A sign – “Steve Twiggs Ranch – 35.4 miles” – and an arrow pointed towards an unimproved dirt track down which a plume of dust was rising from a pick-up truck. About 25 miles away was a ridge of mountains. There was snow beside the road and snow capped peaks in the distance – to the west and to the north and to the northeast. No one else is out on the highway.
To the journalist, the event is a tryrant. It is the authority that grants him liberty to speak – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974 p194
I lit my campfire – first of the trip. A car drove by without stopping. A long way to cruise for a drive by. It had a bike on back and a kayak on top. I have six Buds on ice but don’t feel like drinking a beer (how strange). The little dog has already retreated into the tent. Trail Dog does not like fire. I checked the next morning to see if anyone had camped nearby – they had not. Must have been looking for somewhere more sophisticated to do their recreating - them that sweat together, recreate together. There were few places more primitive or remote than this place. I sit back and poke at the fire and watch the stars come out.
Things might always have been otherwise – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p56
The sun has finally risen enough to clear the canyon walls – its light touches me. It was so cold and I had hated to get out of my warm sleeping bag. I stumbled out to put on some coffee. The birds were chirping. The dog wanted to be taken for a walk. Trail Dog gets up first and if I don't then get up also he climes on top of me and tries to bite my nose. The first of the hot coffee. God! That's a little better. There is no clean water only the Canadian River which the cattle have muddied (and a lot more - defiantly not potable - Trail Dog won't even try it). Hence everything must be managed with a minimum of water. I minimize the number of dishes that I use. “Due to the drought – beware – bears are on the forage.”
Organisms that temporarly forsake immediate personal advantage in the expression of equivalent near-term reciprocation… [must] evolve ways of reliably discriminating between a cooperator and a defector – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002 p28
God shall not be allowed
To be self-contradictory
He shall not possess such
A power, otherwise
God is omnipotent according to
William of Ockham
God freely chooses his
Ordaining himself obedient
To this constituted order
Both miracles and science
Can thus co-exist
He can go no further. He can identify the full moon in the sky as a cubist guitar – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974 p39
While sitting up camp I had to stop and sit down and catch my breath about half a dozen times. I should be getting used to the routine by now, but I am not. First I blamed in on the heat – 98 degrees the other day, then I blamed it on the altitude – 7,000 feet today. But now I am beginning to thank that it might be the medications that I am on. I asked about the potential side effects. The doctor didn't say anything about this.
There can be reasons too why there are reasons why / If they can be said as much – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956p26
First there is a constituency then there is an ideology
It’s surprisingly common for researchers… to declare that A causes B when in fact it’s more likely that B caused A – Charles Seife – Proofiness, 2010 p50
It used to be primarily the health industry that tapped into our life savings and sucked them dry; now the financial industry has figured how to do the same. It used to be that in the end you just died. Now, when you're broke you die.
We are terrified of dying in a plane crash but think nothing about speeding down the highway while talking on a cellphone. We don’t have an internal gauge of what behaviors are truly dangerous and what aren’t – Charles Seife – Proofiness, 2010 p71
81% of renters would like to buy a home. 81% of all Americans still believe that homeownership is the best long term investment that a person can make.
The cultural right is not rebeling against its exclusion from the center, but against the exclusion of the center, its reduction. The ‘cultural wars’ thus arise between those who hold cultural power but feat that it no longer matters and those whose exclusion from that cultural power allows them to believe that such power would matter if only they held it – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p114
I lack a good mysterious landscape
But have plenty of paint
Someplace with picturesque
Improvised villagers
And spewing volcanoes
Where little girls can be
Bought in the middle of the night
And recreation is a vacation
From reality
Money cranks the handle
Of the reality machine
Greed only works when there is
The option of running away
With the spoon as
The cow jumps over the moon
Someone is already dreaming
Of putting up condos there
The rich are different from you and me. They are ruder and less generous. They don’t get what other people are thinking. And apparently they don’t really care… This makes sense. People don’t craft personal collateralized debt obligations by calling on what they learned in Sunday school – Thomas Frank – Harpers, Feb 2011 p7
Congress at large (both the Democratic and Republican leadership at least) has escaped blame by the American public for the budget fiasco. Instead the public blames Obama and the Tea Party.
If the ideological has become visible, it is because the high-stake game has moved to another table – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p104
Wal-Mart’s Walton family owns as much wealth as the bottom 40% of the US population (more than 120 million Americans combined).
Now that the government has divested from the empathy business, we need the rich to discover brotherly love and fast – Thomas Frank – Harpers, Feb 2011 p7
The unabashed deployment of the state is the popular shortcoming of both extremes
The strong idea of culture arises with the nation-state and we now face its disappearances as the locus of social meaning – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p86
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