Monday
Quotes
Vocabulary
The quotations page.com
Attitude & Behaviour
Power
Historical moments and Isms
Truisms
Humorous & curious
Attitude & Behaviour
If you want to be successful faster, you must double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure.
- Thomas J. Watson Sr.
Excessive pride results in a focus on what was or now is. Humility is required to focus on where you could be & admit you are not there yet.
Shinu made doryoku suru - Apply yourself until you die
Wisdom, justice, fortitude, temperance
- The 4 virtues for Marcus Aerelius (Roman Emperor to 180AD, the one in the movie “Gladiator”)
Persistence, belief, vision, action
- The 4 ingredients of success for Simon Reynolds (Austr. advertising executive)
Yesterday's foresight is tomorrow's conventional wisdom... ...Foresight must be accompanied by implementation…. Nothing is worse than procrastination...Better roughly & quickly than carefully & slowly
- Percy Barnevik (CEO, ABB)
Great spirits will encounter the violent opposition of a thousand mediocre minds
- Albert Einstein
"Any dunkie can tear down a barn, but it takes good men to build one."
- Peggy Noonan, citing an old proverb on FNC, 9/2004
"You get not what you deserve, but what you negotiate"
- Advice from "Astrology Zone" website, September 2004
"Whether I am hungry or well fed, whether I am sick or healthy, or cold or comfortable, or honored and respected or despised and kicked and beaten, even that I shall soon be leaving, all is trivial compared to the fact that I got here. I am a miracle, and so, dear reader, are you."
- Forrest McDonald (Historian)
To live forever or die in the attempt
- The ambition of lead character Yossarian in George Orwell’s “Catch 22”
"Revenge is a dish best served cold."
- attributed as an old Chinese proverb
Power
"Power is often no more than a faction ...(and) (f)actions are blind men with a true aim."
- Victor Hugo
"What is bloated beyond its proportions inevitably collapses.... What is concentrated, coherent, and connected to its past has power. What is dissipated, divided, and distended rots and falls to the ground. The bigger it bloats, the harder it falls."
- Robert Greene and Joost Elffers, “The 48 Laws of Power”
- Carroll Quigley's keys to the success of western civilisation
"Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
- George Orwell, “1984”, the words of Winston Smith's torturer, Inner Party man O'Brien
"The combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return."
- John Davison Rockefeller
Historical moments and Isms
Bernard Lewis on Islam
Salman Rushdie on Islam
“I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies.”
- Mark Twain, 1900
"The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …"
- George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism, 1945
"A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
- Jean Francois Revel (re the Cold War)
“Dear Sir:-…I have not meant to leave anyone in doubt…My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union…I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere could be free. Yours. A. Lincoln.”
- Lincoln letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, 1862
Winston Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You had the choice between war and shame. You chose shame and you will get war anyway.”
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "
- The Constitution of the United States of America
"[This] much I think I do know--that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish."
- Learned Hand
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same G-d who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
- Galileo Galilei
- George Washington's 1790 exchange of letters with Newport synnagogue.
He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us . . . And gentlemen in England now abed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day . . .
- Henry V, Agincourt, 1415
You have come to fight as free men and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight? Aye, fight and you may die, run and you will live. At least a while, and die in your beds many years from now. Would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance? Just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our freedom . . .
- William Wallace, Stirling Bridge, 1297
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
- Shakespeare's Hamlet
Truisms
A people that oppresses another can never itself be free.
When explanations of equal merit are encountered, one should prefer that which is least complex - William of Occam
Explanations should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Albert Einstein
- Umberto Eco's definition of beauty:
“(T)hree things concur in creating beauty:
First of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason we consider ugly all incomplete things;
(T)hen proper proportion or consonance;
(A)nd finally clarity and light, and in fact we call beautiful those things of definite colour.
… (T)he sight of the beautiful implies peace, and … our appetite is calmed similarly by peacefulness, by the good, and by the beautiful … “
- From Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”
"Life wasn't meant to be easy. But take courage child, for it can be delightful."
- George Bernard Shaw (and adopted by Malcolm Fraser)
The dog that barks loudest never bites
Humorous & curious
"I wrestled an alligator, I've tussled with a whale, I’ve handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail, I'm mean, I've murdered a stone, hospitalized a brick, I'm so mean I make medicine sick."
- Muhammed Ali
"I make a much better impression when I'm not there"
- Christopher Walken
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
- Ronald Reagan
"A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."
- Josef Stalin
"In the Soviet Union, the most difficult task of the historian (was) to predict the past."
- Anon. Soviet Historian to Bernard Lewis
"The test of a truly first class intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously without going insane."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Well may we say ‘G-d Save the Queen’, for nothing will save the Governor-General”
- Austr. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, after being fired by Governor-General John Kerr in 1975
“I have the heart of a liberal. It’s in a jar on my desk”
- Senator Phil Gramm (R, Texas)
“Up with this I will not put.”
- Winston Churchill, demonstrating correct grammatical construction
"Government is to life what pantyhose are to sex"
- PJ O'Rourke
Vocabulary
Strange antonyms file: ept, veterate, kempt (real), plussed, nate, nane, podean, imperience, (ex)dustrious, inpert, (ex)choate
than·a·tol·o·gy The study of death and dying, especially in their psychological and social aspects
es·cha·tol·o·gy n. The branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind. A belief or a doctrine concerning the ultimate or final things, such as death, the destiny of humanity, the Second Coming, or the Last Judgment.
atavism - throwback
ir·re·den·tist - One who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one's nation but now subject to a foreign government
in·vid·i·ous adj.
Tending to rouse ill will, animosity, or resentment: invidious accusations.
Containing or implying a slight; discriminatory: invidious distinctions.
Envious.
res·tive adj.
Uneasily impatient under restriction, opposition, criticism, or delay.
Resisting control; difficult to control.
reductive adj : characterized by or causing diminution or curtailment; "their views of life were reductive and depreciabory" - R.H.Rovere (disparaging)
syl·lo·gism Logic. A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All humans are mortal, the major premise, I am a human, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion.
Reasoning from the general to the specific; deduction.
A subtle or specious piece of reasoning.
spe·cious Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious: a specious argument.
Deceptively attractive.
es·o·ter·ic - Intended for or understood by only a particular group: an esoteric cult.
ten·den·tious also ten·den·cious by a strong implicit point of view; partisan
shibboleth -
A word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another.
A word or phrase identified with a particular group or cause; a catchword.
A commonplace saying or idea.
A custom or practice that betrays one as an outsider.
meme A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
apocryphal • adjective 1 widely circulated but unlikely to be true: an apocryphal story.
me·tas·ta·size v. To be transmitted or transferred by metastasis. To be changed or transformed, especially dangerously: “a need for love that would metastasize into an insatiable craving for attention” (Michiko Kakutani). To spread, especially destructively: “ [disinformation]... that even now continues to metastasize... to such a degree that myth threatens to overthrow history” (Gore Vidal).
sclerotic - pertaining to the hardening of a body part because of chronic inflammation
an·o·dyne Capable of soothing or eliminating pain.
mel·lif·lu·ous / mellifluent adj. Flowing with sweetness or honey. Smooth and sweet: “polite and cordial, with a mellifluous, well-educated voice” (H.W. Crocker III).
sten·to·ri·an Extremely loud: a stentorian voice.
phlegmatic : showing little emotion; "a phlegmatic...and certainly undemonstrative man
san·guine Of the color of blood; red. Cheerfully confident; optimistic
bu·col·ic Of or characteristic of the countryside or its people; rustic.
unc·tu·ous adj.
Characterized by affected, exaggerated, or insincere earnestness: “the unctuous, complacent court composer who is consumed with envy and self-loathing” (Rhoda Koenig).
Having the quality or characteristics of oil or ointment; slippery.
Containing or composed of oil or fat.
vul·pine Of, resembling, or characteristic of a fox. Cunning; clever.
per·i·pa·tet·ic adj. Walking about or from place to place; traveling on foot; an itinerant
o·paque Impenetrable by light; neither transparent nor translucent
in·cho·ate In an initial or early stage; incipient. Imperfectly formed or developed: a vague, inchoate idea.
immanent : of a mental act performed entirely within the mind; "a cognition is an immanent act of mind" of qualities that are spread throughout something; "ambition is immanent in human nature"; "we think of God as immanent in nature" Immanence is a religious and philosophical concept. It is derived from the Latin words, in and manere, the original meaning being "to exist or remain within".
in·a·ni·tion n. Exhaustion, as from lack of nourishment or vitality. The condition or quality of being empty.
evanescence : the event of fading and gradually vanishing from sight; "the evanescence of the morning mist"
re·cru·desce - To break out anew or come into renewed activity, as after a period of quiescence.
klep·toc·ra·cy : A government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.
plu·toc·ra·cy Government by the wealthy.
con·san·guin·e·ous consan·guine : Of the same lineage or origin; having a common ancestor.
es·cheatn. Reversion of land held under feudal tenure to the manor in the absence of legal heirs or claimants.
tithe n. A tenth part of one's annual income contributed voluntarily or due as a tax, especially for the support of the clergy or church.
sar·to·ri·al Of or relating to a tailor, tailoring, or tailored clothing: sartorial elegance.
puis·sance Power; might
som·no·lent Drowsy; sleepy
en·co·mi·um n. pl. en·co·mi·ums or en·co·mi·a (-m-) Warm, glowing praise. A formal expression of praise; a tribute.
scabrous/skaybrss/ • adjective 1 rough and covered with scabs. 2 salacious or sordid.
libertine • noun a man who behaves without moral principles, especially in sexual matters.
lu·gu·bri·ous adj. Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree.
gorm·less adj. Chiefly British Lacking intelligence and vitality; dull.
fat‧u‧ous 1. foolish or inane, esp. in an unconscious, complacent manner; silly
sa·lu·bri·ous adj. Conducive or favorable to health or well-being.
im·pri·ma·tur Official approval or license to print or publish, especially under conditions of censorship. Official approval; sanction. A mark of official approval: a directive bearing the imprimatur of high officials.
feb·rile adj. Of, relating to, or characterized by fever; feverish
del·e·te·ri·ous adj.
Having a harmful effect; injurious: the deleterious effects of smoking.
or·dure n.
Excrement; dung.
Something morally offensive; filth.
ob·lo·quy n.
Abusively detractive language or utterance; calumny: “I have had enough obloquy for one lifetime” (Anthony Eden).
The condition of disgrace suffered as a result of abuse or vilification; ill repute.
hirsute /hursyoot/ • adjective having abundant hair on the face or body; hairy.
supercilious • adjective having an air of contemptuous superiority.
syn·cre·tism n. Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.
in‧vet‧er‧ate 2. firmly established by long continuance, as a disease, habit, practice, feeling, etc.; chronic.
gar‧ru‧lous 1. excessively talkative in a rambling, roundabout manner, esp. about trivial matters.
se‧gue any smooth, uninterrupted transition from one thing to another.
dyspeptic adj 2: irritable as if suffering from indigestion
sybaritic adj : furnishing gratification of the senses;
ex‧ig‧u‧ous -–adjective
scanty; meager; small; slender: exiguous income.
reductio ad absurdum - (reduction to the absurd) a disproof by showing that the consequences of the proposition are absurd; or a proff of a proposition by showing that its negation leads to a contradiction;
taking something to absurd lengths: the application of a rule or principle so strictly or literally that the result is ridiculous.
au courant ( ) adj. Informed on current affairs; up-to-date. Fully familiar; knowledgeable
pro tem : for the time being; "he is the president pro tem"; "designated him to act as consul protempore"
cui bo·no Utility, advantage, or self-interest considered as the determinant of value or motivation. - 1. for whose benefit?
Manichaean adj : of or relating to the philosophical doctrine of dualism; "a Manichaean conflict between good and evil"
Jac·o·bin A radical or extreme leftist. A radical republican during the French Revolution
Diable - bl) adj.
Flavored with hot spices: sauce diable
cap·tious adj.
Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults: a captious scholar.
Intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument: a captious question.
Ma·gi –plural noun, singular -gus 1. (sometimes lowercase) the wise men, generally assumed to be three in number, who paid homage to the infant Jesus. Matt. 2:1–12. Compare Balthazar (def. 1), Caspar (def. 1), Melchior (def. 1).
2. (sometimes lowercase) the class of Zoroastrian priests in ancient Media and Persia, reputed to possess supernatural powers.
3. (lowercase) astrologers.
tac·tile
–adjective 1. of, pertaining to, endowed with, or affecting the sense of touch.
2. perceptible to the touch; tangible.
pru·ri·ent –adjective 1. having, inclined to have, or characterized by lascivious or lustful thoughts, desires, etc.
2. causing lasciviousness or lust.
3. having a restless desire or longing.
lap·i·dar·y
1. Also, lap·i·dist /ˈlæpɪdɪst/
6. characterized by an exactitude and extreme refinement that suggests gem cutting: a lapidary style; lapidary verse.
boil·er·plate
2. Journalism. a. syndicated or ready-to-print copy, used esp. by weekly newspapers.
b. trite, hackneyed writing.
3. the detailed standard wording of a contract, warranty, etc.
4. Informal. phrases or units of text used repeatedly, as in correspondence produced by a word-processing system.
mer·e·tri·cious –adjective
1. alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions; tawdry.
2. based on pretense, deception, or insincerity.
3. pertaining to or characteristic of a prostitute.
i·con·o·clast
n.
One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
One who destroys sacred religious images.
Rantipole
Vocabulary
The quotations page.com
Attitude & Behaviour
Power
Historical moments and Isms
Truisms
Humorous & curious
Attitude & Behaviour
If you want to be successful faster, you must double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure.
- Thomas J. Watson Sr.
Excessive pride results in a focus on what was or now is. Humility is required to focus on where you could be & admit you are not there yet.
Shinu made doryoku suru - Apply yourself until you die
Wisdom, justice, fortitude, temperance
- The 4 virtues for Marcus Aerelius (Roman Emperor to 180AD, the one in the movie “Gladiator”)
Persistence, belief, vision, action
- The 4 ingredients of success for Simon Reynolds (Austr. advertising executive)
Yesterday's foresight is tomorrow's conventional wisdom... ...Foresight must be accompanied by implementation…. Nothing is worse than procrastination...Better roughly & quickly than carefully & slowly
- Percy Barnevik (CEO, ABB)
Great spirits will encounter the violent opposition of a thousand mediocre minds
- Albert Einstein
"Any dunkie can tear down a barn, but it takes good men to build one."
- Peggy Noonan, citing an old proverb on FNC, 9/2004
"You get not what you deserve, but what you negotiate"
- Advice from "Astrology Zone" website, September 2004
"Whether I am hungry or well fed, whether I am sick or healthy, or cold or comfortable, or honored and respected or despised and kicked and beaten, even that I shall soon be leaving, all is trivial compared to the fact that I got here. I am a miracle, and so, dear reader, are you."
- Forrest McDonald (Historian)
To live forever or die in the attempt
- The ambition of lead character Yossarian in George Orwell’s “Catch 22”
"Revenge is a dish best served cold."
- attributed as an old Chinese proverb
Power
"Power is often no more than a faction ...(and) (f)actions are blind men with a true aim."
- Victor Hugo
"What is bloated beyond its proportions inevitably collapses.... What is concentrated, coherent, and connected to its past has power. What is dissipated, divided, and distended rots and falls to the ground. The bigger it bloats, the harder it falls."
- Robert Greene and Joost Elffers, “The 48 Laws of Power”
- Carroll Quigley's keys to the success of western civilisation
"Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
- George Orwell, “1984”, the words of Winston Smith's torturer, Inner Party man O'Brien
"The combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return."
- John Davison Rockefeller
Historical moments and Isms
“I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies.”
- Mark Twain, 1900
"The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …"
- George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism, 1945
"A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
- Jean Francois Revel (re the Cold War)
“Dear Sir:-…I have not meant to leave anyone in doubt…My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union…I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere could be free. Yours. A. Lincoln.”
- Lincoln letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, 1862
Winston Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You had the choice between war and shame. You chose shame and you will get war anyway.”
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "
- The Constitution of the United States of America
"[This] much I think I do know--that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish."
- Learned Hand
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same G-d who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
- Galileo Galilei
- George Washington's 1790 exchange of letters with Newport synnagogue.
He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us . . . And gentlemen in England now abed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day . . .
- Henry V, Agincourt, 1415
You have come to fight as free men and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight? Aye, fight and you may die, run and you will live. At least a while, and die in your beds many years from now. Would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance? Just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our freedom . . .
- William Wallace, Stirling Bridge, 1297
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
- Shakespeare's Hamlet
Truisms
A people that oppresses another can never itself be free.
When explanations of equal merit are encountered, one should prefer that which is least complex - William of Occam
Explanations should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Albert Einstein
- Umberto Eco's definition of beauty:
“(T)hree things concur in creating beauty:
First of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason we consider ugly all incomplete things;
(T)hen proper proportion or consonance;
(A)nd finally clarity and light, and in fact we call beautiful those things of definite colour.
… (T)he sight of the beautiful implies peace, and … our appetite is calmed similarly by peacefulness, by the good, and by the beautiful … “
- From Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”
"Life wasn't meant to be easy. But take courage child, for it can be delightful."
- George Bernard Shaw (and adopted by Malcolm Fraser)
The dog that barks loudest never bites
Humorous & curious
"I wrestled an alligator, I've tussled with a whale, I’ve handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail, I'm mean, I've murdered a stone, hospitalized a brick, I'm so mean I make medicine sick."
- Muhammed Ali
"I make a much better impression when I'm not there"
- Christopher Walken
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
- Ronald Reagan
"A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."
- Josef Stalin
"In the Soviet Union, the most difficult task of the historian (was) to predict the past."
- Anon. Soviet Historian to Bernard Lewis
"The test of a truly first class intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously without going insane."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Well may we say ‘G-d Save the Queen’, for nothing will save the Governor-General”
- Austr. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, after being fired by Governor-General John Kerr in 1975
“I have the heart of a liberal. It’s in a jar on my desk”
- Senator Phil Gramm (R, Texas)
“Up with this I will not put.”
- Winston Churchill, demonstrating correct grammatical construction
"Government is to life what pantyhose are to sex"
- PJ O'Rourke
Vocabulary
Strange antonyms file: ept, veterate, kempt (real), plussed, nate, nane, podean, imperience, (ex)dustrious, inpert, (ex)choate
than·a·tol·o·gy The study of death and dying, especially in their psychological and social aspects
es·cha·tol·o·gy n. The branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind. A belief or a doctrine concerning the ultimate or final things, such as death, the destiny of humanity, the Second Coming, or the Last Judgment.
atavism - throwback
ir·re·den·tist - One who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one's nation but now subject to a foreign government
in·vid·i·ous adj.
Tending to rouse ill will, animosity, or resentment: invidious accusations.
Containing or implying a slight; discriminatory: invidious distinctions.
Envious.
res·tive adj.
Uneasily impatient under restriction, opposition, criticism, or delay.
Resisting control; difficult to control.
reductive adj : characterized by or causing diminution or curtailment; "their views of life were reductive and depreciabory" - R.H.Rovere (disparaging)
syl·lo·gism Logic. A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All humans are mortal, the major premise, I am a human, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion.
Reasoning from the general to the specific; deduction.
A subtle or specious piece of reasoning.
spe·cious Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious: a specious argument.
Deceptively attractive.
es·o·ter·ic - Intended for or understood by only a particular group: an esoteric cult.
ten·den·tious also ten·den·cious by a strong implicit point of view; partisan
shibboleth -
A word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another.
A word or phrase identified with a particular group or cause; a catchword.
A commonplace saying or idea.
A custom or practice that betrays one as an outsider.
meme A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
apocryphal • adjective 1 widely circulated but unlikely to be true: an apocryphal story.
me·tas·ta·size v. To be transmitted or transferred by metastasis. To be changed or transformed, especially dangerously: “a need for love that would metastasize into an insatiable craving for attention” (Michiko Kakutani). To spread, especially destructively: “ [disinformation]... that even now continues to metastasize... to such a degree that myth threatens to overthrow history” (Gore Vidal).
sclerotic - pertaining to the hardening of a body part because of chronic inflammation
an·o·dyne Capable of soothing or eliminating pain.
mel·lif·lu·ous / mellifluent adj. Flowing with sweetness or honey. Smooth and sweet: “polite and cordial, with a mellifluous, well-educated voice” (H.W. Crocker III).
sten·to·ri·an Extremely loud: a stentorian voice.
phlegmatic : showing little emotion; "a phlegmatic...and certainly undemonstrative man
san·guine Of the color of blood; red. Cheerfully confident; optimistic
bu·col·ic Of or characteristic of the countryside or its people; rustic.
unc·tu·ous adj.
Characterized by affected, exaggerated, or insincere earnestness: “the unctuous, complacent court composer who is consumed with envy and self-loathing” (Rhoda Koenig).
Having the quality or characteristics of oil or ointment; slippery.
Containing or composed of oil or fat.
vul·pine Of, resembling, or characteristic of a fox. Cunning; clever.
per·i·pa·tet·ic adj. Walking about or from place to place; traveling on foot; an itinerant
o·paque Impenetrable by light; neither transparent nor translucent
in·cho·ate In an initial or early stage; incipient. Imperfectly formed or developed: a vague, inchoate idea.
immanent : of a mental act performed entirely within the mind; "a cognition is an immanent act of mind" of qualities that are spread throughout something; "ambition is immanent in human nature"; "we think of God as immanent in nature" Immanence is a religious and philosophical concept. It is derived from the Latin words, in and manere, the original meaning being "to exist or remain within".
in·a·ni·tion n. Exhaustion, as from lack of nourishment or vitality. The condition or quality of being empty.
evanescence : the event of fading and gradually vanishing from sight; "the evanescence of the morning mist"
re·cru·desce - To break out anew or come into renewed activity, as after a period of quiescence.
klep·toc·ra·cy : A government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.
plu·toc·ra·cy Government by the wealthy.
con·san·guin·e·ous consan·guine : Of the same lineage or origin; having a common ancestor.
es·cheatn. Reversion of land held under feudal tenure to the manor in the absence of legal heirs or claimants.
tithe n. A tenth part of one's annual income contributed voluntarily or due as a tax, especially for the support of the clergy or church.
sar·to·ri·al Of or relating to a tailor, tailoring, or tailored clothing: sartorial elegance.
puis·sance Power; might
som·no·lent Drowsy; sleepy
en·co·mi·um n. pl. en·co·mi·ums or en·co·mi·a (-m-) Warm, glowing praise. A formal expression of praise; a tribute.
scabrous/skaybrss/ • adjective 1 rough and covered with scabs. 2 salacious or sordid.
libertine • noun a man who behaves without moral principles, especially in sexual matters.
lu·gu·bri·ous adj. Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree.
gorm·less adj. Chiefly British Lacking intelligence and vitality; dull.
fat‧u‧ous 1. foolish or inane, esp. in an unconscious, complacent manner; silly
sa·lu·bri·ous adj. Conducive or favorable to health or well-being.
im·pri·ma·tur Official approval or license to print or publish, especially under conditions of censorship. Official approval; sanction. A mark of official approval: a directive bearing the imprimatur of high officials.
feb·rile adj. Of, relating to, or characterized by fever; feverish
del·e·te·ri·ous adj.
Having a harmful effect; injurious: the deleterious effects of smoking.
or·dure n.
Excrement; dung.
Something morally offensive; filth.
ob·lo·quy n.
Abusively detractive language or utterance; calumny: “I have had enough obloquy for one lifetime” (Anthony Eden).
The condition of disgrace suffered as a result of abuse or vilification; ill repute.
hirsute /hursyoot/ • adjective having abundant hair on the face or body; hairy.
supercilious • adjective having an air of contemptuous superiority.
syn·cre·tism n. Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.
in‧vet‧er‧ate 2. firmly established by long continuance, as a disease, habit, practice, feeling, etc.; chronic.
gar‧ru‧lous 1. excessively talkative in a rambling, roundabout manner, esp. about trivial matters.
se‧gue any smooth, uninterrupted transition from one thing to another.
dyspeptic adj 2: irritable as if suffering from indigestion
sybaritic adj : furnishing gratification of the senses;
ex‧ig‧u‧ous -–adjective
scanty; meager; small; slender: exiguous income.
reductio ad absurdum - (reduction to the absurd) a disproof by showing that the consequences of the proposition are absurd; or a proff of a proposition by showing that its negation leads to a contradiction;
taking something to absurd lengths: the application of a rule or principle so strictly or literally that the result is ridiculous.
au courant ( ) adj. Informed on current affairs; up-to-date. Fully familiar; knowledgeable
pro tem : for the time being; "he is the president pro tem"; "designated him to act as consul protempore"
cui bo·no Utility, advantage, or self-interest considered as the determinant of value or motivation. - 1. for whose benefit?
Manichaean adj : of or relating to the philosophical doctrine of dualism; "a Manichaean conflict between good and evil"
Jac·o·bin A radical or extreme leftist. A radical republican during the French Revolution
Diable - bl) adj.
Flavored with hot spices: sauce diable
cap·tious adj.
Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults: a captious scholar.
Intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument: a captious question.
Ma·gi –plural noun, singular -gus 1. (sometimes lowercase) the wise men, generally assumed to be three in number, who paid homage to the infant Jesus. Matt. 2:1–12. Compare Balthazar (def. 1), Caspar (def. 1), Melchior (def. 1).
2. (sometimes lowercase) the class of Zoroastrian priests in ancient Media and Persia, reputed to possess supernatural powers.
3. (lowercase) astrologers.
tac·tile
–adjective 1. of, pertaining to, endowed with, or affecting the sense of touch.
2. perceptible to the touch; tangible.
pru·ri·ent –adjective 1. having, inclined to have, or characterized by lascivious or lustful thoughts, desires, etc.
2. causing lasciviousness or lust.
3. having a restless desire or longing.
lap·i·dar·y
1. Also, lap·i·dist /ˈlæpɪdɪst/
6. characterized by an exactitude and extreme refinement that suggests gem cutting: a lapidary style; lapidary verse.
boil·er·plate
2. Journalism. a. syndicated or ready-to-print copy, used esp. by weekly newspapers.
b. trite, hackneyed writing.
3. the detailed standard wording of a contract, warranty, etc.
4. Informal. phrases or units of text used repeatedly, as in correspondence produced by a word-processing system.
mer·e·tri·cious –adjective
1. alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions; tawdry.
2. based on pretense, deception, or insincerity.
3. pertaining to or characteristic of a prostitute.
i·con·o·clast
n.
One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
One who destroys sacred religious images.
an·te·di·lu·vi·an
| 1. | of or belonging to the period before the Flood. Gen. 7, 8. |
| 2. | very old, old-fashioned, or out of date; antiquated; primitive: antediluvian ideas. |
| 3. | a person who lived before the Flood. |
| 4. | a very old or old-fashioned person or thing. |
avuncular
adjective
1. being or relating to an uncle
2. like an uncle in kindness or indulgence; "showed avuncular concern"
adjective
1. being or relating to an uncle
2. like an uncle in kindness or indulgence; "showed avuncular concern"
ep·i·gone
n. A second-rate imitator or follower, especially of an artist or a philosopher.
n. A second-rate imitator or follower, especially of an artist or a philosopher.
lèse ma·jes·té
- An offense or crime committed against the ruler or supreme power of a state.
- An affront to another's dignity.
prof·li·gate
adj.
adj.
- Given over to dissipation; dissolute.
- Recklessly wasteful; wildly extravagant
Rantipole
a. Wild; roving; rakish. [Low]
n. A wild, romping young person. [Low] --Marrya?.
pur·loin
| 1. | to take dishonestly; steal; filch; pilfer. |
punc·til·i·ous
bro·mide
| extremely attentive to punctilios; strict or exact in the observance of the formalities or amenities of conduct or actions. |
-
- A binary compound of bromine with another element, such as silver.
- Potassium bromide.
- A commonplace remark or notion; a platitude.
- A tiresome person; a bore.
cer·ti·o·ra·ri
| a writ issuing from a superior court calling up the record of a proceeding in an inferior court for review. |
pa·ri pas·su
| 1. | with equal pace or progress; side by side. |
| 2. | without partiality; equably; fairly. |
When Modern Medicine Fails
By Charles Krauthammer
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
www.washingtonpost.com
Friday, July 12, 2002; Page A21
In "Sleeper," Woody Allen wakes up a couple of hundred years in the future to discover, among other things, that scientists have found that tobacco is actually good for you.
Well, not quite yet. But how about eggs? After years of egg phobia, we have learned that eggs may not be bad for you after all. And that butter is healthier than stick margarine. Every month, it seems, some accepted nutritional fact is overturned.
We have come to expect that diet fashions, though promulgated with scientific authority, change like the seasons. What we do not expect is a change in hormone fashions. Hence the shock this week when a massive study of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women had to be halted three years early because the estrogen-progestin combination appeared to cause an alarming increase in invasive breast cancer, blood clots, strokes and heart attacks.
With that, the decades-old medical axiom about the protective powers of hormonal therapy was overturned in a flash. The reverberations were immediate. The company whose pill was being tested, Wyeth Pharmaceutical, lost 24 percent of its value in one day. Millions of women are now frantically calling their doctors for advice on whether to continue.
Most shocking, perhaps, is the simple reminder of how contingent are the received truths of modern medicine. We know how pre-modern medicine got it wrong, from centuries of leeching and bleeding to the lobotomies and shock therapies that destroyed the lives of so many psychiatric patients in the mid-20th century. But we think of modern science as infinitely more enlightened and more solid.
Not so. Less than a century ago, the most exalted scientific theory, Newtonian mechanics, was overthrown. Today its successors, general relativity and quantum mechanics, have yet to be fully reconciled. Thirty years ago, the scientific consensus was that we were headed for global cooling. Today it is global warming. The only thing I feel reasonably sure about is that 30 years from now meteorological science will have delivered yet a new theory, a new threat, a new thrall.
The problem is that even the most sophisticated scientific studies are limited by method, by modeling, by sampling and by an inevitable margin of error. Hence error and revision.
In medicine, because its solemn pronouncements are so widely propagated and so ingrained in people's lives, these revisions are particularly shocking. Yet common. When I was a kid, everyone got a tonsillectomy. It was a rite of passage. We now know that this was unnecessary surgery, indeed, worse than useless. We also routinely were given antibiotics for earaches. It now turns out that this did not hasten recovery, and in fact may have made us, and the population in general, more resistant to antibiotics.
For decades, breast cancer was treated with radical mastectomy, a disfiguring and deeply invasive surgery. The idea that many patients should instead be treated with lumpectomy was ridiculed for decades. It is now accepted medical practice.
My favorite myth is 98.6. If there was anything solid in my medical education, it was that mean body temperature was 98.6 F. Well, in 1992 the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that actually measured it. It turns out to be 98.2 degrees. Where did the 98.6 come from? From the German doctor, Carl Wunderlich. In 1868. No one had bothered to check it since then.
The myths go on and on. That infectious diseases had been conquered. (Then came HIV.) That asthma is a psychological condition. That ulcers are caused by stress or stomach acid. For decades at mid-century, at the height of the psychoanalytic fad, the cream of the New York intelligentsia was sending its healthy children to five-day-a-week psychoanalysis.
So much nonsense. So much damage. Yet science has a hard time with humility. The rage today is regenerative medicine. Stem cells. Cloning. The growing, essentially, of replacement parts. It sounds wonderful, and it may yet turn out to be.
It is well to remember, however, that this is not the first panacea to be peddled. Yesterday, it was fetal tissue transplants for degenerative diseases and angiogenesis inhibitors for the cure of cancer. All of which looked wonderful on paper but have not panned out.
This is not to say that this embryonic research will not pan out. It is only to say that when you hear Sen. Dianne Feinstein tell you that the research cloning her bill would promote will do wonders for your suffering Aunt Sarah, hold on to your wallet. She's talking about the speculative benefits from the most speculative of new technologies -- at a time when, until yesterday, science could not tell us the effects of existing postmenopausal hormone therapy on known medical conditions.
For now, I'll put my money on Woody Allen. "Sleeper" discovers that hot-fudge sundaes turn out to be good for you too.
By Charles Krauthammer
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
www.washingtonpost.com
Friday, July 12, 2002; Page A21
In "Sleeper," Woody Allen wakes up a couple of hundred years in the future to discover, among other things, that scientists have found that tobacco is actually good for you.
Well, not quite yet. But how about eggs? After years of egg phobia, we have learned that eggs may not be bad for you after all. And that butter is healthier than stick margarine. Every month, it seems, some accepted nutritional fact is overturned.
We have come to expect that diet fashions, though promulgated with scientific authority, change like the seasons. What we do not expect is a change in hormone fashions. Hence the shock this week when a massive study of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women had to be halted three years early because the estrogen-progestin combination appeared to cause an alarming increase in invasive breast cancer, blood clots, strokes and heart attacks.
With that, the decades-old medical axiom about the protective powers of hormonal therapy was overturned in a flash. The reverberations were immediate. The company whose pill was being tested, Wyeth Pharmaceutical, lost 24 percent of its value in one day. Millions of women are now frantically calling their doctors for advice on whether to continue.
Most shocking, perhaps, is the simple reminder of how contingent are the received truths of modern medicine. We know how pre-modern medicine got it wrong, from centuries of leeching and bleeding to the lobotomies and shock therapies that destroyed the lives of so many psychiatric patients in the mid-20th century. But we think of modern science as infinitely more enlightened and more solid.
Not so. Less than a century ago, the most exalted scientific theory, Newtonian mechanics, was overthrown. Today its successors, general relativity and quantum mechanics, have yet to be fully reconciled. Thirty years ago, the scientific consensus was that we were headed for global cooling. Today it is global warming. The only thing I feel reasonably sure about is that 30 years from now meteorological science will have delivered yet a new theory, a new threat, a new thrall.
The problem is that even the most sophisticated scientific studies are limited by method, by modeling, by sampling and by an inevitable margin of error. Hence error and revision.
In medicine, because its solemn pronouncements are so widely propagated and so ingrained in people's lives, these revisions are particularly shocking. Yet common. When I was a kid, everyone got a tonsillectomy. It was a rite of passage. We now know that this was unnecessary surgery, indeed, worse than useless. We also routinely were given antibiotics for earaches. It now turns out that this did not hasten recovery, and in fact may have made us, and the population in general, more resistant to antibiotics.
For decades, breast cancer was treated with radical mastectomy, a disfiguring and deeply invasive surgery. The idea that many patients should instead be treated with lumpectomy was ridiculed for decades. It is now accepted medical practice.
My favorite myth is 98.6. If there was anything solid in my medical education, it was that mean body temperature was 98.6 F. Well, in 1992 the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that actually measured it. It turns out to be 98.2 degrees. Where did the 98.6 come from? From the German doctor, Carl Wunderlich. In 1868. No one had bothered to check it since then.
The myths go on and on. That infectious diseases had been conquered. (Then came HIV.) That asthma is a psychological condition. That ulcers are caused by stress or stomach acid. For decades at mid-century, at the height of the psychoanalytic fad, the cream of the New York intelligentsia was sending its healthy children to five-day-a-week psychoanalysis.
So much nonsense. So much damage. Yet science has a hard time with humility. The rage today is regenerative medicine. Stem cells. Cloning. The growing, essentially, of replacement parts. It sounds wonderful, and it may yet turn out to be.
It is well to remember, however, that this is not the first panacea to be peddled. Yesterday, it was fetal tissue transplants for degenerative diseases and angiogenesis inhibitors for the cure of cancer. All of which looked wonderful on paper but have not panned out.
This is not to say that this embryonic research will not pan out. It is only to say that when you hear Sen. Dianne Feinstein tell you that the research cloning her bill would promote will do wonders for your suffering Aunt Sarah, hold on to your wallet. She's talking about the speculative benefits from the most speculative of new technologies -- at a time when, until yesterday, science could not tell us the effects of existing postmenopausal hormone therapy on known medical conditions.
For now, I'll put my money on Woody Allen. "Sleeper" discovers that hot-fudge sundaes turn out to be good for you too.
The 100 largest economic entities
Market capitalisation in US dollars, billions
1USA13,956
2 JAPAN 2452
3 UK 2149
4 EURONEXT 2070
5 GERMANY 1072
6 CANADA 615
7 SWITZERLAND527
8 ITALY 527
9 HONG KONG506
10 SPAIN 468
11 AUSTRALIA 375
12 General Electric (US) 374
13 Microsoft (US) 343
14 TAIWAN 293
15 Exxon Mobil (US) 269
16 Wal-Mart (US) 266
17 Pfizer (US) 258
18 Citigroup Inc (US) 256
19 SWEDEN 237
20 Intel (US) 233
21 AIG (US) 202
22 SOUTH KOREA 194
23 FINLAND 190
24 IBM (US) 186
25 BRAZIL 186
26 Johnson & Johnson (US) 178
27 BP (EUR) 169
28 GlaxoSmithKline (EUR) 157
29 SOUTH AFRICA 155
30 Cisco (US) 154
31 Vodafone (EUR) 141
32 AOL TimeW (US) 139
33 Merck (US) 134
34 Verizon (US) 134
35 SBC Comm (US) 129
36 MEXICO 120
37 MALAYSIA 119
38 Home Depot (US) 118
39 SINGAPORE 116
40 Berkshire Hathaway (US) 113
41 Coca-Cola (US) 111
42 Nokia (EUR) 108
43 HSBC (EUR) 107
44 Royal Dutch (EUR) 103
45 Philip Morris (US) 102
46 Procter & Gamble (US) 100
47 Bank of America (US) 98
48 TOTAL Fina Elf (EUR) 98
49 Toyota (JAP) 96
50 Bristol-Myers (US) 96
51 ChevronTexaco (US) 94
52 DENMARK 93
53 Oracle (US) 93
54 Novartis (EUR) 91
55 Tyco (US) 90
56 Eli Lilly (US) 86
57 GREECE 86
58 Abbott Labs (US) 86
59 PepsiCo (US) 84
60 American Home (US) 82
61 AstraZeneca (EUR) 80
62 Wells Fargo (US) 80
63 Fannie Mae (US) 77
64 J.P. Morgan Chase (US) 77
65 Dell Computer (US) 76
66 IRELAND 75
67 BellSouth (US) 73
68 Viacom (US) 69
69 NORWAY 69
70 AT&T (US) 67
71 Shell Trading (EUR) 66
72 Morgan Stanley (US) 65
73 UBS (EUR) 64
74 UPS (US) 63
75 Telecom Italia (EUR) 62
76 Taiwan Semiconductor 61
77 Siemens (EUR) 61
78 Amgen (US) 59
79 Medtronic (US) 59
80 Kraft Foods (US) 58
81 ISRAEL 58
82 China Mobile (HK) 58
83 Telefonica (EUR) 58
84 Allianz (EUR) 57
85 CHILE 56
86 Barclays (EUR) 56
87 Vivendi Universal (EUR) 55
88 Unilever (EUR) 55
89 Aventis (EUR) 54
90 Pharmacia (US) 53
91 Eni (EUR) 53
92 Credit Suisse (EUR) 52
93 Nippon T&T (JAP) 52
94 Schering-Plough (US) 51
95 Deutsche Telekom (EUR)50
96 ING (EUR 50
97 American Express (US) 48
98 TURKEY 47
99 Merrill Lynch (US) 46
100 SAP (EUR) 46
Market capitalisation in US dollars, billions
1USA13,956
2 JAPAN 2452
3 UK 2149
4 EURONEXT 2070
5 GERMANY 1072
6 CANADA 615
7 SWITZERLAND527
8 ITALY 527
9 HONG KONG506
10 SPAIN 468
11 AUSTRALIA 375
12 General Electric (US) 374
13 Microsoft (US) 343
14 TAIWAN 293
15 Exxon Mobil (US) 269
16 Wal-Mart (US) 266
17 Pfizer (US) 258
18 Citigroup Inc (US) 256
19 SWEDEN 237
20 Intel (US) 233
21 AIG (US) 202
22 SOUTH KOREA 194
23 FINLAND 190
24 IBM (US) 186
25 BRAZIL 186
26 Johnson & Johnson (US) 178
27 BP (EUR) 169
28 GlaxoSmithKline (EUR) 157
29 SOUTH AFRICA 155
30 Cisco (US) 154
31 Vodafone (EUR) 141
32 AOL TimeW (US) 139
33 Merck (US) 134
34 Verizon (US) 134
35 SBC Comm (US) 129
36 MEXICO 120
37 MALAYSIA 119
38 Home Depot (US) 118
39 SINGAPORE 116
40 Berkshire Hathaway (US) 113
41 Coca-Cola (US) 111
42 Nokia (EUR) 108
43 HSBC (EUR) 107
44 Royal Dutch (EUR) 103
45 Philip Morris (US) 102
46 Procter & Gamble (US) 100
47 Bank of America (US) 98
48 TOTAL Fina Elf (EUR) 98
49 Toyota (JAP) 96
50 Bristol-Myers (US) 96
51 ChevronTexaco (US) 94
52 DENMARK 93
53 Oracle (US) 93
54 Novartis (EUR) 91
55 Tyco (US) 90
56 Eli Lilly (US) 86
57 GREECE 86
58 Abbott Labs (US) 86
59 PepsiCo (US) 84
60 American Home (US) 82
61 AstraZeneca (EUR) 80
62 Wells Fargo (US) 80
63 Fannie Mae (US) 77
64 J.P. Morgan Chase (US) 77
65 Dell Computer (US) 76
66 IRELAND 75
67 BellSouth (US) 73
68 Viacom (US) 69
69 NORWAY 69
70 AT&T (US) 67
71 Shell Trading (EUR) 66
72 Morgan Stanley (US) 65
73 UBS (EUR) 64
74 UPS (US) 63
75 Telecom Italia (EUR) 62
76 Taiwan Semiconductor 61
77 Siemens (EUR) 61
78 Amgen (US) 59
79 Medtronic (US) 59
80 Kraft Foods (US) 58
81 ISRAEL 58
82 China Mobile (HK) 58
83 Telefonica (EUR) 58
84 Allianz (EUR) 57
85 CHILE 56
86 Barclays (EUR) 56
87 Vivendi Universal (EUR) 55
88 Unilever (EUR) 55
89 Aventis (EUR) 54
90 Pharmacia (US) 53
91 Eni (EUR) 53
92 Credit Suisse (EUR) 52
93 Nippon T&T (JAP) 52
94 Schering-Plough (US) 51
95 Deutsche Telekom (EUR)50
96 ING (EUR 50
97 American Express (US) 48
98 TURKEY 47
99 Merrill Lynch (US) 46
100 SAP (EUR) 46
Reefer Madness
By BILL KELLER, The New York Times, November 30, 2002
We interrupt our coverage of the war on terrorism to check in with that other permanent conflict against a stateless enemy, the war on drugs. To judge by the glee at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the drug warriors have just accomplished the moral equivalent of routing the Taliban ・helping to halt a relentless jihad against the nation's drug laws.
Ballot initiatives in Ohio (treatment rather than prison for nonviolent drug offenders), Arizona (the same, plus making marijuana possession the equivalent of a traffic ticket, and providing free pot for medical use) and Nevada (full legalization of marijuana) lost decisively this month. Liberalization measures in Florida and Michigan never even made it to the ballot.
Some of this was due to the Republican election tide. Some was generational ・boomer parents like me, fearful of seeing our teenagers become drug-addled slackers. (John Walters, the White House drug czar, shrewdly played on this anxiety by hyping the higher potency of today's pot with the line, "This is not your father's marijuana.") Some may have been a reluctance to loosen any social safety belts when the nation is under threat. Certainly a major factor was that proponents of change, who had been winning carefully poll-tested ballot measures, state by state, since California in 1996, found themselves facing a serious and well-financed opposition, cheered on by Mr. Walters.
The truly amazing thing is that 30 years into the modern war on drugs, the discourse is still focused disproportionately on marijuana rather than more important and excruciatingly hard problems like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines.
The drug liberalizers ・an alliance of legal reformers, liberals, libertarians and potheads ・dwell on marijuana in part because a lot of the energy and money in their campaign comes from people who like to smoke pot and want the government off their backs. Also, marijuana has provided them with their most marketable wedge issue, the use of pot to relieve the suffering of AIDS and cancer patients. Never mind that the medical benefits of smoking marijuana are still mostly unproven (in part because the F.D.A. almost never approves the research and the pharmaceuticals industry sees no money in it). The issue may be peripheral, but it appeals to our compassion, especially when the administration plays the heartless heavy by sending SWAT teams to arrest people in wheelchairs. Thus a movement that started, at least in the minds of reform sponsors like the billionaire George Soros, as an effort to reduce the ravages of both drugs and the war on drugs, has become mostly about pot smoking.
The more interesting question is why the White House is so obsessed with marijuana. The memorable achievements of Mr. Walters's brief tenure have been things like cutting off student loans for kids with pot convictions, threatening doctors who recommend pot to cancer patients and introducing TV commercials that have the tone and credibility of wartime propaganda. One commercial tells pot smokers that they are subsidizing terrorists. Another shows a stoned teenager discovering a handgun in Dad's desk drawer and dreamily shooting a friend. (You'll find it at www.mediacampaign.org. Watch it with the sound off and you'd swear it was an ad for gun control.)
Drug czars used to draw a distinction between casual-use drugs like marijuana and the hard drugs whose craving breeds crime and community desolation. But this is not your father's drug czar. Mr. Walters insists marijuana is inseparable from heroin or cocaine. He offers two arguments, both of which sound as if they came from the same people who manufacture the Bush administration's flimsy economic logic.
One is that marijuana is a "gateway" to hard-drug use. Actually Mr. Walters, who is a political scientist but likes to sound like an epidemiologist, prefers to say that pot use is an "increased risk factor" for other drugs. The point in our conversation when my nonsense-alarm went off was when he likened the relationship between pot and hard drugs to that between cholesterol and heart disease. In fact, the claim that marijuana leads to the use of other drugs appears to be unfounded. On the contrary, an interesting new study by Andrew Morral of RAND, out in the December issue of the British journal Addiction, shows that the correlation between pot and hard drugs can be fully explained by the fact that some people, by virtue of genetics or circumstances, have a predisposition to use drugs.
Mr. Walters's other justification for turning his office into the War on Pot is the dramatic increase in the number of marijuana smokers seeking professional help. This, he claims, reflects an alarming rise in the number of people hooked on cannabis. But common sense and the government's own statistics suggest an alternative explanation: if you're caught with pot, enrolling in a treatment program is the price of avoiding jail. And marijuana arrests have doubled in less than a decade, to 700,000 a year, even as use of the drug has remained static. In other words, the stampede of pot smokers into treatment is probably not a sign of more dependency, but of more aggressive enforcement.
So what's really going on at the White House drug office? I can think of three answers. One is that they are sincerely worried about pot. Marijuana is not harmless. Regular pot smoking can mess with your memory and attention span, your immune system and fertility. Mr. Walters may feel the dangers justify a lot of hyperbole.
A second explanation is the old political-bureaucratic imperative. To justify a $19 billion drug control program you need a threat that touches middle-class voters ・not just the few million mostly wretched, mostly inner-city, mostly nonvoting users of heroin and cocaine. And you want to be able to claim success. When he appointed Mr. Walters, President Bush announced he wanted "measurable results," and the measure would be a reduction in the number of people who admit to being recent drug users ・10 percent by 2004. Well, since three-fourths of illicit drug users are pot smokers, the easy way to get the numbers down is to attack the least important aspect of the drug problem. That will give President Bush some bogus victories to boast about when he runs for re-election.
The third reason is the culture war. Mr. Walters is a veteran of the conservative political bunkers, where pot is viewed as a manifestation of moral degeneracy. "It's still about the war in Vietnam and growing your hair long," says Mark Kleiman, a drug law expert at U.C.L.A. and a thoughtful centrist in a debate monopolized by extremes. "It's the 60's being replayed again and again and again ・the S.D.S. versus the football team." For this White House, to give ground on pot would be a moral surrender.
Mr. Kleiman's view, which I find persuasive, is that the way to deal with marijuana is to remove criminal penalties for possession, use (recreational or medicinal) and cultivation of small amounts, but not to legalize sale. It's silly and costly to treat people as outlaws for enjoying a drug that is roughly as addictive as caffeine and far less destructive than tobacco or alcohol. At the same time, the inexorable logic of a legal marketplace would mean a lot more consumption and abuse. Consider this statistic: Fifty percent of the liquor industry's revenues are derived from alcoholics ・people who down at least four drinks every day. The sin business, whether it's a private liquor company or a state-run lottery, may preach responsible behavior, but it thrives on addiction.
Once you're past pot, you face the gloomy landscape of hard drugs, along with newer chemical worries like Ecstasy. If your experience of the hard-core drug world is mostly from movies like "Traffic" or two splendid HBO series, "The Corner" and "The Wire," you may be inclined to despair of easy answers. You would not be wrong. The moralistic drug war has overstuffed our prisons, left communities fatherless, fed corruption, consumed vast quantities of law enforcement time and money, and led us into some cynical foreign ventures, all without making drugs scarcer or more expensive. Legalization, on the other hand, means less crime and inner-city misery, but more addicts.
The things worth doing are incremental and unglamorous and lacking in demagogic appeal. They aim not at winning a spurious war but at minimizing harm ・both the harm caused by drugs, and the harm caused by draconian enforcement. Almost everyone (including Mr. Walters, in principle) agrees that diverting drug users into treatment, preferably backed by the threat of jail, is much better than consigning them to prison. But liberalizers are all carrot, and drug warriors are all stick. The drug czar who so eagerly intervened in Arizona and Nevada has kept his distance from efforts to humanize New York's merciless and failed Rockefeller drug laws.
Drug reform requires not only money, creativity and patience, but also the political courage to face down ideologues. And political courage, you may have noticed, is a lot harder to come by than drugs.
By BILL KELLER, The New York Times, November 30, 2002
We interrupt our coverage of the war on terrorism to check in with that other permanent conflict against a stateless enemy, the war on drugs. To judge by the glee at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the drug warriors have just accomplished the moral equivalent of routing the Taliban ・helping to halt a relentless jihad against the nation's drug laws.
Ballot initiatives in Ohio (treatment rather than prison for nonviolent drug offenders), Arizona (the same, plus making marijuana possession the equivalent of a traffic ticket, and providing free pot for medical use) and Nevada (full legalization of marijuana) lost decisively this month. Liberalization measures in Florida and Michigan never even made it to the ballot.
Some of this was due to the Republican election tide. Some was generational ・boomer parents like me, fearful of seeing our teenagers become drug-addled slackers. (John Walters, the White House drug czar, shrewdly played on this anxiety by hyping the higher potency of today's pot with the line, "This is not your father's marijuana.") Some may have been a reluctance to loosen any social safety belts when the nation is under threat. Certainly a major factor was that proponents of change, who had been winning carefully poll-tested ballot measures, state by state, since California in 1996, found themselves facing a serious and well-financed opposition, cheered on by Mr. Walters.
The truly amazing thing is that 30 years into the modern war on drugs, the discourse is still focused disproportionately on marijuana rather than more important and excruciatingly hard problems like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines.
The drug liberalizers ・an alliance of legal reformers, liberals, libertarians and potheads ・dwell on marijuana in part because a lot of the energy and money in their campaign comes from people who like to smoke pot and want the government off their backs. Also, marijuana has provided them with their most marketable wedge issue, the use of pot to relieve the suffering of AIDS and cancer patients. Never mind that the medical benefits of smoking marijuana are still mostly unproven (in part because the F.D.A. almost never approves the research and the pharmaceuticals industry sees no money in it). The issue may be peripheral, but it appeals to our compassion, especially when the administration plays the heartless heavy by sending SWAT teams to arrest people in wheelchairs. Thus a movement that started, at least in the minds of reform sponsors like the billionaire George Soros, as an effort to reduce the ravages of both drugs and the war on drugs, has become mostly about pot smoking.
The more interesting question is why the White House is so obsessed with marijuana. The memorable achievements of Mr. Walters's brief tenure have been things like cutting off student loans for kids with pot convictions, threatening doctors who recommend pot to cancer patients and introducing TV commercials that have the tone and credibility of wartime propaganda. One commercial tells pot smokers that they are subsidizing terrorists. Another shows a stoned teenager discovering a handgun in Dad's desk drawer and dreamily shooting a friend. (You'll find it at www.mediacampaign.org. Watch it with the sound off and you'd swear it was an ad for gun control.)
Drug czars used to draw a distinction between casual-use drugs like marijuana and the hard drugs whose craving breeds crime and community desolation. But this is not your father's drug czar. Mr. Walters insists marijuana is inseparable from heroin or cocaine. He offers two arguments, both of which sound as if they came from the same people who manufacture the Bush administration's flimsy economic logic.
One is that marijuana is a "gateway" to hard-drug use. Actually Mr. Walters, who is a political scientist but likes to sound like an epidemiologist, prefers to say that pot use is an "increased risk factor" for other drugs. The point in our conversation when my nonsense-alarm went off was when he likened the relationship between pot and hard drugs to that between cholesterol and heart disease. In fact, the claim that marijuana leads to the use of other drugs appears to be unfounded. On the contrary, an interesting new study by Andrew Morral of RAND, out in the December issue of the British journal Addiction, shows that the correlation between pot and hard drugs can be fully explained by the fact that some people, by virtue of genetics or circumstances, have a predisposition to use drugs.
Mr. Walters's other justification for turning his office into the War on Pot is the dramatic increase in the number of marijuana smokers seeking professional help. This, he claims, reflects an alarming rise in the number of people hooked on cannabis. But common sense and the government's own statistics suggest an alternative explanation: if you're caught with pot, enrolling in a treatment program is the price of avoiding jail. And marijuana arrests have doubled in less than a decade, to 700,000 a year, even as use of the drug has remained static. In other words, the stampede of pot smokers into treatment is probably not a sign of more dependency, but of more aggressive enforcement.
So what's really going on at the White House drug office? I can think of three answers. One is that they are sincerely worried about pot. Marijuana is not harmless. Regular pot smoking can mess with your memory and attention span, your immune system and fertility. Mr. Walters may feel the dangers justify a lot of hyperbole.
A second explanation is the old political-bureaucratic imperative. To justify a $19 billion drug control program you need a threat that touches middle-class voters ・not just the few million mostly wretched, mostly inner-city, mostly nonvoting users of heroin and cocaine. And you want to be able to claim success. When he appointed Mr. Walters, President Bush announced he wanted "measurable results," and the measure would be a reduction in the number of people who admit to being recent drug users ・10 percent by 2004. Well, since three-fourths of illicit drug users are pot smokers, the easy way to get the numbers down is to attack the least important aspect of the drug problem. That will give President Bush some bogus victories to boast about when he runs for re-election.
The third reason is the culture war. Mr. Walters is a veteran of the conservative political bunkers, where pot is viewed as a manifestation of moral degeneracy. "It's still about the war in Vietnam and growing your hair long," says Mark Kleiman, a drug law expert at U.C.L.A. and a thoughtful centrist in a debate monopolized by extremes. "It's the 60's being replayed again and again and again ・the S.D.S. versus the football team." For this White House, to give ground on pot would be a moral surrender.
Mr. Kleiman's view, which I find persuasive, is that the way to deal with marijuana is to remove criminal penalties for possession, use (recreational or medicinal) and cultivation of small amounts, but not to legalize sale. It's silly and costly to treat people as outlaws for enjoying a drug that is roughly as addictive as caffeine and far less destructive than tobacco or alcohol. At the same time, the inexorable logic of a legal marketplace would mean a lot more consumption and abuse. Consider this statistic: Fifty percent of the liquor industry's revenues are derived from alcoholics ・people who down at least four drinks every day. The sin business, whether it's a private liquor company or a state-run lottery, may preach responsible behavior, but it thrives on addiction.
Once you're past pot, you face the gloomy landscape of hard drugs, along with newer chemical worries like Ecstasy. If your experience of the hard-core drug world is mostly from movies like "Traffic" or two splendid HBO series, "The Corner" and "The Wire," you may be inclined to despair of easy answers. You would not be wrong. The moralistic drug war has overstuffed our prisons, left communities fatherless, fed corruption, consumed vast quantities of law enforcement time and money, and led us into some cynical foreign ventures, all without making drugs scarcer or more expensive. Legalization, on the other hand, means less crime and inner-city misery, but more addicts.
The things worth doing are incremental and unglamorous and lacking in demagogic appeal. They aim not at winning a spurious war but at minimizing harm ・both the harm caused by drugs, and the harm caused by draconian enforcement. Almost everyone (including Mr. Walters, in principle) agrees that diverting drug users into treatment, preferably backed by the threat of jail, is much better than consigning them to prison. But liberalizers are all carrot, and drug warriors are all stick. The drug czar who so eagerly intervened in Arizona and Nevada has kept his distance from efforts to humanize New York's merciless and failed Rockefeller drug laws.
Drug reform requires not only money, creativity and patience, but also the political courage to face down ideologues. And political courage, you may have noticed, is a lot harder to come by than drugs.
