My
usual Saturday round-up of interesting and compelling articles from
elsewhere that I've stumbled upon over the past week, this time with a
decidedly political flavour:
UK
MP George Galloway Rips Congress:
Read the full transcript of the remarks by the guy who testified in his
own defence against the accusing US Senate Committee on Homeland
Security, remarks that were so devastating to this bunch of
witch-hunting, bullying clowns that they have been pulled
from the official Congressional record. You tell 'em, George. Thanks to
Cyndy for tracking this story: Here's
her link to an interview with Galloway by Thom Hartmann.
Empowering
Citizens With Film: The
illustrious Canadian National Film Board has a new program,
CitizenShift, to encourage and enable documentary and investigative
film projects by ordinary citizens. It's supported by a comprehensive
online site with many excerpts from films made under the auspices of
the program.
Reforming
Education: Capitalizing on the
success of some recent documentary features and the power of the visual
media, a group of filmmakers is working with esteemed education critic John
Taylor Gatto to make a damning
and enlightening 6-hour documentary on formalized Western education,
with a bold prescription for its long-overdue reformation.
Explaining
the Red-Blue State Gap: US
Conservative journalist Steve Sailer has written a fascinating series
of articles on the demographic differences between red and blue states,
and why those differences allow Republicans to win so many elections.
The articles (Baby
Gap, Marriage
Gap, Mortgage
Gap and Real
Estate Gap) are supported by
extensive statistical data. Sailer maps out a program for his beloved
Bush that includes a strong anti-immigration and anti-environment
platform, piping Canadian water in to make the US plains more
'habitable', and encouraging younger marriage and more babies. Thanks
to Dale Asberry for the link.
Rediscovering Oscar Wilde: I read The Importance of Being Earnest in
high school, but only recently became aware of how many popular
expressions (the one I used the other day, "nothing succeeds like
excess" and "a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the
value of nothing" among them) were penned by Wilde during his short (he
died at 46) tumultuous life.. Since then I've discovered these Wilde
gems (remember many of these are tongue-in-cheek, and they're all more than a century old):
- Be
yourself; everyone else is already taken.
- Biography lends to
death a new terror.
- Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
- I don't
want to earn my living; I want to live.
- Imagination is given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humour to console him for what he is.
- The problem with conversation is that the clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
- A
dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his
punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
- We are all in the
gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- One's real life is
often the life that one does not lead.
- Most people are other
people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a
mimicry, their passions a quotation.
- The aim of life is
self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each
of us is here for.
- Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Each time one loves is the only time one has ever loved.
Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely
intensifies it.
- Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than
genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the
world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of
that silver shell we call the moon.
- Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.
- As soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
- Whenever people agree
with me I always feel I must be wrong.
- A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
- How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being?
- A pessimist is one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
- It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
- Nowadays
most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when
it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's
mistakes.
- I think that God in
creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- One should always be
in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Cartoon by Wiley Miller from the wonderful strip Non-Sequitur.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
