change

“What shall we find the other side of the walls of the world we are abandoning?

“Fear will come upon us – a void, a vast emptiness, freedom – how are we to go forward not knowing where we are going, how face loss, not seeing hope of gain?... If Columbus had reasoned thus he would never have weighed anchor. It was madness to set off upon the ocean, not knowing the route, on the ocean on which no one had sailed, to sail toward a land whose existence was doubtful. By this madness he discovered a new world. Doubtless if the peoples of the world could simply transfer themselves from one furnished mansion to another and better one – it would make it much easier; but unluckily there is no one to get humanity’s new dwelling ready for it. The future is even worse than the ocean – there is nothing there – it will be what men and circumstances make it."

— Alexander Herzen, quoted by Leo Tolstoy in The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life, New York, Cassell Publishing Company, 1894, p 157

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props | ten things we should never say to kids

A generous review of Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids from Nicole Avery, The Planning Queen in Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia.

Nicole writes about thoughtful parenting in her Planning with Kids blog (where she uses words like whilst and spells reorganising with an s.

I think the second best thing about Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids is it's free. The best thing about it is what's inside.

You can download Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids at thetinycompanycalledme.com

Senator McCain Said What?

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s statement on Wednesday that he was uncertain whether waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique, was torture drew a sharp rebuke yesterday from Senator John McCain, who said that his failure to call it torture reflected his inexperience.

“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.

Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: “They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”
— The New York TimesOctober 26, 2007


Oddly, on February 13, 2008, Senator McCain voted against a ban on waterboarding. Senator McCain, you leave me shaking my head. Who are you?

oh, no you can't | like hope, but different

[thanks JP]

yes, yes we can

We may not, but we can.