Quote of the Day: 31 July 2017

"[W]hen government expands beyond its rightful limits, problems arise that have little to do with the competence and abilities of its officials and employees. The delusion that these problems can be solved by replacing officials only delays the day when people face the hard questions about what government should do and should not do." -Melvin D. Barger

Quote of the Day: 30 July 2017

"It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out." -Screwtape

Quote of the Day: 29 July 2017

"Journalists are the extreme left of the Dunning Kruger curve." -Robb Allen

[See also the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.]

Quote of the Day: 28 July 2017

"[F]or decades I’ve pointed out the fact that the defensive firearm is a direct analog to a fire extinguisher. Each of those items is an emergency safety/rescue tool, whose purpose is to allow the ordinary citizen who becomes the first responder to ward off death or great bodily harm until the designated public safety professionals can get there to help. The gun doesn’t make you a cop and doesn’t mean you don’t need cops. The fire extinguisher doesn’t make you a trained firefighter and doesn’t mean you no longer need firefighters. 'Emergency safety/rescue tool…first responder…the one there on the ground when the conflagration breaks out, and the one right now positioned to be the best candidate to stop something horrible from happening.'" -Masad Ayoob

Quote of the Day: 27 July 2017

"If you mandate it, it isn't charity and it isn't virtue." -@GlomarResponder

Forest Grove Police Log excerpt, 26 July 2017

Here is the excerpt from the log of local police activity in the past week.

July 22* A resident called for extra patrols after someone rang their doorbell at 4 am.

I was unaware that this was an option. I will have to remember that I can request additional patrols if I have unexpected doorbell ringing at four in the morning.

Quote of the Day: 26 July 2017

"The institution of delegated power implies, that there is a portion of virtue and honour among mankind, which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence: and experience justifies the theory. It has been found to exist in the most corrupt periods of the most corrupt governments." -Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 76

Quote of the Day: 25 July 2017

"Supposing there was justice for all, after all? For every unheeded beggar, every harsh word, every neglected duty, every slight ... every choice ... Because that was the point, wasn't it? You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong, but you had to choose, knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always, you did it by yourself." -Terry Pratchett

Quote of the Day: 24 July 2017

"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." -Tamara Keel

Quote of the Day: 23 July 2017

"Sometimes our attendance at meetings and our service in the kingdom may lack the holy element of worship. And without that, we are missing an incomparable spiritual encounter with the infinite—one we are entitled to as children of a loving Heavenly Father." -Dean M. Davies

Quote of the Day: 22 July 2017

"Be aware that by telling people your dreams, you are leaving yourself wide open for their amateur psychoanalysis." -Scott Meyer

Quote of the Day: 21 July 2017

"When you say someone should have 'housing and food, a car, entertainment, health care' you’re not saying that angels will come down from heaven and grant this. Or if you are, you really should tell us how to summon these angels. What you’re saying is 'we should violate someone’s most basic and fundamental liberties so that someone else can be the equivalent of a trustfund baby with never a worry in the world.'” -Sarah Hoyt

Quote of the Day: 20 July 2017

"It ought to be understood, however, that there can be no remedy for lack of industry and thrift, secured by law." -Calvin Coolidge

[Industry and thrift may not be sufficient on their own to ensure success, but a lack of both will lead to failure.]

Forest Grove Police Log Excerpt, 19 July 2017

This week's excerpt from the log of the local constabulary.

July 10 - A woman reported that the icons on her computer had been mysteriously moved around on the desktop, possibly by a hacker.

We've got some nefarious stuff going on in the Grove. Watch your desktop icons carefully, or they may get moved by some hacker.

Quote of the Day: 19 July 2017

"No legislation can alter the sexes. Legislation should provide equality of opportunity, equality of compensation, equality of political privilege. But any legislation which is designed to create neuter gender of that which God created male and female will bring more problems than benefits. Of that I am convinced." -Gordon B. Hinckley

Quote of the Day: 18 July 2017

"When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be, is rendered dim and doubtful, by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated." -James Madison, The Federalist No. 37

[How difficult it can be to discern the true meaning in the word of God due to the ambiguity inherent in our language.]

Quote of the Day: 17 July 2017

"Intelligence has it’s limits but stupidity does not appear to have an upper bound." -Joe Huffman

Quote of the Day: 16 July 2017

"I must add to my pleading a warning. You have the right and the obligation to choose for yourselves. You can search the scriptures or not. You can choose to work hard enough, to ponder, and to obey His commandments so that the Holy Ghost can be your companion. Then you will come to know the savior better and better and your heart will swell with love for Him. Or you can choose to delay. You can choose to drift, deciding past efforts will be enough." -Henry B. Eyring

Quote of the Day: 15 July 2017

"Every student knows their fellow classmates get different grades becuase of differring individual intelligence, attentive ability, hard work, and the level of other distractions in students' lives. So, you do not have a classroom ideological perspective that insists all grades must be equal and that 'inequality' in grades must be eliminated.

"You know that your efforts, or your classmates' efforts, merit different rewards. You accept that as fair. Shuffling the grades randomly, or making every grade the same, is not going to encourage scholarship and overall effort." -Ron Robinson

Quote of the Day: 14 July 2017

"Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West." -Patrick Deneen

Quote of the Day: 13 July 2017

"I had spent one day in the counterintelligence prison at army headquarters and three days in the counterintelligence prison at the headquarters of the front, where my cellmates had educated me in the deceptions practiced by the interrogators, their threats and beatings; in the fact that once a person was arrested he was never released; and in the inevitability of a tenner, a ten-year sentence; and then by a miracle I had suddenly burst out of there and for four days had traveled like a free person among free people, even though my flanks had already lain on rotten straw beside the latrine bucket, my eyes had already beheld beaten-up and sleepless men, my ears had heard the truth, and my mouth had tasted prison gruel. So why did I keep silent? Why, in my last minute out in the open, did I not attempt to enlighten the hoodwinked crowd?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Forest Grove Police Log Excerpt, 12 July 2017

Here is the excerpt from the log of local police activity for this week.

July 2 

- A man stole an air rifle and some jelly donuts from a local store.

You know it's critical to take the Jelly donuts. As long as you're committing one crime, you may as well tack on the violations for grabbing those sweet, sweet fried confections.

Quote of the Day: 12 June 2017

“When the world was over run with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue.” -Thomas Paine

Quote of the Day: 11 July 2017

"'It is a secret weapon,' said Lu-Tze. 'It's a broom.'" -Terry Pratchett

[A humorous line, but concealing more truth than is at first evident.]

Shirt.woot is great today

The design up for 11 July over on Shirt Woot is great.

Go take a look, and see if you don't agree with the message.

Quote of the Day: 10 July 2017

"Christ commands that I help others. I don't feel that voting to force you to help others meets that criteria." -Robb Allen

Quote of the Day: 9 July 2017

"Sincerely apologizing to your children, your wife, your family, or your friends is not a sign of weakness but of strength. Is being right more important than fostering an environment of nurturing, healing, and love?" -Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Quote of the Day: 8 July 2017

"It is ironic that the Great Depression was produced by government but was blamed on the private enterprise system." -Milton Friedman

Quote of the Day: 7 July 2017

"Maxim 43: If it's stupid and it works, it's still stupid and you're lucky." -Howard Tayler

[But don't expect most people to realize the stupidity and their luck. Usually, they'll attribute the success to their competence instead.]

Quote of the Day: 6 July 2017

"'You're thinking of your own safety. But think, for a moment, about the system.' Leaning over, she stubbed out her cigarette and funbled in her purse for another. 'Which means more to you—your own personal safety or the existence of the system?'

"'My safey,' Anderton answered, without hesitation.

"'You're positive?'

"'If the system can survive only by imprisoning innocent people, then it deserves to be destroyed. My personal safety is important because I'm a human being.'" -Philip K Dick, The Minority Report

Forest Grove Police Log Excerpt, 5 July 2017

There's got to be at least bit of lack of mental function when you do what is reported here.

June 28* A man used the after-hours dispatch phone located outside the police station to report that the Forest Grove Police Department had tried to kill him and that Forest Grove, Beaverton and Hillsboro police stole his property. The man had first encountered the department's off-duty outreach specialist near the bus stop, whom he asked "Where the pigs lived because they had tried to kill him." Officers arrived at the station to contact the man but they were unable to locate him.

I'm glad I live in a small city, where things like this are big enough to warrant inclusion in the weekly police log.

Quote of the Day: 5 July 2017

"This business of 'giving something back' simply becuase you earned it amounts to manufacturing mystical obligations where none exist in reality. It turns the whole concept of 'debt' on its head. To give it 'back' means it wasn't yours in the first place, but the creation of wealth through private initiative and voluntary exchange does not involve the expropriation of anyone's rightful property." -Lawrence W. Reed

Quote of the Day: 4 July 2017

"July 4, 1776, was a day of history in its high and true significance. Not because the underlying principles set out in the Declaration of Independence were new; they are older than the Christian religion, or Greek philosophy, nor was it because history is made by proclamation or declaration; history is made only by action. But it was an historic day because the representatives of three millions of people there vocalized Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill, which gave notice to the world that they were acting, and proposed to act, and to found an independent nation, on the theory that 'all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' The wonder and glory of the American people is not the ringing declaration of that day, but the action, then already begun, and in the process of being carried out in spite of every obstacle that war could interpose, making the theory of freedom and equality a reality. We revere that day because it marks the beginnings of independence, the beginnings of a constitution that was finally to give universal freedom and equality to all American citizens, the beginnings of a government that was to recognize beyond all others the power and worth and dignity of man. There began the first of governments to acknowledge that it was founded on the sovereignty of the people. There the world first beheld the revelation of modern democracy." -Calvin Coolidge

Quote of the Day: 3 July 2017

"[B]ad training can make situations worse. If the person believes that he or she doesn't have what it takes, that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"The obvious solution is to instill confidence. Become a cheerleader. Tell your students they can do anything. That cure is almost as bad as the problem. It is far easier to instill confidence than competence.

"Instill competence. Train hard. If you play hard with actual moving bodies, actual impact, if you take hard hits and give them, you might still have this doubt before the fight ... but once the fight is on, hoo-boy.... If the competence is there, trust that the confidence will come." -Rory Miller

[I have yet to achieve this as I would like, but I trust that this is true. Confidence does seem to be bred of both competence and achievement.]

Quote of the Day: 2 July 2017

"If the work of the Lord is to go forward, it must be done by such as you and me. There is a constant need for men in this church to fill positions of responsibility. They must be taken as they are. And the marvelous thing is that as they serve, taking advantage of the great training programs and magnified by the Spirit of God, they become effective and powerful." -Gordon B. Hinckley

Quote of the Day: 1 July 2017

“We’re going to teach you soldiering. The world’s noblest profession. When we’re done with you, you’ll be able to slaughter your enemies like civilized men.” -Daniel Dravot, The Man Who Would Be King [The movie, and not the story, since I haven't read the story.]