.  Recognition of wrongdoing is
	the first crucial step."
	--p.217, Chapter beginning with that quote.

	
02/2002
The Ascension Factor
Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom

		I will probably re-read the first book of this series (The Jesus Incident)
		many times.  I will probably not bother to read the other two again, which
		is ironic, since the volume of material I found interesting was much
		greater in the second and third books than in the first book, but the
		stories themselves were nowhere near as good.

	"The things that people want and the things that are good for them are very different ...
	Great art and domestic bliss are mutually incompatible.  Sooner or later, you'll have to
	make your choice." --Arthur C. Clarke
	--p.45, Chapter beginning with that quote

	"Watch yourself, an ancient one inside her warned, that you don't become a prisoner of
	action or words.  And remember, when you make a choice you abandon freedom of choice."
	--p.94, Chapter beginning with the quote "I consider the position..."

	"Of everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and of him to whom they
	have entrusted much, they will demand the more." --Jesus
	--p.98, Chapter beginning with that quote	

	"Nothing more dangerous than an army with no one to fight."
	--p.111, Chapter beginning with the quote "Intervention into destiny..."

	"Short term expedients always fail in the long term."
	--p.162, Chapter beginning with that quote

	"If you would get a man to live a certain way, how might you do that?"
	"Map out his life?"
	...
	"But a map, a model - these have a basic limitation.  What is that limitation?"
	...
	Size!
	...
	It's size!  You can never know truly from a model how it will feel because you can't
	live in it.  You can't try it on for size!
	...
	"Exactly, friend Twisp.  But if you could make the illusion life-size, the lesson too would
	be life-size, would it not?"
	...
	"To live to our fullest potential, we have to learn how to unburden ourselves from ourselves."
	--p.190, chapter beginning with the quote "Kill therefore with the sword..."

	"He had been lazy, he had hoped someone else would take care of it.  Like everyone else,
	he had only wanted to live his simple life quietly."
	--p.218, Chapter beginning with the quote "We're more than our ideas"

	"Not by refraining from action does one attain freedom from action.  Not by mere
	renunciation does one attain supreme perfection."
	--p.229, Chapter beginning with that quote

02/2002
9/11
Noam Chomsky


03/2002
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

		I didn't think this was nearly as good as _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ or
		_A Farewell to Arms_.


03/2002
The Flight to Italy
Goethe

	"I live very frugally and calmly so that when I see things I'm not in an
	elevated mood but the things have to do the elevating."
	--p.51, In the 24 September diary entry

	"it's a strange thing about first impressions, they're always an extreme
	mixture of truth and falsehood..."
	--p.51, In the 24 September diary entry

	"Whatever has no true inner existence has no life, and cannot be brought
	alive, and cannot be great or become great."
	--p.109, In the 27 October (Terni) diary entry
	

	
04/2002
All The Trouble in the World
P.J. O'Rourke

		Although I found this book to be without direction a many points, I liked
		all of chapter 6 (saving the earth) very much.

	[Oral rehydration theory for diahrrea - 8 level teaspoons of sugar or honey, 1/2
	teaspoon salt to every liter of clean water]

	` "feed the hungry" is one of the first principles of morality.`
	--p.66, Chapter 3 entitled "Famine"


04/2002
The Covenant
James A. Michener

	"Thus the great journeys of boyhood mark a man, showing him possibilities others never see,
	uncovering potentials that stagger the youthful mind and monopolize an entire life in their
	attaining."
	--p.331, The Trekboers

	"'Missionary work' Keer had predicted, 'is one tenth dispensation, nine-tenths sanitation.'"
	--p.447, The Missionary

*	"'I'm afraid not.  I think that when governments regulate in general, they stifle the individual,
	and then he festers and grows revolutionary and upsets everything.  Start with individual justice
	and you'll guide the general.'"
	--p.525, The Missionary

	"In one of his most perceptive sermons, Hilary had told his mission: 'The perpetual problem of
	government remains, `Am I safe at night when I go to sleep?`'"
	--p.528, The Missionary

	"When I rode back from Chrissie Meer, I reflected on the fact that the three men who were spoilers of
	this land, Shaka, Rhodes, Kitchener, not one of them had a wife.  I fear that men without women are
	capable of terrible misdeeds, and I want to apologize to you for having allowed Mr. Rhodes to delay
	our marriage as he did.  I was as evil as he in conforming to that hateful posture, and I bless you
	tonight for the humanity you have brought into my life."
	--p.881, The Englishmen

		Compare this quote to the Frank Herbert quote on page 45 of the Ascension Factor ...

	"'Children can stand anything, if even one person loves them...'"
	--p.888, The Venloo Commando

	"'The worst thing a nation can do to itself is cultivate and maintain a supply of cheap labor.  When
	salaries are kept down, money stops circulating, taxes bring in diminished funds, and everybody loses.
	The white man thinks he's hurting us when he keeps our wages low.  Actually he's hurting himself.'"
	--p.995, Achievement of a Puritan

	"'The virtue of a nation resides in its farmers.  The rot that destroys a nation thrives in the cities.'"
	--p.1220, Diamonds

	"I remember that day you told us what Santayana had said: 'Those who forget history are condemned to
	repeat it.'  Well, those who remember it obsessively are poisoned by it."
	--p.1229, Diamonds


04/2002
The Age of Faith
Will Durant

	"The higher birth rate outside the empire, and the higher standard of living within it,
	made immigration or invasion a manifest destiny for the Roman Empire then as for North
	America today."
	--p.22, Chapter II

	"Institutions and beliefs are the offspring of human needs, and understanding must be
	in terms of these necessities."
	--p.44, Chapter III

	(humorous) "Among the anchorites a keen rivalry arose for the austerity championship."
	--p.58, Chapter III

	"The soul of the simple man can be moved only through the senses and the imagination,
	by ceremony and miracle, by myth and fear and hope; he will reject or transform any
	religion that does not give him these."
	--p.76, Chapter III

		As evidenced by the differences between the Bhuddist "greater vehicle" and
		"lesser vehicle".

	(humorous) "Perhaps Clovis, longing to reach the Mediterranean, thought France was
	worth a mass."
	--p.91, Chapter IV

	"...perhaps it merits note that the greatest generals - Alexander, Caesar, Belisarius,
	Saladin, Napoleon - found clemency a mighty engine of war."
	--p.108, Chapter V

	"like every successful preacher, Mohammed gave voice and form to the need and longing
	of his time."
	--p.163, Chapter VIII

	"He put on none of the pomp of power, rejected any special mark of reverence, accepted
	the invitation of a slave to dinner, and asked no service of a slave that he had time
	and strength to do for himself."
	--p.173, Chapter VIII

	"The Koran, which excoriates the Jews, is the sincerest flattery they have ever
	received."
	--p.184, Chapter IX

	"Civilization is a union of soil and soul - the resources of the earth transformed by
	the desire and discipline of men."
	--p.206, Chapter XI

	"Next to bread and woman, in the heirarchy of desire, comes eternal salvation; when
	the stomach is satisfied, and lust is spent, man spares a little time for God."
	--p.210, Chapter XI

	(humorous) "Christian influences seem to have molded many of the traditions; love towards
	one's enemies was inculcated, though Mohammed had sterner views; the Lord's Prayer was
	adopted from the Gospels; the parables of the sower, the wedding guests, and the laborers
	in the vineyard were put into Mohammed's mouth; all in all, he was transformed into an
	excellent Christian, despite his nine wives."
	--p.212, Chapter XI

	"Mohammed, like Moses, used religion as a means to hygiene as well as to morality, on
	the general principle that the rational can secure popular acceptance only in the form
	of the mystical."
	--p.212, Chapter XI

	"A law originally enacted for a desert community, he argued, must be interpreted
	analogously, not literally, when applied to an industrial or urban society ..."
	' "The legal rule," said Hanifa, "is not the same as the rules of grammar and logic.
	It expresses a general custom, and changes with the circumstances that produced it." '
	--p.226, Chapter XI

		This sets a precedent for the reinterpretation of sacred laws based
		on changing times.  I would like to think that a system of laws or a
		constitution could be made general and scalable enough that it would
		not need reinterpretation.  I do not think that the nature of human
		life on the Earth is so diverse from age to age that this would be
		impossible.

	"Civilization is rural in base, but urban in form; men must gather in cities to
	provide for one another audiences and stimuli."
	--p.228, Chapter XI

	"The teacher counted for more than the text, except in the case of the Koran; boys
	studied men rather than books; and students would travel from one end of the Moslem
	world to another to meet the mind of a famous teacher."
	--p.236, Chapter XII

	"In a society where government, law, and morality are bound up with a religious creed,
	any attack upon that creed is viewed as menacing the foundations of social order itself."
	--p.251, Chapter XII

	"They conceived friendship as a collaboration of abilities and virtues, each party
	bringing to the union a quality of which the others had lack and need; truth, they
	thought, comes more readily from a meeting of minds than from individual thought."
	--p.254, Chapter XII

		(related closely to the quote from page 236 above)

	"When scholarship has surveyed more thoroughly this half-forgotten legacy, we shall
	probably rank the tenth century in Eastern Islamas one of the golden ages in the
	history of the mind."
	--p.257, Chapter XII

	' "The true saint," said Abu Said, "goes in and out amongst the people, eats and sleeps
	with them, buys and sells in the market, marries and takes part in social intercourse,
	and never forgets God for a single moment." '
	--p.259, Chapter XII

		Joseph Campbell's hero - the master of the two worlds.

	"... and the monotheism of the prophets becomes the polytheism of the populace."
	--p.261, Chapter XII

		Again, witness the distinction between the "lesser vehicle" and "greater vehicle"
		of Bhuddism.  (mahayana and hinayana)

	(humorous) "The American businessman is periodically a zealous Mohammedan, proud of his
	secret doctrine, his Moroccan fez, and his Moslem shrine."
	--p.289, Chapter XIII

	"The poor welcomed him, always preferring new masters to old ..."
	--p.307, Chapter XIII

	"	And we - that dreamed youth's blade would never rust,
		Hoped wells from the mirage, roses from the sand -
		The riddle of the world shall understand
		And put on wisdom with the robe of dust		"
	--p.307, Chapter XIII - a poem by Al-Mutamid

		This is one of my favorite poems - in fact one of the few poems that
		stirs me in any way.

	(humorous) "... philosophers were protected on the quiet understanding that they
	would make their works unintelligible."
	--p.314, Chapter XIV

*	(humorous) " 'The ringlets of the lovely," he wrote, "are a chain on the feet of
	reason."  He divorced her, encountered more ringlets, assumed more chains.'
	--p.326, Chapter XIV

	"Never has anyone acknowledged his own ignorance, except the person who, while another
	is talking and has not yet finished, begins to speak."
	--p.327, Chapter XIV - from "The Rose Garden" by Sa'di

	(humorous, speaking on the medical treatments of the day) "The sleepless were provided
	with soft music, professional storytellers, and perhaps books of history."
	--p.330, Chapter XIV

	"Epicurean indulgence, physical and mental exhaustion, military incompetence and
	cowardice, religious sectarianism and obscurantism, political corruption and anarchy,
	all culminating in piecemeal collapse before external attack - this, and no change of
	climate, turned Western Asia from world leadership to destitution, from a hundred teeming
	and cultured cities in Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Caucasus, and Transoxiana into
	the poverty, disease, and stagnation of modern times."
	--p.341, Chapter XIV

*	"Civilization is polygenetic - it is the cooperative product of many peoples, ranks,
	and faiths; and no one who studies its history can be a bigot of race or creed.  Therefore
	the scholar, though he belongs to his country with affectionate kinship, feels himself
	also a citizen of the country of the mind which knows no hatreds and no frontiers; he
	hardly deserves his name if he carries into his study political prejudices, or racial
	discriminations, or religious animosities; and he accords his grateful homage to any
	people that has borne the torch and enriched his heritage."
	--p.344, Chapter XIV

	"Every day when a man busies himself with the study of the Law he should say to
	himself 'It is as if this day I received it from Sinai.'"
	--p.353, Chapter XV - from the Talmud

	"He who dispenses charity in private is greater than Moses."
	--p.361, Chapter XV - from the Talmud

*	"... the supreme perfection of woman is perfect motherhood, as the supreme virtue of
	man is perfect fatherhood."
	--p.361, Chapter XV

	"A man should first build a house, then plant a vineyard, then marry."
	--p.362, Chapter XV - from the Talmud

	"Descend a step in choosing a wife, ascend a step in choosing a friend."
	--p.362, Chapter XV - from the Talmud

	"... no man is so rich, said Akiba, as one who has a wife noted for her good deeds."
	--p.363, Chapter XV

	"When thou eatest of the labor of thy hands, happy shalt thou be ..."
	--p.363, Chapter XV - from the Talmud

	"The method of teaching was not by mere recitation and repetition; it was also by
	disputation between master and pupil, between pupil and pupil, and the application
	of old laws to the circumstances of the new day."
	--p.365, Chapter XV

*	"A jewish aristocracy took form, graced by beautiful women; perhaps it was too keenly
	conscious of its superiority, but it redeemed its pride by its sense that good birth
	and fortune are an obligation to generosity and excellence."
	--p.372, Chapter XVI

	"None but the honorable honor women, none but the despicable despise them."
	--p.381, Chapter XVI - Judah ben Moses ibn Tibbon

*	"Nevertheless it is almost a Newtonian law of history that large agricultural
	holdings, in proportion to their mass and nearness, attract smaller holdings,
	and by purchase or otherwise, periodically gather the land into great estates;
	in time concentrations become explosive, the soil is redivided by taxation or
	revolution, and concentration is resumed."
	--p.434, Chapter XVIII

	(humorous) "The ecclesiastics of the court and of Rome winked leniently at the Moslem
	morals of so Christian a king."
	--p.471, Chapter XIX - speaking of Charlemagne

	"History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die; and the burning of the
	tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil."
	--p.510, Chapter XX

*	"The life of the mind is a composition of two forces: the necessity to believe in
	order to live, and the necessity to reason in order to advance.  In ages of poverty
	and chaos the will to believe is paramount, for courage is the one thing needful;
	in ages of wealth the intellectual powers come to the fore as offering preferment and
	progress; consequently a civilization passing from poverty to wealth tends to
	develop a struggle between reason and faith, a 'warfare of science with theology'.  In
	this conflict, philosophy, dedicated to seeing life whole, usually seeks a reconciliation
	of opposites, a mediating peace, with the result that it is scorned by science and
	suspected by theology.  In an age of faith, where hardship makes life unbearable without
	hope, philosophy inclines to religion, uses reason to defend faith, and becomes a
	disguised theology.  Among the three faiths that divided white civilization in the
	MIddle Ages this was least true of Islam, whih had most wealth, truer of Christendom,
	which had less, truest of Judaism, which had least.
	--p.405, Chapter XVII

	"... it is reserved to the philosopher, and forbidden to the man of action, to see
	elements of justice in the position of his enemy."
	--p.551, Chapter XXI

	"Like most economic and political systems in history, feudalism was what it had to be
	to meet the necessities of place and time and the nature of man."
	--p.556, Chapter XXII

	"Under every system of economy men who can manage men manage men who can only manage
	things."
	--p.560, Chapter XXII

	"It would of course be absurd to expect soldiers to be saints; good killing requires
	its own unique virtues."
	--p.575, Chapter XXII

	"Whatever its excesses and absurdities in literature, however far chivalry in fact fell
	short of its ideals, it remains one of the major achievements of the human spirit, an
	art of life more splendid than any art."
	--p.578, Chapter XXII

	"The price of sovereignty is the capacity for self defense."
	--p.592, Chapter XXIII

	"If I have become great it is because I have won men's hearts by kindness and gentleness."
	--p.602, Chapter XXIII (Saladin speaking)

	"Every cultural flowering finds root and nourishment in an expansion of commerce and
	industry."
	--p.614, Chapter XXIV

*	"...every generation borrows, and denounces those who lend."
	--p.628, Chapter XXIV

	"You, then, who have received the gift of God, think you that you commit no injustice
	by keeping to yourself alone what would be the means of life to many?  It is the bread
	of the hungry you cling to, it is the clothing of the naked that you lock up..."
	--p.630, Chapter XXIV (Ambrose speaking)

	"Like most great men, William found it easier to rule a kingdom than his family."
	--p.668, Chapter XXV

	"Faith declines as wealth increases."
	--p.710, Chapter XXVI

	"In every great religion ritual is as necessary as creed."
	--p.742, Chapter XXVII

	"The Roman church has always had the advantage of giving that to merit which in
	other governments is given only to birth."	(Voltaire)
	"(This) is the origin of the incredibly vigorous power that inhabits this age-old
	institution.  THis gigantic host of clerical dignitaries, by uninterruptedly
	supplementing itself from the lowest layers of the nations, preserves not only
	its instinctive bond with the people's world of sentiment, but it also assures
	itself of a sum of energy and active force which in such a form will forever be
	present only in the broad masses of the people."	(Hitler)
	--p.759, Chapter XXVII (footnote)

	"Morals fall as riches rise, and nature will out according to men's means."
	--p.786, Chapter XXIX

*	"Anticipating Goethe's dictum that knowledge that does not lead to action is vain
	and poisonous, Francis said ... A man has only so much knowledge as he puts to work."
	--p.795, Chapter XXIX

*	"Boniface had not realized, in undertaking so many conflicts, that the weapons of the
	papacy had been blunted by overuse."
	--p.816, Chapter XXIX

	"Unable to establish a utopia among unequally able men, she organized charity and
	hospitality, and in some measure protected the weak from the strong."
	--p.818, Chapter XXIX

	"Ethically every civilization is a balance and tension between the jungle instincts
	of men and the inhibitions of moral code."
	--p.819, Chapter XXX

	"Theologies and philosophies, like men and states, are what they are because in their
	time and place they have to be."
	--p.821, Chapter XXX

	(humorous) "Logic seems a rather advanced subject for the trivium, but perhaps it was
	good that students should learn to reason as early as they loved to argue."
	--p.915, Chapter XXXIV

	' "He who has by philosophy reached caritas, a charitable kindliness, has attained to
	philosophy's true end." '
	--p.953, Chapter XXXVI (quoting John of Salisbury)

	"The wise man creates order" (Sapientis est ordinare)
	--p.978, Chapter XXXVI (quoting Aquinas)

	"Transmission is to civilization what reproduction is to life."
	--p.989, Chapter XXXVII

	(humorous) "Poverty always mingles myth with medicine, for myth is free and science is
	dear."
	--p.997, Chapter XXXVII

	(humorous) "The fertility of women labors to atone for the stupidity of men and
	the bravery of generals."
	--p.1003, Chapter XXXVII

	"There are few things in the world so unpopular as truth, and the backbone of men and
	states is a concatenation of romance."
	--p.1031, Chapter XXXVIII

	"The middle ages are a condition as well as a period."
	--p.1082, Epilogue

	"...every generation is stirred by a kindred vision of an international moral order
	superior to the jungle ethics of sovereign states."
	--p.1083, Epilogue


04/2002
Understanding Computer Science
Roger S Walker, for the Texas Instruments Learning Center

		This is an excellent book for anyone venturing into _real_
		computer science for the first time.  I am continually
		surprised at how many professionals in the field do not
		understand the basics of computer architecture, operating
		system basics, or resource management.  This book would be
		a quick and easy way to provide some theoretical foundation
		to ones practical knowledge.


05/2002
The Journey to the East
Hermann Hesse

	"Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment and ridicule, efface
	what the previous generation considered most important ?"
	--p.8

	"Grace cannot be bought with repentance; it cannot be bought at all."
	--p.21

	"'The law of service.  He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does
	not live long.'
	'Then why do so many strive to rule?'
	'Because they do not understand.  There are few who are born to be masters; they remain happy
	and healthy.  But all the others who have only become masters through endeavor, end in nothing.'"
	--p.34


05/2002
Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management
M.G. Kains

	"... one of the surest ways to succeed is to have a definite plan and a
	definite goal."
	--p.11, Tried and True Ways to Fail

	"No one should own more arable land than he can maintain in a high state of
	productivity..."
	--P.18, The Farm to Choose

	"Conservation in the broadest sense implies neither waste of product nor
	waste of the forces and conditions which make high production possible.
	These forces are the environment under which the crop is grown and the
	inherent hereditary possibilities within the seed or seed material."
	--p.37, Essential Factors of Production

	"Keeping records is the most effective way by which to determine the truth
	about himself and his business, his less economical and less productive
	methods, practises, crops and live stock."
	--p.64, Farm Accounts

	"Rain water is so superior to most well and spring water and is such a
	money saver that every farm home should have a supply, if for no other
	purpose that for the family washing."
	--p.67, Water Supply

	"Overhead irrigation in some form has the great advantage over all other
	styles in its applicability to every type of soil, every elevation, every
	size of garden of field."
	--p.99, Irrigation

	"No matter how small or large your farm, you should keep hens."
	--p.116, Poultry

	"Red and brown soils are highly valued, less because of their iron
	oxide than because of their condition which this material (and color)
	indicate.  For it suggests good drainage and other favorable growth
	conditions and proves the presence of abundant material which will
	both supply and retain plant food."
	--p.150, Soils and Their Care

	"Every land owner should adopt for his land a system of farming that
	is permanent - a system under which the land becomes better rather
	than poorer."
	--p.154, Manures

	"Numerous experiments have proved that fertilizer gives best results
	when place more or less locally to the seeds or plants rather than
	scattered promiscuously over the surface, but that this distance should be
	relatively distant, not in contact with the seeds or plants."
	--p.165, Commercial Fertilizers

	"Therefore, except for fall plowing, make this your invariable rule:
	Plow in the morning, continue until only so much is plowed as can
	surely be harrowed before the work day ends."
	--p.185, Soil Surface Management

	"Good farmers are not interested in weeds, but in good farming ...
	they are so intent upon growing profitable crops and improving their
	land that weeds just have no chance to become annoying."
	--p.196, Weeds

	"So far as weeds are concerned good farming stresses prevention rather
	than cure, though when cure is necessary acts promptly and
	rigorously."
	--p.196, Weeds

		Excellent advice that can be applied in countless situations
		outside of farming.

	"Our aim should be not how much strain our strength can stand, but how
	great we can make that strength.  With such an aim we shall incidentally
	and naturally find ourselves  accomplishing much more work than if we
	aimed at the work itself."
	--p.200, Tools

	"In no branch of farming is it so true that the pennywise, pound
	foolish policy is so often or so strikingly illustrated as in the
	buying of cheap seed."
	--p.243, Seeds and Seeding

	"Ability to retain moisture during dry times is the main point to
	secure in a soil for berries."
	--p.292, Bush and Cane Fruits

	"Many may think that the home orchard will require an undue amount of
	work.  This is not true for the home orchard of one acre or less in
	extent; in fact, the care amounts to so little that no farmer, if his
	work is properly managed, should be handicapped or delayed in handling
	other farm enterprises."
	--p.301, Small Farm Fruit Gardens

	"Unless the orchard area is very narrow in proportion to its length
	it is a good plan to have the rows of temporary crops extend lengthwise
	one year and crosswise the in the following season.  Such alteration
	of direction will break up and aerate the soil between the trees in
	each direction and thus not only better control perrenial weeds but
	prevent the soil from becoming unduly compacted."
	--p.315, Selection of Tree Fruits

	"... those treatments which have resulted in larger cover crops have
	ultimately resulted in more fruit."
	--p.315, Selection of Tree Fruits

	"Cleanliness of orchard, garden, vineyard and berry patch is one of
	the greatest preventatives of plant diseases and insect attacks."
	--p.331, Essentials of Spraying and Dusting

	"During the growing season in the vegetable garden such removal
	should be followed by the sowing or planting of a succession crop
	or of a green manure."
	--p.331, Essentials of Spraying and Dusting


06/2002
How To Live
Fisher and Fisk

		Dusty living conditions, even if the dust is chemically benign / non-radioactive, are
		very bad for health.

		Exercising with as much surface area of skin exposed as possible is desirable.

	"Only the minimal amount of clothing that will secure warmth should be worn."
	--p.18, Air

	"The air of the best ventilated house is not as good as outdoor air.  It is usually those who spend
	much of their lives in the open who enjoy the best health and the greatest longevity."
	--p.21, Air

	"Leaving the country for the city is often disastrous even for the purpose in view, that is, to gain wealth;
	for wealth gained at the expense of health always proves in the end a bitter joke."
	--p.23, Air

	"Each individual must decide for himself by actual experience what is the right amount of food to eat."
	--p.33, Food

	"The Igorots of the Philippines have perfect teeth so long as they continue to use their coarse native
	foods; but when they change to a soft, concentrated diet, their teeth rapidly decay."
	--p.40, Food

	"One of the simplest and most effective methods of avoiding self-poisoning is by maintaining an erect
	posture."
	--p.55, Poisons

*	"There are two great forms of activity, work and play; and two great forms of inactivity, rest and sleep."
	--p.83, Activity

	"Some people find that, while it is difficult to live a complete life every single day, it is quite within
	their power to give every element its due proportion in each week, taken as a whole."
	--p.83, Activity

	"Husbands and wives who have occupied the same bed for as long as thirty-five years do not tend to follow
	similar habits of sleeping when they are given seperate beds in the same room."
	--p.104, Activity

	"Civilized mothers 'house break' their infants, just as they do their cats and poodle dogs.  As a result,
	both the little ones and the canine pets become constipated."
	--p.186, Food

		page 229 suggests that milk is extremely important for growth and health

		page 272 has an interesting treatmen / cure for flat feet

	"If you stuff a cold _you will have to_ starve a fever"
	--p.317, Avoiding Colds

		So the original phrase "stuff a cold, starve a fever" is not meant in the imperative sense.

		page 322 suggest many related and unrelated illnesses that stem from unhealthy mouths/teeth.

	"When you marry, join, if possible, your family line to one which is strong in respect to the traits
	in which yours is weak."
	--p.354, Eugenics
	

06/2002
The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War
Edited by Charles Townshend

	"The triumph of uniform, economical foot soldiers over individual, extravagant
	horsemen - in a word, the triumph of the ordinary people over the aristocracy -
	represented the decisive juncture of modernization."
	--p.3, The Shape of Modern War

	"His (Clausewitz) famous insistence that war can only be sensibly understood as
	an instrument of policy, 'a continuation of political activity by other means' -
	the means were different but the ends must make political sense - was a way of
	saying that not all wars would thenceforth necessarily display the extremism
	of the French revolutionary model."
	--p.7, The Shape of Modern War

	"War would increasingly be seen as the acid test, not merely of military and
	economic strength, but more fundamentally of the social cohesion of states,
	amd the viability of nations."
	--p.7, The Shape of Modern War

		Could this run in cycles ?  American society _seems_ to be degrading,
		but we are the ones with the best laser guided missiles, etc.  Either
		this is not always true, or America is more cohesive as a nation than
		some give it credit for.

	"mere existence does not entitle a people [volk] to political independence: only
	the force to exert itself as a state amongst others" (quote of a member of the Frankfurt
	parliament during the German revolutions of 1848)
	--p.7, The Shape of Modern War

	"The quick introduction of successful inventions or modifications in most European
	armies suggests that the importance of a technological lead over potential opponents
	was well recognized.  The same can be said about tactical innovation.  Any advantage
	was temorary."
	--p.40, The Military Revolution II

	"They believed that if military effectiveness on the scale of the French revolution
	demanded a radical transformation of their societies, the price was simply not worth paying."
	--p.64, The Nation in Arms II

	"In the eyes of Europe's princely rulers, political loyalty was more important than
	military effectiveness."
	--p.65, The Nation in Arms II

	"What Moltke and many of his contemporaries ignored was Clausewitz's insistence that war
	was an instrument of policy and had to be kept subordinate to political ends.  For them,
	war was merely the inevitable fate of mankind, and it was their job to wage it as
	efficiently as possible."
	--p.73, The Nation in Arms II

	"As Caldwell observed, while in imperial warfare tactics favour the European, strategy favors
	the resistance, which, if clever, can control the pace of a war."
	--p.88, Imperial Wars

	"Irregular armies always count many waverers ... even on the battle-field a large proportion
	of the opposing force consists generally of mere lookers-on ... A vigorous offensive has the
	effect of keeping at home those who hesitate to take up arms and of thereby diminishing the
	fighting strength of the enemy."
	--p.95, Imperial Wars

	"All governments feared their peoples.  Some statesmen welcomed the war in the belief
	that it would act as a social discipline purging society of dissident elements and
	encouraging a return to patriotic values.  Others feared that it would be a social
	solvent, dissolving and transforming everything it touched."
	--p.101, Total War I

	"The German army was a potent instrument.  It had played a historic role in the emergence
	of the German state.  It enjoyed enormous prestige.  It was able to recruit men of talent
	and dedication as officers and NCOs.  As a result it was well trained and well led.  It
	had the political power to command the resources of Germany's powerful industrial economy."
	--p.108, Total War I

	"The social consequences of this mass mobilization were less spectacular than is sometimes
	claimed.  There were advances for the organized working class, especially its trade
	unions, especially in Britian, and arguably for women, but the working class of Europe
	paid a high price on the battlefield for social advances at home.  And in the defeated
	states there was very little social advance anyway."
	--p.117, Total War I

	"Throughout the conflict more civilians were killed than soldiers."
	--p.120, Total War II

	"Saddam Hussein had indeed made a classic mistake and forgotten how previous
	revolutions from Cromwell to Lenin had increased the strength of the country
	involved. (referring to the Iran/Iraq war)
	--p.150, Cold War

	"For land forces the demoralizing effect of remaining inactive in defensive
	positions, whilst waiting for the arrival of attacking forces, was re-emphasized."
	--p.153, Cold War

	"The immediate result was to alienate the surviving peasantry still more completely,
	so that it took Turreau's wiser successor Lazare Hoche - who told his government 'for
	the twentieth time I repeat, if you do not grant religious tolerance, you must give up
	the idea of peace' - two more years to end the conflict."
	--p.157, People's War

	"But these wars also bore out the point made by Clausewitz, that the power of the
	guerilla action was limited.  Irregulars could weaken but not decisively defeat a
	strong and determined enemy; to achieve victory they must act as auxiliaries to
	conventional forces."
	--p.157, People's War

	"... war is completely permeated by technology and governed by it."
	--p.175, Technology and War I

	"The tension between those whose primary function is to engage the enemy
	and those who support them underlines the fact that, for so many cultures,
	combat has been much more than a simple military necessity."
	--p.195, Battle

	"Combat is a watershed even in the lives of those who survive it unscathed.
	Few of them regard war as anything other than an evil, unavoidable perhaps,
	but an evil nevertheless."
	--p.212, Battle

	"The crucial prerequisite of mobilization on this scale was the competence,
	size, and authority of modern bureaucracies."
	--p.248, War and the People


06/2002
Pulling the Strings - How Businesses and Institutions Attempt to Control the Small Press
Fred Woodworth


06/2002
The Story of Philosophy
Will Durant
1953

	`"Facts" replaced understanding; and knowledge, split into a thousand isolated
	fragments, no longer generated wisdom.'
	--p.VIII

	"If one could build a system of morality absolutely independent of religious
	doctrine, as valid for the atheist as for the pietist, then theologies might come
	and go without loosening the moral cement that makes of wilful individuals the
	peaceful citizens of a community."
	--p.7, Plato

	"And in an intelligently administered society - one that returned to the individual,
	in widened powers, more than it took from him in restricted liberty - the advantage
	would lie in social and loyal conduct, and only clear sight would be needed to
	ensure peace and order and good will."
	--p.8, Plato

	"Surely the management of a state is a matter for which men cannot be too intelligent,
	a matter that needs the unhindered thought of the finest minds.  How can a society be
	saved, or be strong, except it be led by its wisest men?"
	--p.8, Plato



2002-08
Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game)
Hermann Hesse

	"In this music we possess the heritage of classical antiquity and Christianity, a spirit of
	serenely cheerful and brave piety, a superbly chivalric morality.  For in the final analysis
	every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated
	into a gesture."
	--p.33

*	"What a pity that no arrangements were ever final, that recognized errors were never eliminated
	for good, that again and again the salfsame failings had to be combated, the selfsame weeds
	plucked out."
	--p.66

	"Remember this: one can be a strict logician or grammarian, and at the same time full of
	imagination and music."
	--p.68

	"That is how we ought to be.  We should be so constituted that we can at any time be placed in a
	different position without offering resistance or losing our heads."
	--p.69

	"Once upon a time the philosophers of history ruined half of world history with their efforts to
	teach such 'meaning'; they inaugurated the age of the Feuilleton and are partly to blame for
	quantities of spilled blood."
	--p.107

	"To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.
	It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one."
	--p.151

	"But that communities such as the Benedictines, the Dominicans, later the Jesuits and others, have
	survived for centuries and, despite their ups and downs, the assualts upon them, and the adaptations
	they have made, retain their face and their voice, their gesture, their individual soul - this is,
	for me, the most remarkable and meritorious phenomenon in history."
	--p.153

*	"We do not intend to flee from the vita activa to the vita contemplativa, nor vice versa, but to keep
	moving forward while alternating, between the two, being at home in both, partaking of both."
	--p.217

	"History has one great strength over the things a Waldzell tutor feels to be worthy of his interest:
	it deals with reality.  Abstractions are find, but I think people also have to breathe air and eat
	bread."
	--p.256

	"'No noble and exalted life exists,' he once said, 'without knowledge of devils and demons, and without
	continual struggle against them."
	--p.261

*	"It is treason to sacrifice love of truth, intellectual honesty, loyalty to the laws and methods of
	the mind, to any other interests, including those of one's country."
	--p.332

	"A man can be a star of the first magnitude in gifts, will-power, and endurance, but so well balanced
	that he turns with the system to which he belongs without any friction or waste of energy.  Another
	may have the same great gifts, or even finer ones, but the axis does not pass precisely through the
	center, and he squanders half his strength in eccentric movements which weaken himand disturb his
	surroundings."
	--p.367

	Stages, from p.411:

		As every flower fades and as all youth
		Departs, so life at every stage,
		So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
		Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
		Since life may summon us at every age
		Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
		Be ready bravely and without remorse
		To find new light that old ties cannot give.
		In all beginnings dwells a magic force
		For guarding us and helping us to live.

		Serenely let us move to distant places
		And let no sentiments of home detain us.
		The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
		But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
		If we accept a home of our own making,
		Familiar habit makes for indolence.
		We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
		Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

		Even the hour of our death may send
		Us speeding no to fresh and newer spaces,
		And life may summon us to newer races.
		So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

	The first of the "Three Lives": "The Rainmaker" is a story pregnant with meaning and mythic pattern.

	"That is how it is when a man fastens all his capacity for love upon a single object.  With
	its loss everything collapses for him, and he stands impoverished amid ruins."
	--p.493


2002-12
Paradise Below Zero
Calvin Rutstrum

	"Since man, in order to survive even moderate temperatures, must resort to the artificial
	covering of his body, it may be assumed that primordially he may have been a tropical
	animal.  Yet, if we are to judge the comparative progress he has made in warm areas of the
	world with those of the cold, he seems to accomplish most in colder climates.  Strangely,
	this has applied as well to his mental efforts as to his physical accomplishments.  We have
	seen how any intellectually creative work drops markedly in the heat of summer and rises
	measurably in the cold of winter."
	--p.7, The Human Cold Weather Equation

	"Perspiration from accumulating residual salts in undergarments and sleeping bags has
	traditionally been the insidious enemy stalking the winter trail."
	--p.15, Escape Complex

*	"To unlearn in adulthood what in such large measure we are speciously taught in youth -
	must this always be the process of much education?"
	--p.33, The White Wilderness

	"Merriam points up a comparative basic concept that each three hundred miles of latitude change
	is equal to about one thousand feet of elevation zonal change."
	--p.45, The White Wilderness

*	"We may assume that had Franklin been able to subordinate his military pomp and disdain of
	Eskimo acumen, the expedition members, by imitating the Eskimo's methods, might at least
	have survived.  The point here, I think, is not too far-fetched.  People who lack intellectual
	humility generally are destined to lose the fruits of outstanding achievement."
	--p.86, Incredible Naturalistic Man

	"We have seen in reading significant biographies that no life can have real meaning that does
	not show a few consequent scars.  As the caribou herd without the wolf pack on its migratory
	heels becomes less vigorous, so is man apt to fall short of full maturity without a substantial
	share of adversity."
	--p.100, Retrospection

*	"Freedom for both man and beast is undoubtedly the most precious of all life's attributes."
	--p.105, Retrospection

	"We experience the same insulating principle in the making of a bed quilt - two thin coverings
	trapping myriad air spaces in the bat of wool or down.  An ordinary sweater, for example, becomes
	much warmer if worn under a thing cotton outer shirt rather than over it."
	--p.114, The Magic Effect of Winter Clothes

	"Since it is possible to avoid the constant enemy of the winter trail - perspiration - only to a
	limited degree, the experienced wilderness traveler cuts back on his dress until he is apt to be
	more on the cool than on the warm side of comfort."
	--p.131, The Function of Winter Clothes

	"The fallacy of spare the whip and spoil the child corresponds to the adage of spare the whip and
	spoil the dog.  The matter of categorical division in either instance should not be difficult.
	Where there is a shortage of intelligent direction, there must, I suggest, be a compensating
	extension of the whip method to bridge this tragic gap.  It seems to apply as well to horses
	and dogs as to children.  Both the whip method and the intelligent influence method work their
	own particular ends, but the results differ widely."
	--p.147, Winter Wilderness Travel Methods

	"I have watched with great interest the sudden influx of many people into the winter wilderness,
	solely through the inception of the motorized toboggan - those who would otherwise not have
	stirred out of doors for winter recreation without it.  Whatever instrumentation can break
	the barrier between indoor enervation and outdoor invigoration can be considere valuable despite the
	incidental lost values.  The important thing to consider is that some areas should be left
	inviolate where mechanization is concerned, so that 'silent places' for those who want serenity
	can continue to exist."
	--p.163, Winter Wilderness Travel Methods


2003
House Corrino
Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson

	"The more tightly packed the group, the greater the need for strict social ranks
	and orders"

	--Bene Gesserit Teaching, p.194


2003
Salt
Mark Kurlansky

	"The Roman genius was administration - not the originality of the project but the scale
	of the operation."
	--p.64, Chapter 4 - Salt's Salad Days

2003
Cod
Mark Kurlansky

		I liked this book better than _Salt_, his more celebrated work...

	"In trade, it is an almost infallible natural law that a hungry low-end market, an eager dumping
	ground for the shoddiest work, is an irresistable market force.  At first it offers an opportunity
	to sell off the mistakes that would otherwise have represented a loss.  But producers increasingly
	turned to this fast, cheap, profitable product because it was easy."
	--p.81, Certain Inalienable Rights

	"But technology never reverses itself.  It creates new technology to confront new sets of problems."
	--p.133, The Last Two Ideas

	"The central issue to the survival of a species is how to maintain its diversity - the wide range of
	genetic characteristics that gives a species the ability to adapt to the many challenges of life in
	the world."
	--p.198, The Dangerous Waters of Nature's Resilience

	"When a species is in danger of extinction, it often starts reaching sexual maturity earlier."
	--p.203, The Dangerous Waters of Nature's Resilience


2003
Black Hawk Down
Mark Bowden

	"Rightly or wrongly, they stand as an enduring symbol of Third World ingratitude
	and intractibility, of the futility of trying to resolve local animositiy with
	international muscle.  They've effectively written themselves off the map."
	--p.334, Epilogue


2003
The Art of War
Sun Tzu

	"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the
	ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight,
	even at the ruler's bidding."
	--p.53, Terrain

	"The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace,
	whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for the sovereign, is
	the jewel of the kingdom."
	--p.53, Terrain


2003
Clear and Present Danger
Tom Clancy

	"The American police are hamstrung because their political leadership does not allow them
	to act as they wish to act - and as they could act, in a moment, if those restrictions were
	ever eased."
	--p.501, Chapter 11 - In Country


2003
The Sum of All Fears
Tom Clancy

	"... the noblest of ideas have always been protected by warriors."
	--(from the dedication)

	"You just fell into the most dangerous trap in government service, ma'am.  You started to
	think that your wishes to make the world a better place supercede the principles under
	which our government is supposed to operate."
	--p.1001, Chapter 10 - Last Stands

	
2003-11
Debt of Honor
Tom Clancy

	"Do you understand America as poorly as that ?  Our current difficulties began because a single family
	was burned alive.  They are not the same as us.  They think differently.  Their religion is different.
	They have the most violent culture in the world, yet they worship justice.  They venerate making money,
	but their roots are found in ideals."
	--(unknown)

2004-01
Class Warfare
Noam Chomsky

	(all of page 19, starting with: "That's the way the U.S. was founded...")

	"The goal of production is to produce free people."
	--p.29, Rollback - quote from John Dewey

	"It's exactly what existing capitalism is about.  Profit is privatized but costs
	are socialized."
	--p.42, Rollback

	"I compared some passages of articles of his in the late 1960s, speeches, on management
	and the necessity of management, how a well-managed society controlled from above was the
	ultimate in freedom.  The reason is if you have really good management and everything's under
	control and people are told what to do, under those conditions, he said, man can maximize
	his potential.  I just compared that with standard Leninist views on Vanguard parties, which
	are about the same.  About the only difference is that McNamara brought God in, and I suppose
	Lenin didn't bring God in.  He brought Marx in."
	--p.76, History and Memory

	"As the organization of investment markets improves, the risk of the predominance of speculation
	does, however, increase.  Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of
	enterprise, but the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of
	speculation."
	--p.105, The Federal Reserve Board, quote from Adam Smith

		An entire chapter of this book is devoted to the United States Federal Reserve Board

	"Military aid is payment by the U.S. taxpayer to U.S. corporations.  That's money that doesn't
	move out of U.S. banks.  Incidentally, that's true of a lot of foreign aid.  You want to maintain
	the high-tech sector of the U.S. economy.  The way we do that is under a military cover.  One way
	of doing it is producing and exporting high-technology waste."
	--p.167, Israel: Rewarding the Cop on the Beat
	

2004-02
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman
Richard Feynman

		An extremely self indulgent and self aggrandizing book.


2004-02
Chronicles of Dissent
Noam Chomsky

	"In fact, even earlier, during the First World War, American historians offered themselves to
	President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a task that they called "historical engineering," meaning
	designing the facts of history so that they would serve state policy.  That's Orwell, long before
	Orwell was writing."
	--p.46, The Propaganda System

		What a very odd fact - it seems that the most despicable of conspiracies are not conceived
		of in the way that conspiracy theorists and modern drama would have us believe.  The end
		result of such actions would be such that it would apear could only have been the result of
		meticulously planned back room dealings between major power brokers, etc., when in fact it
		was nothing but the misguided efforts of a few civilians offering to help in a very odd way.

		I wonder if their impulse to offer this help is evidence of some general form of societal
		entropy ... of a generalized breakdown of the citizenry and their leaders that is always
		progressing.  If so, I wonder how much of what is accepted as "conspiracy" is just the result
		of this kind of societal and political "drift".

	"...in a competitive system you do short-term planning only."
	--p.96, State Power and the Domestic Enemy

		Think:  luxury car companies leveraging (and extending, and diminishing) their brands by selling
		low-cost versions of their upscale models.

	"Again, that doesn't really arise in United States because there are basically no major policy issues
	in the public domain.  But it would happen if the political system ever opened up.  What that reflects is the
	fact that in a system of private enterprise, with private control over the means of production and distribution
	and decisions over investment and so on, the range of political choices is restricted."
	--p.108, Elite Power and the Responsibility of Intellectuals

		But what is the alternative that still preserves personal freedom ?  Certainly not more political
		choices and less personal freedom ... I think the greater the number of political choices available,
		the greater the chaos that is belied in the political system.  A savage has all possible political
		choices available, whereas the creation of a constitution restricts greatly the number of political
		choices.  What I want to see is freedom of determination for individual actors ... is it possible
		that the amount of stability and freedom of determination that we have is inversely proportional
		to the amount of _real political choices_ (should people be protected equally under the law ?  should
		democratic elections be held to determine the will of the people?) we have ?  We should work for a
		more perfect, more free system that further restricts our _real_ political choices.

	"So I said, for example, imagine a Russian intellectual now.  Should that person write accurate criticism
	of the terror and atrocities of the Afghan resistance in the Soviet press, knowing that that accurate
	criticism will enable the Soviet Union to mobilize its own population for further atrocities and aggression?
	Would that be a morally responsible thing to do?"
	--p.111, Elite Power and the Responsibility of Intellectuals

		Yes.  Read the quote from Fred Woodworth for the reason.

	"Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence.
	That's pretty obvious.  You can't have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp,
	to take an extreme case, but the same holds generally."
	--p.126, State Economic Planning

	"The U.S. made a tactical error in the Vietnam War.  It sent a conscript army.  Every imperial power
	knows that you do not send conscript armies to fight colonial wars.  Colonial wars are vicious,
	murderous wars in which you're killing civilians and murdering babies.  There's no other way to do it.
	For that you need professional killers.  Either professional killers or people who are so far away from
	the action that they don't see what's happening, like B-52 pilots.  That's OK.  They don't have to see
	what's going on.  But if you want to fight a colonial war on the ground, you need professional killers
	like the French Foreign Legion and the Gurkhas, etc.  But not conscripts."
	--p.239, The Global Protection Racket

	"You should do what you think is right and not what's going to be tactically useful."
	--p.264, Pascal's Wager

		Then why the question on p.111 (above) ?

	"you'd "like to believe that people have this instinct for freedom, that they want to control their
	own affairs, they don't want to be pushed around, ordered, oppressed, etc.  They want a chance to do things
	that make sense, like constructive work, in a way they can control and control with others."  "
	--p.265, Pascal's Wager

	"Nobody supports free trade unless they think they're going to win the competition."
	--p.267, Pearl Harbor

		I disagree - I think some people are enamored of correctly functioning systems that they would
		sacrifice some portion of their well-being in order to participate in a scalable and correct
		economic system.  Most people would not, though.


2004-04
Designing Storage Area Networks
Tom Clark

	This was worth reading.


2004-04
IP SANs
Tom Clark

	This was worth reading.


2004-04
The Skeptical Environmentalist
Bjorn Lomborg

		It should be noted that Lomborg does not deny the existence of an anthropogenic greenhouse 
		effect.  Many people claim he does, and this book has often been marginalized based on that
		specific critique - obviously by people that have never read it.

		His constant attacks on Lester Brown, et. al, were, however, tiring.  Were the two to three
		specific groups that Lomborg demonizes in the book really the worst offenders in this regard,
		that is, clear standouts that deserve constant refutation, or is there a personal prejudice
		involved here ?

	"This is my long-run forecast in brief:  The material conditions of life will continue to get better
	for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely.  Within a century or two, all nations
	and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards.  I also speculate, however,
	that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse."
	--(no page number - introductory quote by Julian Simon (1932-98), Professor of Economics, University of Maryland)

	"Counting lives lost from different problems also emphasizes a central assumption in my argument:
	that the needs and desires of humankind represent the crux of our assessment of the state of the world.
	This does not mean that plants and animals do not also have rights but that the focus will always be on
	the human evaluation."
	--p.11, Things Are Getting Better

	"The media-based reality has numerous consequences.  First, the incoherent information we are given provides
	us with too little knowledge of concrete problemsto enable us to take part in a democratic decision-making
	process.  Second, we feel sufficiently comfortable that we believe we actually do have sufficient knowledge
	to partake in the debate and to make valid decisions.  Third, we will often get a far too negative and
	distorted impression of the problems."
	--p.39, Why Do We Hear So Much Bad News?

		Chapter 4 discusses the life expectancies of medieval peoples, etc. ... it is interesting to
		note that historical texts are full of examples of philosophers, rulers and clergy living well
		into their 80's - some in wonderful health.  Genetics play a dominant role here, of course,
		but it is interesting to note the variance in life expectancy even in ignorant, sickly times.
		It suggests that only a moderate amount of thoughtful care is needed to extend ones lifespan
		dramatically beyond the span of nasty, brutish ancestors.

G!c	"The problem was that farm productivity remained low because collective organization did not give
	people the incentive to work."
	--p.67, Food and Hunger

	"Generally speaking, research has shown that the best way to secure long-term growth lies in large-scale
	investment in physical capital (e.g. machinery) and people (education).  In addition to this, it is
	necessary to have an open economy in order to facilitate international trade, investment and economic
	freedom, because this encourages the exchange of technology and administration.  Finally, reasonable
	stability, both economic and political, is also a prerequisite.
	--p.72, Prosperity

*	"We need to act such that our descendants will be at least as well off as we are now."
	--p.91, Beginning of Part III

	"Today, desalted water makes up just 0.2 percent of all water or 2.4 percent of municipal water.
	Making desalination cover the total municipal water withdrawal would cost about 0.5 percent of
	the global GDP.  This would definitely be a waste of resources, since most areas have abundant
	water supplies and all areas have some access to water, but it underscores the upper boundary of
	the water problem."
	--p.153, Water

	"Many of the countries with low water availability therefore compensate by importing a large amount of
	their grain.  Since a ton of grain uses about 1,000 tons of water, this is in effect a very efficient
	way of importing water."
	--p.154, Water

		Fascinating.

	"According to the US EPA, the four most dangerous substances are not the major outdoor criteria
	pollutants, but radon gas, cigarette smoke, formaldehyde and asbestos."
	--p.183, Indoor Air Pollution

	"The main thing to point out here, however, is that there is no reason to assume that it is due
	to a deterioration of our environment, but rather because we have sealed up our homes, spend more
	time indoors and have more soft objects around the home."
	--p.188, Allergies and Asthma

	"It turns out that when we look at the problems over time, the environment and economic prosperity
	are not opposing concepts, but rather complementary entities:  without adequate environmental protection,
	growth is undermined, but environmental protection is unaffordable without growth."
	--p.210, Conclusion to Part IV

	"Heat related deaths occur not beyond a certain fixed temperature, but somewhat beyond the usual
	temperature."
	--p.291, Global Warming

	"What these statements of opposition to an almost ideal energy source show is that the relevant agenda
	is not about energy or the economics of energy."
	--p.321, Global Warming

	"This total future consumption also underscores that global warming is not anywhere near the most
	important problem facing the world.  What matters is making the developing countries rich and
	giving the citizens of developed countries even greater opportunities."
	--p.323, Global Warming

	"On the global level, it seems obvious to me that the major problems remain with hunger and poverty."
	--p.327, Predicament or Progress?

*	"In terms of securing a long-term improvement of the environmental quality of the developing world,
	securing growth so as to lift these people out of hunger and poverty is of the utmost importance,
	since out historical experiences tells us that only when we are sufficiently rich can we start to
	think about, worry about and deal with environmental problems."
	--p.327, Predicament or Progress?

	"Of course this does not mean that everything is hunky dory and that we face no problems at all.
	Humanity still has a whole series of challenges to tackle, now and in the future.  Things are better
	now, but they are still not good enough."
	--p.330, Predicament or Progress?

	"This means we need to lift restrictions and cut subsidies on labor-intensive products such as
	agriculture and textiles, two of the areas most protected by developed countries."
	--p.330, Predicament or Progress?

		Anyone claiming that this book is right-wing, big-business propoganda can be refuted,
		to some degree, by the presence of this recommendation by the author.  Rich, developed
		countries have been conservatively holding on to their textile and agriculture subsidies
		and artificial stimulants, protections, etc., for far too long.  That quote is hardly
		a conservative, big-business sentiment...

	"This apparent paradox seems to be a consequence of prosperity often described by the expression:
	'No food, one problem.  Much food, many problems.'  We are now so well off in so many different
	respects that we have time to worry about a whole series of other minor problems."
	--p.330, Predicament or Progress?


2004-05
The Third Chimpanzee - The Evolution of the Human Animal
Jared Diamond

	(amazing and disappointing section where Diamond discounts theories simply because they are not progressive enough
	or supportive enough of womens rights.  Astounding.)
	--p.79-82, The Evolution of Human Sexuality

	"That is, life is considered an evolutionary contest whose winners are those individuals leaving the largest
	number of surviving offspring."
	--p.88, The Science of Adultery

	"A cuckolded animal, deceived into rearing offspring not its own, has thereby lost the evolutionary game
	while advancing the victory of another player, the real parent."
	--p.89, The Science of Adultery

	"Thus, among the ground rules of mating strategy for these colonial birds are the following: polygamy is
	forbidden; copulation with or by an unmated female is pointless, unless she soon acquires a mate to care
	for the resulting offspring: but surreptitious fertilization by one male of another male's mate is a
	viable strategy."
	--p.91, The Science of Adultery

		What does this say about the social safety net in civilized countries ?  The fact that in nature,
		it is completely non viable for a non mated woman to raise a child ... yet it seems that the greater
		the social safety net, the more humans are apt to attempt just that ...

*	"The goal of all human activity cant be reduced to the leaving of descendants.  Once human culture was firmly
	in place, it acquired new goals."
	--p.98, , The Science of Adultery

*	"In short, we evolved, like other animals, to win at the contest of leaving as many descendants as possible.
	Much of the legacy of that game strategy is still with us.  But we have also chosen to pursue ethical goals,
	which can conflict with the goals and methods of our reproductive contest.  Having that choice among goals
	represents one of our most radical departures from other animals."
	--p.98, , The Science of Adultery

	"Like other things in life, inbreeding seems to be good in moderation - a little inbreeding but not too much."
	--p.107, How We Pick Our Sex Partners

	"It illustrates dramatically that the period between birth and age six is a critical time for formation of
	our sexual preferences."
	--p.109, How We Pick Our Sex Partners

	"Hence those who surround us as we grow up, though ineligible themselves as eventual mates, nevertheless shape
	our beauty standards and search images."
	--p.109, How We Pick Our Sex Partners

	"Don't some men and women set disproportianate value on the size or form of certain bdy parts, which are really
	nothing more than arbitrary signals for sexual selection ?"
	--p.118, Sexual Selection, and the Origin of the Human Races

		Perhaps, but wouldn't that suggest that the longer those arbitrary selections take place, the more they
		represent _real and actual_ selection traits ?  (because so many prior high-individuals fought for them ?

	"Think of all the human suffering caused by the sad truth that beautiful, sexy women or handsome, Porsche owning
	men often prove to have miserable genes for other traits."
	--p.175, The Origins of Art

	(discussion of primitive lifestyles and their pros and cons reminds me of the discussion I had with Gavin Seedorf
	in February 2004 regarding "progress")
	--p.187-189, Agriculture's Mixed Blessings

	"It's not that hunter-gatherers abandoned their lifestyle, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were
	forced out of all areas except the ones the farmers didn't want."
	--p.190, Agriculture's Mixed Blessings

	"Languages differ in structure and vocabulary, in how they express causation and feelings and personal responsibility,
	hence in how they shape our thoughts.  There's no single purpose "best" language: instead, different languages are
	better suited for different purposes."
	--p.232, The Last First Contacts

*	"When I try to think of reasons why nuclear weapons won't inexorably combine with our genocidal tendencies to break
	the records we've already set for genocide in the first half of the twentieth century, our accelerating cultural
	homogenization is one of the chief grounds for hope that I can identify.  Loss of cultural diversity may be the
	price that we have to pay for survival."
	--p.234, The Last First Contacts

	"It's a common belief that species in a state of nature live in balance with each other and with their environment.
	Predators don't exterminate their prey, nor do herbivores overgraze their plants.  According to this view,
	humans are the unique misfit.  If this were true, Nature would hold no lessons for us." (but it isn't, so it does)
	--p.311, Reversing Our Progress Overnight

	"While courses in the history of civilization often dwell on kings and barbarian invasions, deforestation and
	erosion may in the long run have been more important shapers of human history."
	--p.335, The Golden Age That Never Was

	"Tragic failures become moral sins only if one should have known better from the outset."
	--p.337, The Golden Age That Never Was


2004-06
Quicksilver
Neal Stephenson

*	"This was a harsh judgement to pass on anyone - and the proverb went 'judge not lest ye be judged'.  But
	its converse was that when you were treating with a man like Isaac Newton, the rashest and cruelest judge
	who ever lived, you must be sure and swift in your own judgements."
	--p.63, Daniel Departs from Boston

	"No man was more comprehensively doomed than him whose chief source of gratification was making favorable
	impressions on some particular woman."
	--p.389, Jack and Eliza in Austria

*	"This is wealth, and the means to defend it, combined into one - perfection."
	--p.392, Jack and Eliza in Bohemia

	"Mademoiselle, in my circles, anyone who transacts business of any sort, on any level, is a whore."
	--p.519, Skating Lessons at the Hofvijver

	"But he mastered his rage, and answered in a tight voice: 'Understand: Louis is not like us - he does
	not trifle with reasons.  He is a reason.  Which is why he must be destroyed."
	--p.594, William of Orange

	"The upright, conservative arch-Anglican had been replaced with a florid papist, but nothing was really
	different - which taught Daniel that the world was full of powerful men but as long as they played the
	same roles, they were as interchangeable as second-rate players speaking the same lines in the same
	theatre on different nights."
	--p.613, Whitehall Palace

	"'It is an error for you to feign modesty when you are talking to me,' the King said, firmly but not angrily."
	--p.653, A Visit From Le Roi

	"'I do not recognize the self-serving decrees of that rebel Parliament,' Jeffreys said squeamishly.  'The
	court star chamber was ancient - Henry VII convened it, but its procedures were rooted in roman
	jurisprudence - consequently, `twas a model of clarity, of efficiency, unlike the time-encrusted
	monstrosity of Common Law, that staggering, cobwebbed beast, that senile compendium of folklore and
	wives' tales, a scabrous Colander seiving all the chunky bits out of the evanescent flux of society
	and compacting 'em into legal head-cheese.'"
	--p.776, Daniel and Jeffreys in the Star Chamber

*	"But consider: Newton has thought things that no man before has ever thought.  A great accomplishment,
	to be sure.  Perhaps the greatest achievement any human mind has ever made."
	--p.797, Daniel in the Tower


2004-05
Pattern Recognition
William Gibson

	"'... we have no future because our present is too volatile.'  He smiles, a version of Tom Cruise with too
	many teeth, and longer, but still very white.  'We have only risk management.  The spinning of the given
	moment's scenarios.  Pattern recognition."
	--p.57, Chapter 6: The Match Factory

	"He approached every partner as though they already had slept together."
	--p.67, Chapter 7: The Proposition

	"Darryl says that the highest level of play, for techno-obsessives, is always and purely about information
	itself..."
	--p.171, Chapter 20: Uber-bones

		As a techno-obsessive, I disagree.  Not only is that not the "highest level of play" for me, but
		further I know many peers who have differing (and differing from me) "highest level of play".  Mine
		is the building of well designed and simple systems.

	"There must always be room for coincidence, Win had maintained.  When there's not, you're probably well into
	apophenia, each thing then perceived as part of an overarching pattern of conspiracy.  And while comforting
	yourself with the symmetry of it all, he'd believed, you stood all too real a chance of missing the genuine
	threat, which was invariably less symmetrical, less perfect.  But which he always, she knew, took for
	granted was there."
	--p.294, Chapter 36: The Dig


2004-07
Economic Solutions: The Incredible Story of How You and America are Being Bankrupted and What You Can do to Avoid the Wipeout
Peter Kershaw

	"The town smith started functioning as the banker, and soon enough, learned the oldest swindle all bankers
	know too well - never was there a day when all the depositors came to the bank, presented their bearer notes
	and asked for all their money."
	--p.7, Chapter 1

	"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.  Already they
	have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance."
	--p.8, Chapter 1 (quote from Thomas Jefferson at the Constitutional Convention of 1787)

	"The typical bereaucrat is primarily interested in three things:  power, prestige and money.  These things
	are obtained when his agency gets bigger.  Anything which can be done to make it bigger is beneficial to him,
	including going to almost any length to spend more money, even to consciously waste it.  The more resources
	spent in one year, the higher the budget for the next."
	--p.43, Chapter 5 (quote from _The Squeeze_ by James Dale Davidson)

		It is interesting to wonder ... if fractional reserve banking is simply an expedient for
		economic growth (and not a conspiracy for theft, as is proposed by some), then perhaps
		it is merely an expression of the need of the powerful to grow wealthy in the course of a
		single (short) lifespan.  The same relationship could be drawn up between unbridled capitalism
		and more socialist forms of economic planning.  The inevitable question is, does freedom tend
		to increase ... does liberty express itself more fully ... as lifespan increases ?


2004-08
Burning Chrome
William Gibson


2004-08
Understanding Power - The Indispensible Chomsky
Noam Chomsky

(gr)	"After all, what are the Iran-contra hearings about?  What they're about is the fact that the
	government was driven underground.  Well, why was the government driven underground, why didn't
	they just come out and do everything up front ?  They couldn't.  They couldn't because they were
	afraid of their own population.  And that's significant, you know.  It's very rare that a
	government has had to go this deep underground in order to carry out its terrorist activities.
	It's an unusual situation; I don't even think there's a historical precedent."
	--p.6, Chapter One

	"...it's what the New York Times recently referred to in a book review as the 'traditional
	Jeffersonian role of the media as a counter-weight to government' - in other words, a
	cantankerous, obstinate, ubiquitous press, which must be suffered by those in authority
	in order to preserve the right of the people to know, and to help the population assert meaningful
	control over the political process.
	...
	The alternative conception is that the media will present a picture of the world which defends
	and inculcates the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate
	the domestic economy, and who therefore also largely control the government."
	--p.15, Chapter One

	"Well, the first thing they tried to do was to reintroduce the capacity to coerce: there was an
	absolute state for a time, and then the King was restored [Charles II regained the throne in 1660
	after several years of rule by Oliver Cromwell's military administration].  But they couldn't change
	everything back, they couldn't regain total control, and a lot of what the popular movements had
	been fighting for slowly began to work its way into the development of British political democracy
	[e.g. constitutional monarchy was established in 1689 and a Bill of Rights adopted].  And ever since
	then, every time popular movements have succeeded in dissolving power to a certain extent, there has
	been a deepening recognition among elites in the West that as you begin to lose the power to control
	people by force, you have to start to control what they think.  And in the United States, that
	recognition has reached its apogee."
	--p.16, Chapter One

	"Remember, this was a citizens' army, and it was the first time in history that a citizens' army
	was being used to fight a colonial war - and that doesn't work."
	--p.34, Chapter One, referring to the Vietnam War

	"Look, there is no such thing as a 'volunteer army': a 'volunteer army' is a mercenary army of
	the poor.  Take a look at the Marines - what you see is black faces, from the ghettos."
	--p.36, Chapter One

	"See, the truth of the matter, and it's very well supported by declassified documents and other
	evidence, is that military spending is our method of industrial management - it's our way of
	keeping the economy profitable for business."
	--p.39, Chapter Two

	"Okay, for anybody that gets amused at these things, the Republicans and the Democrats had
	shifted their traditional positions 180 degrees; historically, the Democrats have been the party
	of Keynesian growth, and the Republicans have been the party of fiscal conservatism.  But they
	shifted totally - and what's interestingis, nobody even noticed this, I never even saw a single
	comment on it in the press.  Well, that tells you something: what it tells you is, there are
	different sectors of the business community in the country, and they sometimes have slightly
	different tactical judgements about the way to deal with current problems.
	--p.57, Chapter Two

	"The trouble is, that's the way that capitalism works.  The nature of the system is that it's
	supposed to be driven by greed; no one's supposed to be concerned for anybody else, nobody's
	supposed to worry about the common good - those are not things that are supposed to motivate
	you, that's the principle of the system.  The theory is that private vices lead to public
	benefits - that's what they teach you in economics departments.  It's all total bullshit,
	of course, but that's what they teach you.  And as long as the system works that way, yeah,
	it's going to self-destruct."
	--p.62, Chapter Two

		Well, yes, it seems easy to dismiss as "total bullshit" the notion that private vices
		lead to public virtues.  Certainly in the context of any confucian interpretation, it is
		unthinkable ... but it's not like it defies the laws of physics.  It's _possible_ that
		private vices can, in some cases, lead to public virtue.

		I suspect that even if we do not live in a state of capitalism, even if we do not encourage
		private vice and people take it upon themselves to act with thought towards each other ...
		it would still be useful, and further, even virtuous and responsible to act _as if_ we lived
		in a hostile system of capitalism.  Our individual survival requires eternal vigilance, and
		a flexibility in response to changing climates.

	"But the point is, the Japanese-style development model works - in fact, it's how every country in
	the world that's developed has done it: by imposing high levels of protectionism, and by extricating
	its economy from free-market discipline.  And that's precisely what the Western powers have been
	preventing the rest of the Third World from doing, right up to this moment."
	--p.66, Chapter Two

	"I mean, capitalism is fine for the Third World - we love them to be inefficient.  But we're not
	going to accept it.  And what's more, this has been true since the beginnings of the industrial
	revolution: there is not a single economy in history that developed without extensive state
	intervention, like high protectionist tariffs and subsidies and so on.  In fact, all the things
	we prevent the Third World from doing have been the prerequisites for development everywhere else -
	I think that's without exception."
	--p.73, Chapter Three

	"See, capitalism is not fundamentally racist - it can exploit racism for its purposes, but racism
	isn't built into it.  Capitalism basically wants people to be interchangeable cogs, and differences
	among them, such as on the basis of race, usually are not functional.  I mean, they may be functional
	for a period, like if you want a super-exploited workforce or something, but those situations are
	kind of anamolous.  Over the long term, you can expect capitalism to be anti-racist - just because
	it's anti-human.  And race is in fact a human characteristic - there's no reason why it should be a
	negative characteristic, but it is a human characteristic.  So therefore identifications based on
	race interfere with the basic ideal that people should be available just as consumers and producers,
	interchangeable cogs who will purchase all of the junk that's produced - that's their ultimate
	function, and any other properties they might have are kind of irrelevant, and usually a nuisance."
	--p.89, Chapter Three

	"See, libertarian structures are not very resilient - they can easily be wiped out by violence,
	whereas tough authoritarian structures can often survive that violence; in fact, one of the effects
	of violence is to magnify the power of authoritarian groups."
	--p.90, Chapter Three

*	"You don't 'rally to the leader' in a democracy - you do whatever you feel like doing."
	--p.107, Chapter Four

	"But in this essay Orwell said, look, this book is obviously about Stalinist Russia, however
	it's not all that different in England.  And then he described how things worked in England.  He
	said: in England there isn't any commissar around who beats you over the head if you say the
	wrong thing. but nevertheless the results are not all that different."
	--p.111, Chapter Four

	"It's very hard to live with cognitive dissonance: only a real cynic can believe one thing and
	say another.  So whether it's a totalitarian system or a free system, the people who are most
	useful to the system of power are the ones who actually believe what they say, and they're the
	ones who will typically make it through."
	--p.112, Chapter Four

	"So in terms of all the horrifying atrocities the Nixon government carried out, Watergate isn't
	even worth laughing about.  It was a triviality.  Watergate is a very clear example of what
	happens to servants when they forget their role and go after the people who own the place:
	they are very quickly put back into their box, and somebody else takes over."
	--p.120, Chapter Four

	"Remember that the media have two basic functions.  One is to indoctrinate the elites, to make
	sure they have the right idea and know how to serve power.  In fact, typically the elites are
	the most indoctrinated segment of a society, because they are the ones who are exposed to the
	most propoganda and actually take part in the decision-making process.  For them you have the
	New York Times, and the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and so on.  But there's
	also a mass media, whose main function is just to get rid of the rest of the population - to
	marginalize and eliminate them, so they don't interfere with decision-making.  And the press
	that's designed for that purpose isn't the New York Times and the Washington Post, it's
	sitcoms on television, and the National Enquirer, and sex and violence, and babies with three
	heads, and football, all that kind of stuff."
	--p.121, Chapter Four

	"But for another thing, there's no law of nature which says that control over capital has to
	be in a few hands - that's like saying that political power has to be in a few hands.  Why?
	There wasn't a law that said that the king and the nobles had to run everything, and there isn't
	a law that says that corporate owners and managers have to run everything either.  These are
	social arrangements.  They developed historically, they can be changed historically."
	--p.123, Chapter Four

		Perhaps there is no such law that dictates control over capital _must_ be in a few
		hands, but there is a law that says it _most likely will be_, and that is the natural
		phenomenon of inequality among all peoples and all groups.  We are most certainly not
		created equally, and time and environment magnifies our inequality.

(gr)	"See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence."
	--p.124, Chapter Four

	"Anybody who wants to be President, you should right away say, 'I don't want to hear that guy
	anymore'."
	--p.138, Chapter Four

	"In fact, that's exactly what the U.S. was worried about in the Cold War in the first place, if
	you want to know the truth - that soviet economic development just looked too good to poor Third
	World countries, it was a model they wanted to follow."
	--p.142, Chapter Five

	"However, the country certainly was succeeding in terms that are meaningful to other populations
	in the region - I mean, just compare Cuba with Haiti or the Dominican Republic right next door,
	or with any other place in Latin America which the United States has controlled: the difference
	is obvious, and that's exactly what the United States has always been concerned about."
	--p.149, Chapter Five

	"The real crime of Cuba was the successes, in terms of things like health care and feeding people,
	and the general threat of a 'demonstration effect' that follows from that - that is, the threat
	that people in other countries might try to do the same things."
	--p.149, Chapter Five

	"Well, states are not moral agents; they are vehicles of power, which operate in the interests of
	the particular internal power structures of their societies."
	--p.163, Chapter Five

	"And we ought to be aware of those mistakes and learn from them: if you're getting accepted in
	elite circles, chances are very strong that you're doing something wrong - I mean, for very
	simple reasons.  Why should they have any respect for people who are trying to undermine their
	power?  It doesn't make any sense."
	--p.186, Chapter Six

(gr)	"But when you begin to encroach on power, you may find that it's necessary to defend your rights -
	and defense of your rights sometimes does require violence, then either you use it or you don't,
	depending on your moral values."
	--p.193, Chapter Six

	"But you see, 'libertarian' has a special meaning in the United States.  The United States is off
	the spectrum of the main tradition in this respect: what's called 'libertarianism' here is
	unbridled capitalism.  Now, that's always been opposed in the European libertarian tradition,
	where every anarchist has been a socialist - because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism,
	you have all kinds of authority: you have extreme authority."	
	--p.200, Chapter Six

	"Instead, the basic principle I would like to see communicated to people is the idea that every form of
	authority and domination and hierarchy, every authoritarian structure, has to prove that it's justified
	- it has no prior justification."
	--p.201, Chapter Six

	"... no institution is going to help people undermine it ..."
	--p.205, Chapter Six

	"No, not really - and for a very simple reason, actually: if you look at me, you'll see what it is.
	I'm white, I'm privileged, and that means I'm basically immune from punishment by power.  I mean, I don't
	want to say that it's a hundred percent immunity - but the fact of the matter is that these two things mean
	that you can buy a lot of freedom.

	Look, there isn't any true capitalist society in the world, if couldn't survive for ten minutes, but there
	are variations on capitalism, and the U.S. is towards the capitalist end of the world spectrum - not very far
	towards it, I should say, but towards it at least in values.  And if you had a truly capitalist society,
	everything would be a commodity, including freedom: there would be as much of it as you can buy.  Well, since
	the U.S. is towards that end of the spectrum, it means there's an awful lot of freedom around if you can
	afford it.  So, if you're a black organizer in the ghetto, you don't have much of it, and you're in trouble -
	they can send the Chicago police in to murder you, like they did with Fred Hampton [a Black Panther
	assassinated by the F.B.I. in 1969].  But if you're a white professional like me, you can buy a lot of
	freedom."
	--p.210, Chapter Six

	"So when someone comes along claiming a scientific basis for some social policy or anything else having
	to do with human beings, I'd be very skeptical if I were you - because the knowledge just isn't there
	right now, and may never be, either."
	--p.221, Chapter Six

		He means true, logically consistent basic laws of the physical world ...

	"In fact, even half a century later, Alexis de Tocqueville [French politician and writer] pointed out
	that you can have systems in which 'the art advances and the artisan recedes', but that's inhuman -
	because what you're really interested in is the artisan, you're interested in people, and for people to
	have the opportunity to live full and rewarding lives they have to be in control of what they do, even if
	that happens to be economically less efficient."
	--p.222, Chapter Six

	"Yeah, in my opinion the heart of the problem is Marxism-Leninism itself - the very idea that a 'vanguard
	party' can, or has any right to, or has any capacity to lead the stupid masses towards some future they're
	too dumb to understand for themselves.  I think what it's going to lead them towards is 'I rule you
	with a whip'.  Institutions of domination have a nice way of reproducing themselves - I think that's kind of
	like an obvious sociological truism."
	--p.226, Chapter Seven

*	"You only learn things and learn how to think if there's some purpose for learning, some motivation that's
	coming out of you somehow.  In fact, all of the methodology in education isn't really much more than that -
	getting students to want to learn.  Once they want to learn, they'll do it."
	--p.234, Chapter Seven

	"Actually the most dramatic example of these 'market distortions' that I can think of - which I suspect
	is never even taught in economics courses - concerns the reason why the United States had an industrial
	revolution in the first place.  Remember, the industrial revolution was fueled by textiles, meaning one
	commodity: cotton.  And cotton was cheap, that was crucially important.  Well, why was cotton cheap ?
	Was it because of market forces ?  No.  Cotton was cheap because they exterminated the native population
	here and brought in slaves - that's why cotton was cheap.  Genocide and slavery: try to imagine a more
	severe market distortion than that."
	--p.257, Chapter Seven

		What is the line between "real" market forces and market distortions ?  Aren't the distortions defined
		only in relation to the economic system they are contained in ?  If the economic system is loosely
		defined, or is large enough in scope to encompass violent and horrific actions, then these actions
		may indeed have represented market forces.

		Is it possible to have a truly, totally free market if you do not have the possibility of _literal_ slavery ?

(egr)	"See, in the Air Force and the Navy (where most of this took place), nobody cares about costs - because the
	taxpayer's paying, so the development can be as expensive and inefficient as you like.  And in that way, they
	were able to develop automation to the point where it could then be used to drive people out of work and make
	profits for corporations.  For instance, take the history of automated numerical control of metal-cutting
	machines [i.e. translation of part specifications into mathematical information that can be fed into machines
	without the need for skilled machinists].  That was developed through the Air Force, it went on for decades,
	and finally it got efficient enough so that it could be handed over to the corporations and they could then
	throw out their workers.  But it didn't happen through market forces, not at all - it was the result of massive
	state intervention."
	--p.259, Chapter Seven

*	"And that's based on a very simple ethical principle - namely, that the ethical value of one's actions depends
	on their anticipated consequences for human beings:  I think that's kind of like a fundamental moral truism."
	--p.286, Chapter Eight

*	"Again, it's a very simple ethical point: you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions,
	you're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions."
	--p.287, Chapter Eight

	"Remember, everyone in the world is scared shitless of us: we're a brutal terrorist power of enormous
	strength, and if you get in our way, you're in trouble.  Nobody steps on Uncle Sam's toes.  So when the
	United States Congress makes a symbolic gesture banning military-training aid or banning small arms sales,
	the Indonesian generals hear it, even if they can get whatever they want from some other country, or even
	from Bill Clinton in the end."
	--p.298, Chapter Eight

*(gr)	"This point has been understood forever, actually.  So if you go back to James Madison, who framed a lot of
	the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and so on, he pointed out that, as he put it, a 'parchment barrier'
	will never stand in the way of oppression - meaning, writing something down on paper is totally worthless
	by itself: if you fight for it, you can make it real, otherwise you'll just have really nice things on paper."
	--p.334, Chapter Nine

	"Well, that's again the same interaction: there are already laws on the books that make hiring scabs illegal,
	but laws only get enforced if the people are willing to fight for them, otherwise they don't get enforced."
	--p.341, Chapter Nine

(gr)	"That's the basic story, though:  these laws were made by a big power-play, completely outside of popular
	control.  Okay, as usual, the guys with the guns are the ones that decide what the law is."
	--p.348, Chapter Nine

	"The World Bank has its own term for the phenomenon: they call it 'technocratic insulation'.  So if you read
	World Bank studies, they talk about the importance of having 'technocratic insulation' - meaning a bunch of
	technocrats, who are essentially employees of the big transnational corporations, have to be working somewhere
	in 'insulation' from the public to design all the policies, because if the public ever gets involved in the
	process they may have bad ideas, like wanting the kind of economic growth that does things for people instead
	of profits, all sorts of stupid stuff like that.  So therefore what you want to have is insulated technocrats -
	and once they're insulated enough, then you can have all the 'democracy' you like, since it's not going to make
	any difference."
	--p.381, Chapter Ten

	"... because part of the whole capitalist ethic is that the only thing that matters is how much money you
	make tomorrow: that's the crucial value of the system, profit for tomorrow.  Not just profit, but the bottom
	line has to look good tomorrow.  And the result is that planning for the future, and any kind of regulatory
	apparatus that would sustain the environment for the long-term, becomes impossible - and that means the planet
	is going to go down the tubes very fast."
	--p.386, Chapter Ten

	"In fact, it's institutionalized: it's not that these people are stupid, it's that to the extent that you
	have a competitive system based on private control over resources, you are forced to maximize short-term gain."
	--p.391, Chapter Ten

*	"I mean, to talk about 'corporate greed' is like talking about 'military weapons' or something like that -
	there is just no other possibility.  A corporation is something that is trying to maximize power and profit:
	that's what it is.  There is no 'phenomenon' of corporate greed, and we shouldn't mislead people into
	thinking there is.  It's like talking about 'robber's greed' or something like that - it's not a meaningful
	thing, it's misleading.  A corporation's purpose is to maximize profit and market share and return to
	investors, and all that kind of stuff, and if its officers don't pursue that goal, for one thing they
	are legally liable for not pursuing it."
	--p.391, Chapter Ten

		And this is what all tools should be - simple and purpose driven, and following expected courses
		of action.  If we have corporations at all, and that is not obvious ... but if we do, this is
		how they should be constructed and how they should behave.

	"Look, I really don't know, but I think we can predict one thing with fair certainty: if the U.S. public
	remains marginalized, there isn't going to be much history left to worry about.  We're not living in the
	eighteenth century anymore.  The problems may be sort of similar, but they're quite different in scale, and the
	problems now have to do with human survival.  So if the general population in the most powerful country
	in the world remains marginalized, we aren't going to have to worry very much about history, because there
	isn't going to be any.  And that's not very far away at this point."
	--p.400, Chapter Ten


2004-08
Middle East Illusions
Noam Chomsky

	"Everyone seeks peace.  The question is: on what terms?"
	--p.ix, Preface

	"Will the major oil companies be able to amass sufficient profits in the final period of petroleum-based
	energy to ensure their domination of the next phase (coal, nuclear energy) ?"
	--p.5, Introduction

	"Sooner or later, it can be expected that the balance of International forces and the array of chance
	events will be such that Israel will be destroyed, and with it, probably much of the surrounding world."
	--p.9, Introduction

	"The Yishuv was thus faced with a profound, never resolved contradiction.  The most advanced socialist
	forms in existence, the germs of a just and egalitarian society, were constructed on land purchased by
	the Jewish National Fund and from which arabs were excluded in principle, lands that were in many
	instances purchased from absentee landlords with little regard for the peasants who lived and worked on
	them."
	--p.13, Introduction

	"It is natural to think that security can be achieved only through strength and through the use of
	force against a threatening opponent.  Perhaps so.  But those who adopt this course must at least
	be clear about the likely dynamics of the process to which they are contributing:  occupation,
	resistance, repression, more resistance, more repression, erosion of democracy, internal quandaries
	and demoralization, further polarization and extremism on both sides, and ultimately - one shrinks
	from the obvious conclusions.  It is not evident that security is to be achieved through the use
	of force."
	--p.50, Nationalism and Conflict in Palestine

		It is not evident, that is, unless you use ultimate force and successfully commit
		genocide.  White settlers did achieve ultimate security against Tasmanians, for
		instance.

	"The long-standing position of the left wing of the Kibbutz movement was "that the kibbutz was not
	simply a form of settlement but a way of life, the raison d'etre of Zionism."
	--p.62, Nationalism and Conflict in Palestine

	"The United States has a great need for an international enemy so that the population can be effectively
	mobilized, as in the past quarter-century, to support the use of American power throughout the world
	and the development of a form of highly militarized, highly centralized state capitalism at home."
	--p.75, A Radical Perspective

*	"I note with interest that a recent statement of the Democratic Front (PDFLP) quotes approvingly the
	following statement attributed to Lenin:  'the victorious proletariat cannot impose any `happiness` on
	any foreign people without bringing to an end its own victory.'  The observation is correct.  A society
	must carry out its own revolution, achieve its own 'happiness.'  Revolutionary struggles cannot be exported.
	They must be indigenous."
	--p.79, A Radical Perspective

*	"If a state is Jewish in certain respects, then in these respects it is not democratic."
	--p.101, Reflections on a National Conflict

	"On the one hand, the Jewish settlement (Yishuv) in Palestine, later Israel, developed the most advanced
	democratic socialist institutions that exist anywhere, institutions that might be described - without
	exaggeration, in my opinion - as a model in microcosm for decent human survival."
	--p.109, Reflections on a National Conflict

	"The first postwar task was domestic.  Articulating a broad consensus, the business press pointed out
	that advanced industry 'cannot live without one kind or another of governmental support.'  It was
	quickly realized that the Pentagon system would be the best device to socialize cost and risk while
	privatizing power and profit, in part because it is easy to disguise 'subsidy' as 'security', as the
	Truman administration observed."
	--p.162, The "Peace Process" in US Global Strategy

	"The immediate response to the final end of the Cold War is instructive.  Policies continued much as
	before, but with new pretexts and fewer constraints, effects soon to be seen in the Middle East as well."
	--p.166, The "Peace Process" in US Global Strategy

	"In reality, the 'threats to our interest' had always been indigenous nationalism, a fact recognized
	internally, and sometimes even publicly."
	--p.167, The "Peace Process" in US Global Strategy

	"'Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining
	table,' he (then Secretary of State George Schultz) declared, condemning those who advocate 'utopian,
	legalistic means like the United Nations and the World Court, while ignoring the power element of the
	equation.'  The United States was exercising 'the power element of the equation' with mercenary forces
	based in Honduras, where John Negroponte was in charge, while blocking efforts by the World Court and Latin
	American nations to pursue 'utopian legalistic means.'"
	--p.236, A Changed World ?  Terrorism Reconsidered

	"None of these examples enter the canon of international terrorism, however, because of a crucial condition:
	terrorism is terrorism targeting us, excluding what we do to them.  That is standard practice, probably a
	historic universal."
	--p.238, A Changed World ?  Terrorism Reconsidered

	"The stance reflects a traditional principle of world order: the powerful must establish that they defer
	to no authority."
	--p.239, A Changed World ?  Terrorism Reconsidered


2004-10
The Paradox of Choice
Barry Schwartz

	"Which is no small matter.  The United States was founded on a commitment to individual freedom and autonomy,
	with freedom of choice as a core value.  And yet it is my contention that we do ourselves no favor when we
	equate liberty too directly with choice, as if we necessarily increase freedom by increasing the number
	of options available."
	--p.4, Prologue

	"But what I think is most important is that people won't ignore alternative if they don't realize that too
	many alternatives can create a problem.  And our culture sanctifies freedom of choice so profoundly that the
	benefits of infinite options seem self-evident.  When experiencing dissatisfaction or hassle on a shopping
	trip, consumers are likely to blame it on something else - surly salespeople, traffic jams, high prices, items
	out of stock - anything but the overwhelming array of options.
	--p.21, Let's Go Shopping

	"Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues have shown that what we remember about the
	pleasurable qualities of our past experiences is almost entirely determined by two things:  how the experiences
	felt when they were at their peak (best or worst), and how they felt when they ended.
	--p.49, Deciding and Choosing

	"The endowment effect helps explain why companies can afford to offer money-back guarantees on their products.
	Once people own them, the products are worth more to their owners than the mere cash value, because giving up
	the products would entail a loss.  Most interestingly, people seem to be utterly unaware that the endowment
	effect is operating, even as it distorts their judgement."
	--p.71, Deciding and Choosing

	"But remember, I'm not saying that satisficers do not have standards.  Satisficers may have very high
	standards.  It's just that they allow themselves to be satisfied once experiences meet those standards."
	--p.89, When Only the Best Will Do

	"(Fred) Hirsh (economist) suggested that the more affluent a society becomes, and the more basic material needs
	are met, the more people care about goods that are inherently scarce.  And if you're in competition for inherently
	scarce goods, "good enough" is never good enough; only the best - only maximization - will do."
	--p.95, When Only the Best Will Do

	"So it is not an exaggeration to say that our most fundamental sense of well-being crucially depends on our
	having the ability to exert control over our environment and recognizing that we do."
	--p.103, Choice and Happiness

		This remind me of some interpretations I have had of Buddhism, and the ability to cultivate an
		inner sense of control over an inner environment.  Does this not allow us to maintain sanity and
		well being in the presence of uncontrollable external factors ?  Can sanity and well being be
		maintained in the _complete absence_ of external control if an internal, controlled world is
		created ?  Is this how prisoners survive torture, in which all control over external events is
		removed as a matter of course ?

	"But if money doesn't do it for people, what does ?  What seems to be the most important factor in providing
	happiness is close social relations.  People who are married, who have good friends, and who are close to their
	families are happier than those who are not.  People who participate in religious communities are happier than
	those who do not."
	--p.107, Choice and Happiness

	"According to standard economic assumptions, the only opportunity costs that should figure into a decision
	are the ones associated with the next-best alternative."
	--p.121, Missed Opportunities

	"We seem to do our best thinking when we're feeling good."
	--p.132, Missed Opportunities

	"When we can change our minds, apparently we do less psycholigical work to justify the decision we've made,
	reinforcing the chosen alternative and disparaging the rejected ones."
	--p.145, Missed Opportunities

		Theoretically, good systems of thought and rules for behavior give people frameworks for making
		decisions, but do not need to spell out individual, specific rules.  "Buddhahood, Enlightenment,
		cannot be communicated, but only the way to enlightenment." --Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a
		Thousand Faces.  However, this book gives credence to the notion of establishing
		specific rules and nitty gritty regulations for life, a la the Talmud, because it reduces the
		problems associated with too much choice.

	"From the perspective of a model of decision making that is future oriented, being sensitive to sunk costs
	is a mistake."
	--p.160, "If only ...": The Problem of Regret

		Forcing a person to develop a framework of second order choices (as they are described in this book)
		would be an interesting rite of passage in a society.  Setting out these boundaries for ones self
		in some ordered fashion would do much to eliminate the choice anxiety described.


2004-12
My Antonia
Willa Catcher

	"At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.  When it comes to one, it
	comes as naturally as sleep."
	--p.14, Chapter II

	"I've come strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good thing to have, no matter what you
	don't have."
	--p.48, Chapter X

	"On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under
	the ice."
	--p.116, Book II, Chapter VII

	"If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry."
	--p.173, Book III Chapter II

	"She was satisfied with her success, but not elated.  She was like someone in whom the faculty of becoming
	interested was worn out."
	--p.194, Book IV, Chapter I

	"She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true."
	--p.226, Book V, Chapter I
	
	"It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight.  She was a rich mine of life, like the founders
	of early races."
	--p.227, Book V, Chapter I


2005-01
Dreamer of Dune
Brian Herbert

	"He would watch what people were doing, not what they were saying."
	--p.39, Chapter 3

	"Of course there was an element of philosophical and moral truth in his concept, that the words 'try' and
	'can't' were weak, indicating a person was not strong of character and was incapable of taking responsibility
	for his own actions.  It was an important lesson of life, one I think of often to this day."
	--p.130, Chapter 10

	"This leader would be charismatic, capable of inspiring intense loyalty among his people.  A power structure
	would develop around him."
	--p.141, Chapter 11

	"In Dune and Dune Messiah he was cautioning against pride and excessive confidence, the hubris of greek tragedies
	that led to the great fall.  But it was societal scale hubris he was warning against ... the potential demise of
	an entire society."
	--p.191, Chapter 14

	"From this cup I drank as deeply as any man should do, and was sated with it."
	--p.327, Chapter 28 (quote from T.E. Lawrence)

	"He said it was a sharing experience, and that one party should be careful not to make all of the decisions,
	or the mate would stop growing and become dull in comparison."
	--p.363, Chapter 31 (speaking of marriage)

	" ... it is well to remember that more than half the Earth's human population still uses astrology as a guide
	in the making of decisions.  There is a possibility that a kernel of truth remains at the core of this ancient
	belief.  We are Earth creatures.  It would be remarkable if the rhythms that influence this planet where we
	eveolved produced no effects on our flesh comparable to the influences upon our religions and philosophies.
	When we look at the heavens, we look at a cosmic clock that has marked every evolutionary development upon this
	mundane surface.  That clock is still ticking ..."
	--p.523, Chapter 45


2005-01
The Anti Chomsky Reader
Peter Collier and David Horowitz

	"As we have seen, Chomsky boasts that he will defend the freedom of expression of anyone, anytime, presumably
	regarding anything, and that he doesn't need to see the disputed material in order to defend its right to be heard
	and published."

2005-05
The Weight of All Things
Sandra Benitez

	"'In this changing reality,' Dolores said, 'we do what we must.  A few of us must sacrifice for the good of the rest.'
	--p.53, Chapter 10

	"Nicolas shrugged.  'I was either the army or the guerillas.  In the end, they're all the same.'
	--p.192, Chapter 30

2005-06
Love in a Fearful Land: A Guatemalan Story
Henri J.M. Nouwen

2005-09
The Trial
Franz Kafka

	"One did not need to have a timid and fearful nature to be easily persuaded that the completion of this plea was a
	sheer impossibility.  Not because of laziness or obstructive malice, which could only hinder Dr. Huld, but because
	to meet an unknown accusation, not to mention other possible charges arising out of it, the whole of one's life
	would have to be recalled to mind, down to the smallest actions and accidents, clearly formulated and examined
	from every angle.  And besides, how dreary such a task would be!  It would do well enough, perhaps, as an occupation
	for one's second childhood in years of retirement, when the long days needed filling up."
	--p.128, Chapter 7

	"When I stood alone I did nothing at all, yet it hardly bothered me; after acquiring a lawyer, on the other hand, I
	felt that the stage was set for something to happen, I waited with unceasing and growing expectancy for your
	intervention, and you did nothing whatever."
	--p.186, Chapter 8

	"So the lawyer's methods, to which K. fortunately had not been long enough exposed, amounted to this: that the client
	finally forgot the whole world and lived only in hope of toiling along this false path until the end of his case should
	come in sight.  The client ceased to be a client and became the lawyer's dog."
	--p.193, Chapter 8

	"'You cast about too much for outside help,' said the priest disapprovingly, 'especially from women.  Don't you see that
	it isn't t