I heard this on today’s BBC Lunchtime News from Rt Hon. Keith Vaz MP:
There is an economic tsunami coming over the Atlantic.
An interestingly picturesque, if apposite, way of expressing the current economic difficulties.
Category Archives: quotes
Democracy in Action
This is today’s Quotation of the Day entry:
If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.
There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!
[George W Bush, during a 2004 videoconference with national security and military officials. Quoted in Lt Gen Ricardo S Sanchez’s memoir, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story an at www.mydd.com/story/2008/6/2/114955/1042]
I was going to say this is scary, but it isn’t; it is obscene (and that’s a word I don’t often use). What price democracy and Christian tolerance now? Anyone still like to argue that Dubya isn’t dangerous and bigoted?
Thought for the Day
Wu-Wei is the Taoist expression for the power of positive not-doing. It is the action in non-action, the knowing in not-knowing, the something in nothing, the doing in not-doing. Wu-Wei is following the way of the water, the way of the wind. It is the not absence of action, but it is the absence of trying. Wind is never still, but it has no intention. Water ever seeks its own level, but not on purpose.
[from www.foolquest.com/zen.htm]
Zen Mischievous Moments #142
Connioseurs of 1970s UK police soap operas will remember the refrain “Let’s be ’avin’ you” when an arrest was about to be made. Our attention has been drawn to an example not of nominative determinism, but of locational determinism – the existence of a police facility on Letsby Avenue in the Yorkshire town of Sheffield (it’s right next to Sheffiled City Ariport). Sadly there is as yet no news of an “Onyer Way” or “Evenin Hall” in the vicinity.
[HT Feedback @ New Scientist]
Zen Mischievous Moments #141
The “Feedback” column this week’s New Scientist contains this item …
Thanks to Terence Dunmore for alerting us to a report in the 11 June issue of Professional Engineering about the UK’s new Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations (WEEE regulations). It warns readers: “If you are a producer of WEEE, you must make sure it is disposed of in an environmentally sound manner, including the treatment, reuse, recovery and recycling of components where appropriate.”
Dunmore is puzzled. “Isn’t the local sewage department already doing just that?” he asks.
Quote: Life
Life must be understood backwards … but it must be lived forward.
[Soren Keirkegaard]
Quote: Reality
Today’s Quotation of the Day is quite brilliant. It is Jon Stewart commenting on George W Bush:
He treats reality like it’s out to get him.
The same could have been said of my father; everything was a plot against him. Sad.
Quote: Einstein on God
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless childish.
[Albert Einstein; Letter to Eric Gutkind, 1954]
Insult of the Week
Dixon of Dock Green, in a comment over on Nanny Knows Best, perpetrates a wonderfully insulting description of the state of government in this country:
The marriage of government and celebrity, whereby various jobbing actors, minstrels and cook-boys seek to exert influence over policy…
(My emphasis.)
Brilliant!
Quote: Spring
Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
[The Zenrin]