#ding

This president has been reluctant to hold anybody accountable. No one was held accountable after September the 11th. Nobody's been held accountable after the clear flaws in intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. ↗

— Bob Graham

#after #anybody #been #clear #flaws

Of all the intoxicants you can find on the road (including a "national beer" for nearly every country in the world), marijuana deserves a particular mention here, primarily because it's so popular with travelers. Much of this popularity is due to the fact that marijuana is a relatively harmless diversion (again, provided you don't get caught with it) that can intensify certain impressions and sensations of travel. The problem with marijuana, however, is that it's the travel equivalent of watching television: It replaces real sensations with artificially enhanced ones. Because it doesn't force you to work for a feeling, it creates passive experiences that are only vaguely connected to the rest of your life. "The drug vision remains a sort of dream that cannot be brought over into daily life," wrote Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard. "Old mists may be banished, that is true, but the alien chemical agent forms another mist, maintaining the separation of the 'I' from the true experience of the 'One.'" Moreover, chemical highs have a way of distracting you from the utterly stoning natural high of travel itself. After all, roasting a bowl might spice up a random afternoon in Dayton, Ohio, but is it really all that necessary along the Sumatran shores of Lake Toba, the mountain basins of Nepal, or the desert plateaus of Patagonia? As Salvador Dali quipped, "I never took drugs because I am drugs." With this in mind, strive to be drugs as you travel, to patiently embrace the raw, personal sensation of unmediated reality--an experience for more affecting than any intoxicant can promise. ↗

— Rolf Potts

#dreams

The standing ovation threw me... to be held in such regard in a town so full of talent is quite something. ↗

— Michael Caine

#held #me #ovation #quite #regard

We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production. ↗

— Nina Fedoroff

#century #demanding #doctor #doctors #food

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring. ↗

— David Brin

#backgrounds #characters #depth #develop #erupt

When I was younger, I looked at getting older as this process of getting less interested in things and becoming colder, and of finding less joy in the mystery of things. And I've found the exact opposite to be true. I find that I'm getting warmer, and that I'm more mystified by human interactions. ↗

— Jon Brion

#becoming #colder #exact #exact opposite #find

These people being of a sharp and acute intellect, and gifted with a rich and powerful understanding, excel in whatever studies they pursue, and are more quick and cunning than the other inhabitants of a western clime. ↗

— Giraldus Cambrensis

#being #clime #cunning #excel #gifted

Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone. ↗

— David Brooks

#aspects #building #character #comes #educated

I don't think religious groups should be allowed to apply for federal funds to start new ministries they have not been doing before the funding was available. ↗

— Jerry Falwell

#apply #available #been #before #doing

The real problem at the moment is that the banks - because of their existing culture, which is frankly anti-business, obsession with short-term trading profits, not focusing on the long term - are throttling the recovery of British industry. ↗

— Vince Cable

#because #british #culture #existing #focusing