• • "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy
  • "Wikipedia is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate." - paraphrased from Douglas Adams in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
  • To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
  • "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." - Howard Aiken
  • "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James Nicoll
  • "People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events." - T. S. Eliot
  • "Sources are not required to be neutral. Only Wikipedia editors are." - WhatamIdoing

• • "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book” - Groucho Marx [10]
  • "The media’s group embrace of Jenner’s transition should be seen for what it is — not a revolutionary step toward minority rights but a money grab for ads, ratings, sales and buzz in a culture of provocation and greed without ethics or conscience." Kathleen Parker

• • "No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session." - attributed to Mark Twain
  • "In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." -Voltaire
  • "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." -Winston Churchill
  • "..In Italy for 30 years, under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!" - Graham Greene in The Third Man (User:Rklear says that Greene added it under instruction from Orson Welles)
  • "..democracy without identity invites war,
  • identity without democracy guarantees it." - Natan Sharansky
  • "..democracy put man in place of God.
  • socialism put the body before the soul." - Robert Leckie, The Wars of America
  • "the only pauses in the history of human conflict had been pauses not for moderation but excess, pauses for the world to redivide itself, for thugs and victims to find each other..." - John LeCarre in The Secret Pilgrim
  • Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies. - Groucho Marx
  • "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." — H.L. Mencken
  • Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born." - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name. - Henry Kissinger
  • "the state incurs debts for politics, war, and other higher causes and ‘progress’. . . . The assumption is that the future will honor this relationship in perpetuity. The state has learned from the merchants and industrialists how to exploit credit; it defies the nation ever to let it go into bankruptcy. Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.” - Jacob Burckhardt
  • Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions. — George F. Will
  • In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work. (attributed to Murphy's Law)
  • A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns." - attributed to Vito Corleone
  • "A trillion here, a trillion there. After a while, you're talking about real money." -paraphrased from saying attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen

• • "Reality is merely an illusion..." - Albert Einstein
  • "[the universe is] not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think." - Niels Bohr
  • "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." - Albert Einstein [11]
  • "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." — Albert Einstein
  • "...big bang, that first great quantum leap was not to the lowest energy level, the ground state. It stopped higher up, like an electron falling into one of the outer possible orbits around a nucleus..." "the state can change. Collapse, fall down. Spontaneously, randomly, at any time, any point..!" ("The past itself annulled, and we not only cease to be, we never were.") - Stefano Olivares, physicist
  • "The rules that describe nature seem to be mathematical. This is not result of the fact that observation is the judge, and it is not a characteristic necessity of science that it be mathematical. It just turns out that you can state mathematical laws, in physics at least, which work to make powerful predictions. Why nature is mathematical is, again, a mystery." - Richard Feynman in The Meaning of It All
  • "Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful." — Georg Lichtenberg
  • The one-electron universe hypothesis postulates that there exists only a single electron in the universe, propagating through space and time in such a way as to appear in many places simultaneously. John Archibald Wheeler as related by Richard Feynman
  • "I can prove almost nothing I believe in.." [including the roundness of the earth, quarks, and the Big Bang]. - Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  • "All that is not eternal, is eternally out of date." -CS Lewis
  • The importance of String Theory
  • The importance of Nothing
  • People are made of nothing?
  • We don't know much about Dark matter which comprises 83% of the matter in the universe. In 2012, we found we knew less when we found that dark matter stuck together during a collision of two galaxies. It wasn't supposed to do that.[12]
    • We know even less about dark energy which comprises 73% of the mass-energy of the universe.
  • Then there is the Many-worlds interpretation which has the world branching at each "event." There are a lot of events.
  • Information cannot exceed the speed of light, except for Quantum entanglement. In other words, nothing exceeds the speed of light, except when it does.

• Monotremes oviparous, ovum meroblastic
• ontology recapitulates phylogeny

• • "Science asks 'how' or 'what' questions, while theology seeks answers to 'why' or 'who.'" - Norris Burkes
  • "Religious faiths generally make claims about the nature of reality that conflict with the claims of other faiths. Attacking Christian religions exclusivity is also to attack nearly every vital religious tradition." - Michael Gerson
  • "It is true that you can't prove the existence of God from His creation, but then, neither can you prove the existence of Henry Ford from the Model T." Jeffrey D. Kooistra (slightly reworded)
  • "That the Bible gives an incomplete picture of the Biblical world is obvious, but not really meaningful. It is not an encyclopedia, so of course it is not comprehensive. That's like saying that Anne Frank's diary gives an incomplete picture of WW2. Obviously true, but that tells us nothing about its usefulness or reliability." - Lindert
  • "I've never seen electricity, so I don't pay for it. I write right on the bill, "I'm sorry, I haven't seen it all month." - Steven Wright
  • "Atheism is blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere."
  • Atheism - the belief that there was nothing,

and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.

• • "We should take care not to make the intellect our God." - Albert Einstein
  • The phrase "Life is not worth living," if believed should lead to "Murderers [being] given medals for saving men from life; firemen would be denounced for keeping men from death; poisons would be used as medicines; doctors would be called in when people were well;..." - G. K. Chesterton
  • "As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss." - atheist Noam Chomsky
  • "The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty." - quote from Dear Abby
  • "How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?" - Woody Allen

(in response to articles featuring "bad" people to look down on, reflecting the current media obsession with such topics)

• • "Everybody's normal TILL you get to know them" - John Ortberg
  • "If the best man in the world had his worst sin written on his forehead, he would pull his hat down over his eyes" - old saying
  • "A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian is guilty of plargarism; a politician's career explodes in sexual scandal; a powerful CEO resigns in disgrace over illegal document shredding. What's is surprising is not that such things happen; it's that the general public response is, "Can you believe it? And they seemed so normal. As if you and I, of course, would be incapable of such behavior." - John Ortberg
  • " He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone..."John 7:53–8:11
  • "If perfection is our standard, then no one gets to talk." - Bill Bennett
  • A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory
  • To err is human; to blame it on the other guy is even more human. - Bob Goddard
  • "Every man has a right to be valued by his best moment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • "..there are some things that happen to people...[that] will destroy them. ...most people do not deserve to be destroyed.. the lives of some are already so tragic that [publicity] would only double their pain." Frederick Forsyth in The Phantom of Manhattan. (Note that all of the scandals in Wikipedia have received extensive media exposure already; the lives of the perpetrators already degraded).

• • Hindsight bias - we knew what would happen ahead of time. We "knew" it was going to happen the way it did, even though there were several possible outcomes at the time. e.g bursting of the housing bubble. (There were many people who bought homes at the top of the market).
    • Also related to redlining, since we "know" everything will turn out okay very soon despite dangerous indications to the contrary
    • Seems related to double or nothing but not as easily addressed.
  • Propensity effect - hyper-confidence that a certain outcome is inevitable. This has become stronger with visualization (i.e. television). For example, people "know" that global warming will destroy civilization as we know it with television repetition, despite the fact that no one "knew" this at all 20 years ago.
    • Similar to confirmation bias
    • Domino effect - similar though this is more easily conquered.
    • Seems related to situational blindness which also may be more easily addressed
    • "Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian." - Simonson's Law

• 1492 - Philosophers have known since the 3rd century BC that the world is round and it is "about" 25,000 miles in circumference. Christopher Columbus wrongly assumes the world is only 15,000 miles in circumference and cluelessly sails west to what he thinks is China. In fact, he never realizes that he has not reached China.
• From the 19th century through most of the 20th century - Students are taught that everyone thought the world was flat prior to Columbus and the latter changed everyone's thinking so it was up to date!

• 1945 - Harry Truman drops two atomic bombs on Japan. Nobel Committee reluctantly strikes him from the list of possible Peace Prize recipients, although he did end the war!
• 1961-1969 John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson enter Vietnam War. Nobel Committee strikes them off list of Peace Prize recipients.
• 1998/9 - Bill Clinton does not have sex with "that woman". House of Representative impeaches him anyway. Nobel Committee strikes him from their list.
• 2002 - Jimmy Carter wins Nobel Prize for "Nicest Smile"[13]
• 2007 - Al Gore wins Nobel Prize for "Best Film on Nature" (See Note A)
• 2009 - President Obama wins Nobel Prize for Public Speaking.
  

Note A: The Nobel Prize committee passed over Irena Sendler who risked her life literally thousands of times, saving 2,500 Warsaw Jewish babies and 500 adults from the Gestapo during WWII.

• In 1966, Harry Harrison predicts the correct value for the world's population in the 21st century; also the correct number for the population of Calcutta; just slightly higher than the actual US population; also global warming. He is a bit pessimistic about the latter however in his book Make Room! Make Room!. The 1973 film Soylent Green is based on his book which chronicles the last days of the extremely deprived population of earth, which takes place in 1999. The film uses excessively high guesses for the population, which turns out to be wrong.
• 1969-1975 - critics tried to stop supersonic flights, assuming that they would leave lasting contrails which would reflect solar energy and cause global cooling.
• 1972 - 1982 - We're going to run out of everything real soon..
• 1985-1986, winters are among the coldest on record. Freezes kill off orange trees in Central Florida, forcing the industry further south, where it has migrated from south Georgia in the early 1900s. Many people wonder whether we are entering a period of glacial cooling. Newsweek has that very suggestion as a front page article.
• 1987-1997 or so - The human race was threatened by Mad Cow Disease. At best, we would all have to stop eating hamburger. At worst, we were already contaminated and didn't know it. There was no cure. Except for Hindus and other vegetarians, we would all succumb and die. In fact, 166 people did die. 4.4 million suspect cattle were slaughtered, mostly in England. In fact, this probably had the worst direct effect on humanity than anything else on this list.
• 2000 - with anything and everything causing global warming, the anti-supersonic lobby claims that plane contrails will last a long time and cause global warming (not cooling, as they had claimed in the 1970s)
• 1998 - January 1, 2000 - Y2K
• 1980 to 2000 - Ozone depletion
• 1994 - present - global warming.
• 2001 - Danger from Islamofascists - 9/11 attacks
• 2011 - Several Japanese nuclear reactors have caught fire after one of the worst earthquakes in history. It is the end of the world. The Japanese, then us, will all be killed by fallout. (Fire is controlled after a week). Everyone will have to shut down all their reactors: The "design" is faulty. (Actually the backup cooling system was inundated by water which was four feet higher than anticipated). Incredibly, the Japanese, extremely cautious, shut down all their reactors by May 2012, despite being heavily dependent on foreign energy sources, and conscious of pollution.
  • Update 2013, two years after accident - World Health Organization indicated that the residents of the area were exposed to so little radiation that it probably won't be detectable. They indicated that a Japanese baby's cancer lifetime risk would increase by about 1%.[14]
• 2013 (March) - Sequestration will be the end of the United States as we know it (according to the media). As of October, sequestration was a big yawner unless you were directly affected and I don't know of anyone who was.
• 2013 (October) - Shutdown of some government functions will be the end of the US, as we know it (according to the media)
• "What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion." — Herman Melville

• In 2012, two DJs from Australia phoned a hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was recovering from pregnancy complications. They pretended to be the Queen and Prince Charles, figuring that no one would believe them. The phone was answered by a foreign nurse who believed them immediately and put them through where they obtained personal data on the Duchess. Subsequently the answering nurse, apparently humiliated by her error, committed suicide several days later.

• 1949 - Orwell postulates a public Two minutes of hate in his novel of the future, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Resembles scapegoating.
• 1972 -1974 - Orwell's prediction of "two minutes of hate" comes true with the Watergate break-in. Richard Nixon tries to protect his political burglars from prosecution, thereby becoming the most hated man on the planet. Nightly "hate" rants continue on television until he finally resigns.
• 1974 - 1976 - Ford pardons Nixon, thereby becoming the most hated man on the planet.
• 1978 - Anwar El Sadat wins Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Israel. When he gets home, they shoot him.
• Fall, 1982 - Roxanne Pulitzer divorces her husband, a Pulitzer heir. A quarrel over parental rights degenerates into a trial free-for all involving various sexual activities of both. The media is happy to carry this as "major" news, as long as the trial lasts. They unflattering refer to Roxanne as "Foxy Roxy."
• 1989 billionaire Leona Helmsley not only cheats on her income taxes, but displays a bad temper and is quoted as saying unpleasant things. She becomes "most hated" even after serving a prison sentence, despite a $5 million contribution to the families of 9/11 firefighters.
• 1992 - billionaire Donald Trump divorces Ivana in order to marry Marla Maples. He becomes "most hated" for quite awhile since he is also living like a billionaire but technically bankrupt. By 2003, his reputation, if not his finances, have improved to the point of hosting a weekly television show. He continues to be demonized by Doonesbury, and eventually the press, starting with his candidacy for President in late 2015, up through and including his election, and assumption of office.
• 1992 - relying on incorrect notes, Vice-President Dan Quayle incorrectly judges that a student has spelled potato wrong. He claims it should be "potatoe." The media never forgets this and repeats it endlessly well beyond the end of his term of office, pretending that no other politician ever pronounces or spells a word wrong.
• 1995 - O. J. Simpson, a popular athlete and personality is accused of killing his ex-wife and another person. The media keeps us tuned in to the trial most of the year, as if it were major news. Most American whites became disenchanted with Simpson during the trial.
• 1998 - Mark McGwire accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs, admits to taking an OTC alternative, thereby becoming the most-hated man on the planet.
• 2000 - Katherine Harris, whose job it is to submit Florida election results, waits until all appeals have been answered, then submit election results, thereby becoming the most hated person on the planet.
• 2000 - Comedian Bill Cosby, a conservative, is accused of raping women in the 20th century. He is hated by the left for suggesting that African-Americans should get more education and work harder to get ahead. The accusations, for all but three plaintiffs, comes after the statute of limitations has lapsed for possible criminal indictment. The accusations become an increasing crescendo, replaced only when he is indicted, and the race for US President in 2015 replaces him as a national scapegoat.
• 2003 - George W. Bush orders the invasion of Iraq and overthrows Saddam Hussein, which his father had failed to do. It was obvious that he would look for an opportunity to do this since the day of his election. While the military wins the war, it loses the peace and a load of money. Bush becomes the most hated man on the planet.
• 2001+ - Billionaire Martha Stewart sells stock prior to bad news on an illegal tip from her broker, saving her a $46,000 potential loss. She tries to protect the broker from prosecution by lying. She is convicted of Making false statements, a felony, and served seven months in prison. Up to the time of actual sentencing, she was the most hated person in the country. (This diminished considerably when she entered prison).
• Financier Jeffrey Epstein is accused in 2004 and convicted of underage sex abuse in 2008. And again in 2019. There are a flurry of news reports each time, ceasing, pretty much, at his death, ruled a "suicide" in 2019.
• 2007 - Michael Vick is accused of illegal dog fighting, thereby becoming the most hated man on the planet. The federal authorities incarcerate him in Leavenworth for 21 months
• 2009 - Tiger Woods is revealed as having cheated on his wife. He becomes the most hated man on the planet. He returns to golfing to resume his high rankings until 2014, when back surgery pretty much removes him from his career (now resumed without the baggage of marriage/divorce).
• 2011 - Coach Jerry Sandusky of Penn State is arrested, accused of 40 counts of sexually molesting student players. He becomes the most hated man on the planet.
• 2012 - A volunteer neighborhood watchman, Hispanic-American George Zimmerman, unaccountably kills an unarmed African-American who was legally staying in his neighborhood. Zimmerman becomes the most hated man in the country. So much so, that the media starts calling him "white," considered a pejorative, instead of "Hispanic," considered complimentary.
  • When he is inevitably cleared by a jury, the media cries "foul." The US Justice Department sullenly announces that it is looking into "Civil Rights Violations."
• In October 2013, Americans claim to be shocked! Shocked! To discover that their deliberately secretive spy agency, paid by the government to spy on people, is actually spying on people! Can anyone hate an agency for doing what they're supposed to do? We tried!
• In February 2014, Ray Rice was alleged to have punched his then fiancee in an elevator. Both were arrested. He was subsequently criminally indicted for third degree assault. Charges were dropped when he accepted court-supervised counseling. He and his fiancee were married in March. A public relations clause in his contract allowed the NFL to suspend him for the first two games of the football season. In September 2014, television became aware of a video tape of the incident, which became national news. The NFL suspended Rice indefinitely. The media is on both sides here. If it doesn't publicize the tape, it is "covering up" the incident. If they do publicize it, television may lose viewers and advertisers. But it is a totally media-driven event, one way or the other. The court has taken care of it already. It is a several week wonder, nevertheless. Rice becomes the most-hated man in America. A U.S. federal court restores him to playing for his team on November 29, and criticizes the NFL for "being so mean" (not a direct quote!  :) By then, everybody hates the cop from Ferguson and has forgotten all about Rice!
  • Shortly after, Adrian Peterson is indicted by a grand jury for child abuse. He is suspended for one game. This overlaps and finally supersedes the Rice story. Being an federal and state election year, media presentation tend to suggest that NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, should be replaced. This seems to overlook the fact that Goodell was not elected by the public. This doesn't happen, of course, and within a few months, it becomes a backpage story.
• In August 2014 Michael Brown, an African American, 18, was walking down the middle of a street in Ferguson, Missouri with some companions and a box of cigars he had just looted from a store. He was stopped by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, 28. Within a 90 second confrontation, Brown, unarmed, apparently resisted arrest. slammed the door on Wilson several times to prevent him from exiting and grabbed for Wilson's gun. In the process, Wilson killed Brown, firing many shots. Wilson becomes the most hated man in Ferguson, and perhaps the country. When the inevitable "no bill" is issued by the Grand Jury (typical in police shootings with no motive on the part of the policeman), poor blacks nationwide use this as an excuse to loot and burn businesses in their area. Black politicians, and black print media executives posture for the television media. No one suggests that if Wilson's narrative is correct, he was justified in shooting Brown. The President of the United States, a black, who could have halted the riots with a word, fails to do so. All blacks believe that this was a hate crime, believe Brown's companions whose stories differed when told to the Grand Jury, and disbelieve the evidence. Most do not understand that no petit jury would have convicted Brown of anything. The U.S. Justice Department says, sullenly, that it is "looking into" charges. The Browns are intending to sue and to bring the case before the United Nations!
• 2018 - On January 14, police discover that 13 children may have been abused for as long as 29 years. There is not, nor can there be, any more news associated with this alleged felony. Television repeats what little is known daily since it generates high public interest. But there is no "new" news. Just endless repetition, only awaiting something more aggravating to replace it in the media lineup. The print media tended to ignore it, once published!
• In 2017, the media revealed that 80 women had complained about sexual abuse from film producer Harvey Weinstein. This resulted in near-daily reports up to and including the year 2020.
• "Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Martin Luther King

• There are three engineers and a psychologist in a car. The engineers include an electrical engineer, a chemical engineer and a Microsoft engineer. Suddenly the car just stops by the side of the road, and the three engineers look at each other wondering what could be wrong. The electrical engineer suggests stripping down the electronics of the car and trying to trace where a fault might have occurred. The chemical engineer, not knowing much about cars, suggests that maybe the fuel is becoming emulsified and getting blocked somewhere. Then, the Microsoft engineer, not knowing much about anything, comes up with a suggestion, 'Why don't we close all the windows, get out, get back in, open the windows again, and maybe it'll work!?
  The psychologist demurs, saying that "We used to define this as 'vehicle malfunction.' Since my fellow psychologists cannot solve a problem like this, it cannot be a problem. We have therefore defined this sort of thing as 'operationally challenged.' The engineers asked how would that solve the problem. The psychologist answered, "We will validate it. You will push the vehicle to our destination. I will pay the car compliments and steer."
• "Liberals Versus Conservatives: At this time in history, the contemporary choice offered most Americans is between unstable correctness (liberals) and stable illusion (conservatives)! What a choice! It has little to do with real transformation in either case. How different from the radical traditionalism of T.S. Eliot: “You are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosity or carry report. You are here to kneel . . . ” (Little Gidding)
  There is a third way, and it probably is a way of “kneeling.” Most people would just call it “wisdom.” It demands a transformation of consciousness and a move beyond the dualistic win/lose mind of both liberals and conservatives. An authentic God encounter is the quickest and truest path to such wisdom, which is non-dual consciousness.
  Neither expelling nor excluding (conservative temptation), nor perfect explaining (liberal temptation) is our task. True participation in God liberates us each from our control towers and for the compelling and overarching vision of the Reign of God—where there are no liberals or conservatives. Here, the paradoxes—life and death, success and failure, loyalty to what is and risk for what needs to be—do not fight with one another, but lie in an endless embrace. We must penetrate behind them both—into the Mystery that bears them both. This is contemplation in action. - Richard Rohr

• Connie Willis has been quoted as calling the mindset "chronocentrism," the notion that the mores of our time and place are the supreme pinnacle of thought and ethics, and that benighted dwellers in the outer darkness of earlier times can be righteously judged, ex post facto, on our terms. (paraphrased by Michael F. Flynn).
• "The reason people blame things on the previous generations is that there's only one other choice." — Doug Larson