Badges?

 
A trio of bandits confront a miner packing out his gold. They claim to be Federallys (police) but the miner is suspicious and asks to see their badges. “Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!” With those words Alfonso Bedoya achieved screen immortality in his role as the Mexican bandit “Gold Hat” in John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 

Shakespeare belies his own words

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...
Shakespeare may have reached a dusty death described in the pessimistic passage below but his work lives on and contradicts the "signifying nothing" phrase.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

--From Macbeth (V, v, 19)

Democrats guilty of racism in Maryland politics

'Party trumps race' for Steele foes�-�Metropolitan�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
Maryland Democrats call black Senate candidate an "uncle Tom" and pelt him with Oreo cookies at rally.

Federal Budget is busted

E-mail sent to Senator Conrad, copy to Sen. Lugar:

Sir:
I watched your presentation on C-SPAN today (10/20/05) concerning the federal deficit and debt. Thank you for trying to wake up your colleagues and the public to this oncoming disaster. We have had a long run of (relatively) good economic times and still are running huge deficits and piling up the debt. What will we do if we have a run of poor economic performance?

While the Bush administration should be blamed for part of the situation I remind you that Congress must, by law, appropriate every dollar the government spends. When will the Congress bring spending in line with revenues?  Like many citizens, the Congress needs to cut up the credit cards and scale back on the (federal) high living.

William Combs

The OJ Simpson verdict is announced on TV at IU. 

People and animals respond to novelty

Put a new object into an animal’s cage. It will be investigated immediately. Some species, like apes, will play with it for a while. A new restaurant comes to town and everyone wants to go there. Sometimes a new car model that is very different, like the retro looking Chrysler PT Cruiser or the new Morris Minor will attract buyers due solely to their novelty. I call these novelty cars. Often, enthusiasm fades after a time and the car is pulled from the market. In what passes for pop culture, often driven by TV and magazines, novelty is king. The new pop stars, the new look, the new sound etc. draws people like moths to a light. Often, novelty is the only asset and the ‘buzz’ dies down and people move on to the next novelty.

Your own facts

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts," said the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "Facts are what separate good political reporting and analysis from hot air.”

The frog experiment

The frog experiment...Put a frog into a pan of hot water and he will jump out. Put a frog into a pan of cool water then gradually raise the temperature to a boil. The frog will stay in the pan and die.

Jury selection

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."
- Mark Twain

Model High School

CBS had a story on 60 minutes about the most highly rated High School in the country, located in southern California. Children from as far away as India and Taiwan attend the school. There is a waiting list to get in and academic standards are very high. Video showed mostly oriental faces in the class room. They noted in the segment that this shows there is hope for American education and this school could serve as a model. How absurd! Let’s see them take gang-bangers from east L.A. and have the same success! When your students are pre-screened , well prepared and from highly motivated homes you cannot claim the school is a “model” for other schools who have to deal with the real world. Note also that the U.S. spends more per capita on education than any other nation. The Washington, D.C. schools have the highest spending per student in the country.