Thank god they're in charge!

"Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking."

George Osborne, 2006      (via)

An excerpt from the Glastonbury programme

Drugs
Drugs are as illegal at Glastonbury as anywhere else. If you buy, sell or use drugs you are likely to be arrested and ejected from the festival. Glastonbury is not a good place to take drugs and certainly not a place to start. Do not buy drugs at Glastonbury, they may have been mixed with other, more dangerous substances. Taking drugs could have harmful or even fatal results. Reassure anyone having a bad reaction.

History Lesson

Marx said: "History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

Santayana said: "He who cannot learn from history is doomed to repeat it."

I says: "Since farce is preferable to tragedy, it appears incautious to learn too much from the past."

quotes subtly altered for purposes of making post look cleverer than it is

What's in a name

Labour sources were pointing the finger at the Unite trade union, which is riven by splits

Phrases to make your heart sink #253

"It's set in stone . . . at the moment"

Security v Liberty

From Slavoj Zizek's The Plague of Fantasies, preface to the new edition

In the last years of the Communist regime in Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu was asked by a foreign journalist how he justified the constraints on foreign travel imposed on Romanian citizens. Was this not a violation of their human rights? Ceausescu answered that these constraints existed to protect an even higher and more important human right, the right to safety, which would have been threatened by too much free travel.

Educative

Its not a joke, but I found this Jerry Seinfeld quote interesting.
"School is not learning, it's exercise. You don't remember anything that you learn but the act of trying to learn is mental exercise and that exercise builds some sort of muscle that you can use."
From

Suf is m

No-one eats your daily bread for you
No-one performs your acts except yourself
As death is hurrying toward you so address your life now to meet it
Every moment of your life is under the eye and judgment of God
Hatim al-Assam

A new day

"Bitch may be the new black but black is the new president, bitch!"
Sir Tracy Morgan Esq

funniest line of the day so far

I, for one, welcome our new competent, informed, professional, and intellectually curious overlords
courtesy of

Overheard overhead

"Yeah all the adults who want to be down with the kids are doing it."

"What's it called?"

"Weblog, or drivel for short."

Mortal Luvbat

The sooner we recognise that we are all mortal, the better. I don't think one has to put a skull on one's desk as a memento mori as they did in the Middle Ages. But I've always felt there is no such thing as darkness: only the absence of light. There is no such thing as evil: only the absence of goodness. And one can accept death more easily if one doesn't think of it as an equal opposite but simply as no life.
Peter Brook

Family

"The great thing about family life is that it introduces you to people you'd otherwise never meet."
Christopher Hitchens

The good doctor

"In America, childhood is a disease. Spontaneity is a symptom."
Oliver Sacks

Great Cocaine Excuses Of Our Time #1

"I need to have some to remind me why I shouldnt do it"

Taskforce

"as for the US, they all coke snorting /
gave birth to hip hop, but now its an orphan"
Chester P