On September 18, 1986, a student at Benicia High School in Benicia, California was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend after an on-campus quarrel. I was a high school sports reporter for the Benicia Herald in 1986-87, and wrote the following column for the newspaper, which it
Politics
"[Latin America] must pass from nationalism to interdependence, but interdependence is senseless without a basis in independence. Only independent nations can become interdependent partners. If not, they become protectorates, neo-colonies, subject states." -- Carlos Fuentes, Foreword, Ariel by José Enrique Rodó (Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 1988)
Philosophy
"To propose to a man that he be someone else, that he become someone else, is to propose that he cease to be himself. Every man defends his own personality, and will agree to a change in his way of thinking or of feeling only in so far as
Life
"Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation
Commerce
"Wasting seven seams of coal meant the mine would have a shorter life, about forty years rather than 140 years if the coal from all ten seams was recovered. Dave questioned the logic of mining only three seams. The mine's financial officer provided an explanation: 'We
Politics
Andrew Pace notes the perils of "doing more with less". A related question: If someone is saying that a public agency should do, say, 110% of its previous work with 90% of its previous resources, then who is getting that 10% of the resources that has been taken
History
-- Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), pg. 309.
History
"Today we reel at the speed of globalization and long for the placid, pastoral times of, say, Edwardian Britain in the years before World War I. Yet people living in those times did not think their lives were placid or that the pace of change was slow. As suffragettes
History
"Conversely and significantly, the vast majority of the joke tellers who were denounced and brought before special Nazi courts received a mild punishment, if any. Usually they were let off with a warning. 'Whispered jokes' were a surrogate for, and not a manifestation of, social conscience and
Chapbook
begin -- John Tabak, The History of Mathematics: Numbers, Revised Edition (New York : Facts on File, 2011), pgs. 160-61.
Music
In the wake of Amy Winehouse's death, many people (intending wit, I suppose) have said that she should have gone to rehab. They miss the point of the song, and miss it in a characteristically American way. In the United States, we see problems as fixable. But many
Communication
[U]nderlying each connection are the core beliefs that the parties about to communicate hold about each other. These colour the whole relationship. If you think a person is incompetent then no matter how much you try to mask that belief it percolates as a subtle energy through the relationship,