Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, re-arrange, and

Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, re-arrange, and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. -Banksy, street artist (b. 1974)

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it...

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

A man's library is a sort of harem. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

A man's library is a sort of harem.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deeply. Let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can. -Hafez

Don't surrender your loneliness / So quickly. / Let it cut more deeply. / Let it ferment and season you / As few human / Or even divine ingredients can. -Hafez, poet (1315-1390)

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

The tragedy of modern war is not so much that young men die but that they die fighting each other, instead of their real enemies back home in the capi

The tragedy of modern war is not so much that young men die but that they die fighting each other, instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
-Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake.

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

Not thinking critically, I assumed that the "successful" prayers were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof that there was...

Not thinking critically, I assumed that the "successful" prayers were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof that there was something wrong with me. -Dan Barker, former preacher, musician (b. 1949)

Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade in public. Never clothe them in vulgar and shoddy attire. -George W. Crane

Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade in public. Never clothe them in vulgar and shoddy attire. -George W. Crane

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent -Epicurious

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? -Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! -Andre Gide

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! -Andre Gide, author, Nobel laureate (1869-1951)

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience. -Emily Dickinson

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
-Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -Dwight D. Eisenhower

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. --Dwight David Eisenhower, (1890-1969)

So, this blog is really just the source of my random quotes for my gmail account. Unfortunately it only will take from the top 10 of the list, so I've got to do something about that... But the blog provides a feed and the feed feeds the random sig labs feature in gmail. I just turn on the labs feature and slap http://feeds2.feedburner.com/DwightsQuoteCollection?format=xml in to my feed area and voila. Still not nearly as cool as the unix randomizer which would let me pull from any of the 400 or so quotes that I have. Also, it limits quotes to one line and 96 characters. But it is better than nothing for now.

I figure if I want to make this in to a blog that has interesting content, I can do an analysis of why each quote resonated with me at the moment, why it was important to me. This one is pretty obvious. The fact that he was the president who shared a name with me, he had grave concerns about the creeping military-industrial complex (he was the one to coin that term in a farewell address to the nation in an address late in his second term), and also an examination of the security vs. freedom dilemma that we continuously have to look at in our society.

I personally feel that military spending beyond what is needed for simple defense is inherently economic opportunities lost. On the guns vs. butter debate, I fall squarely in the butter camp. The fact that the military consumes so much of our governments resources really is tragic. We could have a balanced budget simply by dismantling the military. I'd love to see a mandatory budget balancing put in where we will not ever deficit spend but where military spending must always come last. So thus if we don't have the political will to tax ourselves sufficiently, we must first take the excess from military spending.

How much are we currently spending on the military? The OMB's web site lists $481.4 billion for 2008 expenditures. The site http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm shows $1449 billion ($1.449 trillion) (they include spending on past vets and interest on the debt.) Even if you take the lower value, you still could knock off a lot of the deficit of the stimulus package. Want to have nationalized health care? That much money would more than cover the cost of it. A military sufficient to the demands of national defense (without the need to "project power in to two theaters simultaneously") would be much, much cheaper than that. Heck, all you need is enough submarines with nukes in them sufficient to wipe humanity off the planet and you'd have a deterrent against being invaded. What would that cost? Not much more than a billion or so I'd imagine. Add in a "projecting" force not small enough to invade, but large enough to contribute to joint operations and you can get away with far less than $50 billion. Canada's (18th largest military spender in the world) defense budget was $18.2 billion. Are they under threat from invasion? Right now we spend more on our military than all the rest of the countries in the world combined.

Our founding fathers (and even Eisenhower) felt that a standing military was a threat to democracy itself. Up until after WWII we had always drawn down our military size after every war, kept a small standing reserve and ramped up again when the need was present. Now there is an economic incentive for those in the military-industrial complex to continue to create war just to keep their jobs secure. So are we in these wars to keep ourselves safe or to keep some fat cats in money? Another quote (that is bigger than 96 characters) sums it up nicely:

On croit mourir pour la patrie, on meurt pour des industriels. (You believe you're dying for the country -- you die for some industrialists.)
-- Anatole France (1844-1924)

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. -Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

"Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power." --Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)