3 TIMELY QUOTES

1. Here's a quote from yesterday's NY Times that is kind of obvious, but is still worth repeating and remembering:

"The thing that transforms something from being an idea to being a physical reality is work." "You can have outlandish ideas, but if you don't work at them, they just remain outlandish ideas. Anyone can have an idea. Work is transformative."

It's from 27-year-old David Longstreth of the band Dirty Projectors, who, according to the article had just written "an elaborate seven-part vocal suite from scratch. In 10 days..." [for Bjork] while rehearsing for a performance with David Byrne at Radio City Music hall and preparing for a summer tour, etc. etc. etc.

As most of us have learned from experience, want to get something done, ask a busy person to do it.

2. One of my busy friends is RJ Eskow, who writes for the Huffington Post and was on a few radio shows lately over the issue of free speech and the rightwing talking heads whose rhetoric has become more and more extreme (inspiring domestic terrorism of the sort that killed those people in that church in the South not long ago, or Dr. Tiller the other day, etc.).

His recent post about this on his blog—A Night Light—is the best thing written about it I've seen, and I'd quote it in full but thanks to modern technology I can just link to the entire post here.

3. In a recent issue of Time magazine, Eric Maddox, "an Army staff sergeant whose book Mission Black List #1 chronicles his interrogations in Iraq that ultimately led to the capture of Sadam Hussein" has this to say about interrogation methods:

"There is nothing intelligent about torture." "If you have to inflict pain, then you've lost control of the situation, the subject and yourself."