“I think people would just like to stick with one things for a while, and focus on quality,” he pleaded, in a way that suggested the complaint was his own, not that of employees at large." pg 22 “…Consensus is usually not achievable. The likelihood of six intelligent people coming to a sincere and complete agreement on a complex and important topic is very low.” pg 123 “To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict.

“Bill contended that the word exterminate suggested a permanency to a customer that was not possible to provide, while control more closely described the service provided.” pg 98

“In analyzing and security situation, we need to assess these agendas and power relationships. The questions isn’t which system provides the optimal security trade-offs – rather, it’s which system provides the optimal security trade-offs for which players” pg 33< “A terrorist is someone who employs physical or psychological violence against noncombatant in an attempt to coerce, control or simple change a political situation by causing terror in the general populace.”

I’ve changed the “blog quote”. Retiring the old tired mainstay and moving on to something more appropriate. It takes more than a little ego for some one to blog, assuming that your thoughts, ideas and comments actually have meaning. I was always struck by this quote from Stephen King’s the Dark Half. I was always able to relate it to the Stand. When any one reads the Stand or watches any of the disaster films I am sure they imagine themselves as one of the survivors not of the faceless victims.

“… he accused Proprietor Thomas Penn of “taking advantage of publich calamity” and trying “to force down their throats laws of imposition abhorrent to common justice and common reason.” pg. 169 “At first, he was reluctant to guess what practical use might come of balloons, but he was convinced that experimenting with them would someday, as he told Banks, “pave the way to some discoveries in natural philosophy of which at present we have no conception.

Many people use the phrase “Catch-22” to describe a choice with no good options. But the true definition of the phrase is surprisingly captured by the dictionary.com entry: A situation in which a desired outcome or solution is impossible to attain because of a set of inherently illogical rules or conditions" In the book the Catch for Yossarian is that to not want to fly means you are not crazy therefore not eligible for the craziness excuse for not flying.

“Uncontrolled competition, like unregulated liberty, is not really free.” pg. 88 “When quarreling parties are both in the wrong, and are assailed with blame … they will do strange things to save their faces.” Grover Cleveland pg. 167 “Roosevelt cared little for Korea, a little, impotent kingdom that fancied itself an empire – and even less for China. But he was aware that the latter was potentially the world’s greatest market.

Notes from “The Metaphysical Club” By Louis Menand (0-374-52849-7) “The abolitionists were not interested in reform. They were interested in conversion” Page 14 “On [Holmes’s] view, successful people, like Morgan an d Rockefeller, just had a better grasp of social tendencies than unsuccessful people did. Everyone is simply riding the wave chance has put them on. Some people know how to surf; some people drown.” Page 26 “Pragmatically defined, variations are habits.

There is a well known adage that three versions exist to any disagreement. What the first party believes happened, what the second party believed happened and the truth. As a corollary to this I have always felt that when it came to news from Israel by reading the Haaretz, Jerusalem Post and Arutz Sheva somewhere in the middle would be what really happened. With my recent trip to Israel and the recent happenings in Amona I think this system is coming under attack.

So found the following YNet Article via Josh I guess this is one time when my bourbon preference comes in handy. As per US Law bourbon must be made in NEW Oak casks. It is pretty funny that the picture they use with the article is of a bottle of Gentleman Jack which while not technically a bourbon still adhears to the bourbon standard but is charcoal filtered.