Quotes

George Lucas didn’t rape a goddamn thing. He GAVE me my childhood. He provided the fat, pale and sensitive boy I once was with a vibrant, imaginative and optimistic idea of what storytelling could be. George Lucas engineered a waking dream that evolved into an overwhelming desire to become a creator on my own right. I am where I am thanks, in great part, to George Lucas. I went to the University of Southern California film school because that’s where he went. I make TV, films and comics because he showed me that it is possible. If I should ever meet the guy, I will shake his hand and thank him… then go about my business… without making further eye contact.

My Year Without Star Wars

In the period up to roughly the thirteenth century, male bonding ceremonies were performed in churches all over the Mediterranean. These unions were sanctified by priests with many of the same prayers and rituals used to join men and women in marriage.

When A Medieval Knight Could Marry Another Medieval Knight | The Awl

I’m stunned,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby founded by sisters. Her group was also cited in the Vatican document, along with the Leadership Conference, for focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping “silent” on abortion and same-sex marriage.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/vatican-reprimands-us-nuns-group.xml

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.

Kurt Vonnegut – Letters of Note

Can we talk? Ron Paul is not a charming oddball with a few peculiar notions. He’s not merely “out of the mainstream.” Ron Paul is a full-bore crank. In fact he’s practically the dictionary definition of a crank: a person who has a single obsessive, all-encompassing idea for how the world should work and is utterly blinded to the value of any competing ideas or competing interests.

Crackpots Do Not Make Good Messengers | Mother Jones

Yours is a voice for the world not just the neighborhood of Duarte Park. Injustice, unfairness, and the strangle hold of greed which has beset humanity in our times must be answered with a resounding, “No!” You are that answer. I write this to you not many miles away from the houses of the poor in my country. It pains me despite all the progress we have made. You see, the heartbeat of what you are asking for—that those who have too much must wake up to the cries of their brothers and sisters who have so little—beats in me and all South Africans who believe in justice.

A Message Of Solidarity From Archbishop Desmond Tutu | OccupyWallSt.org

via Boing Boing.

Cronkite’s belief in “human rights for everyone” hadn’t been willfully circumscribed to exclude gay people, it was just something he hadn’t previously considered due to the luxury that privilege affords of not having to think about how such abstract commitments apply to others outside of our own limited sphere. An encounter with a new friend revealed a new context in which to test that belief. Does “human rights for everyone” apply to GLBT people too? Cronkite doesn’t seem to have thought much about that before, but once he was led to do so, he concluded that of course it does. And that made him a bridge and a friend and an ally.

slacktivist » Walter Cronkite and a familiar story

A year and a half ago, then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger complained that California was spending nearly 11 percent of its budget on prisons and only 7.5 percent on the university system. He noted, “Thirty years ago, 10 percent of the general fund went to higher education and 3 percent went to prisons.” The spike in penitentiary spending is artificial, and does not reflect crime trends. Since the early 1990s, crime in the state has fallen, whereas the prison population has skyrocketed.

Truthdig – How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War

1. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.

Thirteen Observations Made by Lemony Snicket While Watching Occupy Wall Street From a Discreet Distance

There’s a long and a short story to the tragic tale of Postal Service financial trouble. I’ll start with the short one. Right now, the Postal Service is being forced to pre-pay health benefits for the next 75 years during a 10-year stretch. In the past four years, those prepayments have totaled $21 billion. The agency’s deficit during that time is about $20 billion. Remove these crazy pre-payments — a requirement that no other government agency endures and no private industry would even consider — and the Postal Service would be in the black.

Red Tape – Twisted government accounting behind Postal Service woes