Quote
"Nothing should be given to a man that does not belong to him, and nothing should be taken from him to which he is entitled."

— Bernal Díaz del Castillo, “The Memoirs of the Conquistador: Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain”

February 19, 2013
2 notes
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vicemag: Koch: I wanted to get rid of New York’s graffiti problem, but I wasn’t in charge of the subways, the MTA was. I called the MTA into City Hall and told them they had to get rid of the graffiti. I presented them with a plan to do it: Kids were spray-painting train cars in the yards at night because there weren’t any fences. I told them, just put up a fence and put some dogs inside. They got scared, worried that the dogs would bite people, so I said, “OK, if you don’t want any chance of dogs biting people, get wolves.” That’s the problem with the new Liam Neeson movie, The Grey. There’s no recorded case of a wild wolf ever having bitten or attacked a single human being in North America. I don’t believe that.Well, it’s true. The next day Clyde Haberman of the New York Times came to me and told me he’d checked my statement and that there are records of domesticated wolves biting humans. I said, “I know that! I’m not talking about a domesticated wolf. I’m talking about wild wolves. Let’s have wild wolves protect the trains. If the wild wolves become tame, replace them with more wild ones.” So you recommended that the MTA fight graffiti with wild wolves?Yes.  —Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch has died at 88. We spoke with him in 2012. A taste of old New York. My favorite Koch quote: “Have you ever lived in the suburbs? It’s sterile. It’s nothing. It’s wasting your life, and people do not wish to waste their lives once they’ve seen New York! … This rural American thing — I’m telling you, it’s a joke.”

vicemag:

Koch: I wanted to get rid of New York’s graffiti problem, but I wasn’t in charge of the subways, the MTA was. I called the MTA into City Hall and told them they had to get rid of the graffiti. I presented them with a plan to do it: Kids were spray-painting train cars in the yards at night because there weren’t any fences. I told them, just put up a fence and put some dogs inside. They got scared, worried that the dogs would bite people, so I said, “OK, if you don’t want any chance of dogs biting people, get wolves.” That’s the problem with the new Liam Neeson movie, The Grey. There’s no recorded case of a wild wolf ever having bitten or attacked a single human being in North America.

I don’t believe that.
Well, it’s true. The next day Clyde Haberman of the New York Times came to me and told me he’d checked my statement and that there are records of domesticated wolves biting humans. I said, “I know that! I’m not talking about a domesticated wolf. I’m talking about wild wolves. Let’s have wild wolves protect the trains. If the wild wolves become tame, replace them with more wild ones.”

So you recommended that the MTA fight graffiti with wild wolves?
Yes. 

—Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch has died at 88. We spoke with him in 2012.

A taste of old New York. My favorite Koch quote: “Have you ever lived in the suburbs? It’s sterile. It’s nothing. It’s wasting your life, and people do not wish to waste their lives once they’ve seen New York! … This rural American thing — I’m telling you, it’s a joke.”

(via merlin)

February 02, 2013
898 notes
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npr: explore-blog: The 113th Congress, by the numbers (ᔥ The Atlantic) The more you know. -heidi

npr:

explore-blog:

The 113th Congress, by the numbers

(ᔥ The Atlantic)

The more you know. -heidi

(Source: )

January 12, 2013
1,101 notes
Quote
"To decide that I love my mother by staying beside her, and to play a comedy the upshot of which is that I do so – these are nearly the same thing. In other words, feeling is formed by the deeds that one does; therefore I cannot consult it as a guide to action. And that is to say that I can neither seek within myself for an authentic impulse to action, nor can I expect, from some ethic, formulae that will enable me to act."

— Jean-Paul Sartré, “Existentialism is a Humanism”

January 12, 2013
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merlin: One Foot Tsunami: Limited-Time Offer There, the USPS has opted to cross off the word “Forever” for security purposes. That leads to a disturbing bit of incongruity with their “Four Flags” set… Great find, Paul.

merlin:

One Foot Tsunami: Limited-Time Offer

There, the USPS has opted to cross off the word “Forever” for security purposes. That leads to a disturbing bit of incongruity with their “Four Flags” set…

Great find, Paul.

November 21, 2012
659 notes
Photoset

ihatepeacocks:

Obama is sending Hillary Clinton to Israel to help resolve the conflict in Gaza.

(via merlin)

November 21, 2012
4,512 notes
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New York is getting ready. (Taken with Instagram)

New York is getting ready. (Taken with Instagram)

October 01, 2012
Quote
"Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both."

— John Stuart Mill, “What Utilitarianism Is”

August 30, 2012
Quote
"This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or primarily, because of the effect on the student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in general. Thus utility does not belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it. It is in these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must be primarily sought."

— Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

August 09, 2012
Quote
"He [Robert McNamara] was classically a corporate man; had it been a contest between the United States and Hanoi as to which side could produce the most goods for the peasants of South Vietnam, clearly we would have won… This man, whose only real experience had been in dealing with the second largest automotive empire in the world, producing huge Western vehicles, was the last man to understand and measure the problems of a people looking for their political freedom"

— David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest

November 25, 2011

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