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“On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.”

“On any Tuesday morning, if asked, a good working scientist will tell you with some self-satisfaction that the affairs of his field are nicely in order, that things are finally looking clear and making sense, and all is well. But come back again on another Tuesday, and the roof may have just fallen in on his life's work.”

“On Apollo 11 in route to the Moon, I observed a light out the window that appeared to be moving alongside us. It was either the rocket we had separated from, or the 4 panels that moved away when we extracted the lander from the rocket and we were nose to nose with the two spacecraft. So in the close vicinity, moving away, were 4 panels. And i feel absolutely convinced that we were looking at the sun reflected off of one of these panels.”

“On April 1, armed SA men took up positions in front of Jewish businesses and tried to prevent customers from spending money in them. Some troops painted anti-Semitic slogans and Stars of David on display windows; others were content to hold up signs calling for a boycott and to curse at Jewish businessmen. Some areas also saw looting and acts of violence. All in all, this display of activism made a very negative impression on most people, and the thuggish SA men with their uneducated bellowing were left even less popular among the general population than they had been before. Although very few Germans openly declared their solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens, the boycott did not, as it was intended to do, set German gentiles against German Jews. On the contrary, ordinary people felt sorry for them, and if reports by the Nazis, who were disappointed by the boycott, are to be believed, the amount of commerce done afterward by Jewish-owned business did not decline at all.”

“On April 2, the nurses started my first round of five intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) infusions. The clear IV bags hung on a metal pole above my head, their liquid trickling down into my vein. Each of those ordinary-looking bags contained the healthy antibodies of over a thousand blood donors and cost upwards of $20,000 per infusion. One thousand tourniquets, one thousand nurses, one thousand veins, one thousand blood-sugar regulating cookies, all just to help one patient.”

“On April 30 Lucy cheerfully reported that, after three days' illness, she was on the mend. Although she had no mirror, she could feel twenty pockmarks on her face. 'I am almost glad you do not see it.," she wrote, "I don't believe I should get one kiss and yet the doctor tells me it is very becoming.”

“On areas like abortion where there is major disagreement among the mainstream religious groups in the Judeo-Christian tradition, I believe that requires a lot more caution. The Jewish position on abortion is very different from the Roman Catholic position. That is reason to be cautious about enacting laws rather than saying to the religious group: instruct your followers on these matters as matters of personal religious belief.”

“On arrival at Orly Airport, Fritz and Magda hired a taxi which drove them to the city. They saw before them a metropolis crowned with triumphal architecture and magnificent monuments. The first Parisian landmark that caught their eye was the majestic Eiffel Tower and, in the background, on a distant hill, the white church of Montmartre. They immediately opted that their hotel could wait and asked the driver to take them around the city, though they knew that this would cost them a whole day's budget. What they began to see was simply spectacular: wide areas edified with splendid monuments, fantastic fountains, enchanting gardens and bronze statues representing the best exponents who flourished in the city, amongst whom artists, philosophers, musicians and great writers. The River Seine fascinated them, with boatloads of tourists all eager to see as much as they could of the city. They also admired a number of bridges, amongst which the flamboyant Pont Alexandre III. The driver, a friendly, balding man of about fifty, with moustaches à la Clemenceau, informed them that quite nearby there was the famous Pont Neuf which, ironically, was the first to be built way back in 1607. They continued their tour...”

“On arrival, we served Bloody Marys, though we couldn't in all good conscience garnish with sticks of celery, so we finished with bacon and shrimp. I no longer did all the cooking; instead we each brought a dish. The first course was one of Stevie's specialties, macaroni and cheese. There was something vaguely hacky and antiquated about it, which fit the gold theme perfectly; she always made it very rich and dense, crisp on top and silky underneath. Her trick was to use "twice the recommended amount of butter and three times the cheese." After the pasta we had ham hock with whipped peas, the ham stringy and salty, the peas fresh and slightly minted.”

“On Assault Weapons.... Democratic Countries that ban the sale military style weapons suffer millions fewer gun deaths to their population. Also; there is NO WAY that such guns (automatic machines) are approved under the Second Amendment. It was not the intent of Thomas Jefferson or the other Founding Fathers that automatic machine guns could be widely available for use in the slaughter of fellow citizens (such as children, women, babies, grand folks and everyone in between). The Founders language in the Second Amendment instead described "a well regulated militia" which the general public is not.”

“On Atheism – If people continue to think of atheism as a kind of religion, then I demand all the perks that real religions get. I want to build big empty buildings where like-minded people can gather once a week to debate a non-existent deity. I want tax-exempt status. I want real food, not cheap wine and crackers. I want a rocking band. I want altar men! Not altar boys—altar MEN—and I want them to look like the chain-clad guy who hands an envelope to RuPaul at the beginning of “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar”.”

“On August 10, 1984, my plane landed in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. There were no skyscrapers here. The blue domes of the mosques and the faded mountains were the only things rising above the adobe duvals (the houses). The mosques came alive in the evening with multivoiced wailing: the mullahs were calling the faithful to evening prayer. It was such an unusual spectacle that, in the beginning, I used to leave the barracks to listen – the same way that, in Russia, on spring nights, people go outside to listen to the nightingales sing. For me, a nineteen-year-old boy who had lived his whole life in Leningrad, everything about Kabul was exotic: enormous skies – uncommonly starry – occasionally punctured by the blazing lines of tracers. And spread out before you, the mysterious Asian capital where strange people were bustling about like ants on an anthill: bearded men, faces darkend by the sun, in solid-colored wide cotton trousers and long shirts. Their modern jackets, worn over those outfits, looked completely unnatural. And women, hidden under plain dull garments that covered them from head to toe: only their hands visible, holding bulging shopping bags, and their feet, in worn-out shoes or sneakers, sticking out from under the hems. And somewhere between this odd city and the deep black southern sky, the wailing, beautifully incomprehensible songs of the mullahs. The sounds didn't contradict each other, but rather, in a polyphonic echo, melted away among the narrow streets. The only thing missing was Scheherazade with her tales of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights ... A few days later I saw my first missile attack on Kabul. This country was at war.”

“On August 12, 1933, Machado fled Cuba with ABC terrorists shooting at his airplane as it prepared to take off from the runway, leaving Cuba without any continuity of leadership. A smooth transfer of authority to the next administration became impossible in Havana. American envoy, Sumner Welles stepped into the vacuum and encouraged Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada to accept the office of Provisional President of Cuba. Céspedes was a Cuban writer and politician, born in New York City, son of Carlos Manual de Céspedes del Castillo who was a hero of the Cuban War of Independence. Wearing a spotlessly clean, crisp white suit, Céspedes was installed as the Provisional President of Cuba, on what was his 62nd birthday.”

“On August 21, the Soviet defense minister, Dmitry Yazov, gave the order for troops to be withdrawn from Moscow. The State Committee for the State of Emergency had lost, and along with it, the U.S.S.R. had, too. On returning from his dacha in Crimea, Gorbachev evidently expected to be greeted by rejoicing crowds as a liberated hero. People were happy to see him back, but only as further evidence that the putsch committee had been defeated. Gorbachev's expectation of consolidating his authority on a surge of support came to nothing. All the admiration and support was for Yeltsin and a new government, the people who had taken risks and acted resolutely. This was strengthened when testimony was produced suggesting that Gorbachev might have had a part in preparing the conspiracy, or at least knew of it in advance and, in his usual way, decided not to take sides either with the Soviet conservatives or with the Russian reformers but to wait and see who came out on top. Indecision is a cardinal sin in an era of change. In an instant, Gorbachev lost everything. Once again, as happens during revolutions, something mind-blowing had occurred. On Monday he was, if not the most popular of leaders, the universally acknowledged president of a vast nation, with power over the world's largest army and over the industry and agricultural enterprises of a territory covering one-sixth of the world's land area-and the power to start a nuclear war. Come Thursday, he was nobody. He still retained a personal limousine, his secretaries, and a special telephone, only now no one was calling him. Whatever might be documented in seemingly unchallengeable statutes protected by a constitution and an army of lawyers, the center of power had shifted to Yeltsin, transferred in some intangible manner. Nobody really understands exactly how it happened, but neither was anyone in any doubt that the transfer of power had taken place. On December 8, 1991, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republics, and Ukraine pulled of a spectacular ruse. Their leaders, Stanislav Shushkevich, Boris Yeltsin, and Leonid Kravchuk, met in a forest in Belarus, where they declared that, since their three republics had been the founders of the U.S.S.R., they had the right to dissolve it, which they would proceed to do. In its place they established the Union of Independent States. From their point of view, the trick made good sense: the presidents of the republics wanted to put Gorbachev and all his officials out of contention and to seize unfettered power for themselves. That is what was behind their action, and to implement it they needed formally to put an end to the indestructible U.S.S.R. Nowadays, people go on about what a mistake that action-the Belovezha Accords-was. One of those publicly lamenting it is Vladimir Putin. With great intensity and passion, he claims the accords was "a major geopolitical disaster." Well, it didn't seem like that to me at the time (and I'm not claiming to be a repository of objective truth, just relaying what my feelings were). It was just one more item on the television news-well, perhaps an item that rated a bit more discussion that usual, but there was no sense of portentousness. If those who gathered in the woods executed a crafty and, to be honest, rather deceitful and devious legalistic maneuver, they were only confirming something that was already obvious, namely that the U.S.S.R. no longer existed as a real country.”

“On August 29th, 1949, when the Soviets conducted their own successful nuclear test, our love for the bomb began to lessen. Perhaps it was foolhardy to think that we alone could hold fire in a fennel stalk. At 5:29 a.m. on that July morning, all we saw was the future when, in fact, we should have remembered how Zeus chained Prometheus to a mountaintop and sent an eagle to eat his liver daily. Night after night, his liver regrew, and day after day, the eagle ate it.”

“On August 3, 2012, the fifteenth day of the government offensive, rebels in the city said they were desperately low on ammunition and expressed dismay that the international community had not reacted when a huge massacre could be coming. Again, Libya was the example. Gadhafi threatened to overrun Benghazi and when he tried to do it, NATO started bombing. Now in Syria, Assad was threatening to crush the opposition in Aleppo and had already started doing it, but Washington’s reaction was only hand-wringing. In my conversations with rebels it was clear they were becoming increasingly disheartened and desperate. (The rebels would usually communicate with each other on Skype, blending in with the billions of people using the Internet instead of going through cell-phone towers.) The United States was apparently still skittish about sending in arms because it feared they would end up in the hands of Islamic extremists, but that, like so many unintended consequences of US foreign policy in the Middle East, was a self-fulfilling prophecy. At this stage the rebels were numerous, strong, motivated, and moderate and I made that clear in my reports on the air.”

“On August 5, 2012, a few days before the fourth anniversary of the war, a forty-seven-minute Russian documentary film “8 Avgusta 2008. Poteryannyy den” (8 August 2008. The Lost Day) was posted on YouTube. In the film retired and active service generals accused former President Medvedev of indecisiveness and even cowardice during the conflict. They praised Putin, on the other hand, for his bold and vigorous action. According to one of Medvedev’s critics, retired Army General Yury Baluevsky, a former First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff, “a decision to invade Georgia was made by Putin before Medvedev was inaugurated President and Commander-in-Chief in May 2008. A detailed plan of military action was arranged and unit commanders were given specific orders in advance.” [...] After the release of the documentary film Putin confirmed that the Army General Staff had, indeed, prepared a plan of military action against Georgia. It was prepared “at the end of 2006, and I authorized it in 2007,” he said. Interestingly, Putin also said “that the decision to ‘use the armed forces’ had been considered for three days—from around 5 August,” which clearly contradicts the official Russian version that the Russian army only reacted to a Georgian attack that started on August 7. According to this plan not only heavy weaponry and troops were prepared for the invasion, but also South Ossetian paramilitary units were trained to support the Russian invading troops [234―35].”

“On August 7, 2013, on the evening of the fifth anniversary of the war, Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvili, in a prerecorded interview on Georgia’s Rustavi-2 TV, told that he had met Putin in Moscow in February 2008 at an informal summit of the CIS. During the summit he told Putin that he was ready to say no to NATO in exchange for Russian help with the reintegration of the two breakaway territories. Saakashvili claimed “that ‘Putin did not even think for a minute” about his proposal. “[Putin] smiled and said, ‘We do not exchange your territories for your geopolitical orientation... And it meant ‘we will chop off your territories anyway.’” Saakashvili asked him to talk about the growing tensions along the borders with South Ossetia, saying, “It could not be worse than now.” “That’s when he [Putin] looked at me and said: ‘And here you are very wrong. You will see that very soon it will be much, much, much worse.’” [234]”

“On average, males tend to be more dominant, assertive, risk-prone, thrill-seeking, tough-minded, emotionally stable, utilitarian, and open to abstract ideas. Males also tend to score higher on self-estimates of intelligence, even though sex differences in general intelligence measured as an ability are negligible [2]. Men also tend to form larger, competitive groups in which hierarchies tend to be stable and in which individual relationships tend to require little emotional investment. In terms of communication style, males tend to use more assertive speech and are more likely to interrupt people (both men and women) more often-- especially intrusive interruptions-- which can be interpreted as a form of dominant behavior.”

“On average, men are more unrestricted and show higher-risk and sensation seeking; they are also lower in agreeableness, honesty-humility, and disgust sensitivity, particularly in the sexual domain (in constrast, there are only minor sex differences in impulsivity and conscientiousness). The reason is that these traits are crucially involved in the mating-parenting tradeoff, and males tend to invest in mating effort more than females even net of individual differences in life history strategies.”

“On average the people watching the videos correctly identified the lairs 56% of the time. Other sociologist have tried similar versions of the same experiment, the average for all of them? 54%. Just about everyone is terrible, police officers, judges, therapists even CIA officers running big spy networks. Everyone. Why? Tim Levine answer is called Truth-default theory.”