"I feel lifeless - more dead than alive."

- Depression Quiz on ask.com

From Karl Clark to Kyoto

It holds more oil than Iraq's proven reserves of 112 billion barrels. It even holds more oil than Saudi Arabia's 250 billion barrels. In fact, Alberta's oil sands deposit contains between 1.75 and 2.5 trillion barrels of oil -- approximately 200 billion barrels of which are recoverable with current technology. That is enough oil to supply all of Canad's petroleum needs for the next 475 years. In fact that is enough proven reserves to supply all of North America's petroleum needs for the next forty-seven years -- without using a single drop of oil from another source. The volume of recoverable oil in the sands is so large that when technological advances prompted the Alberta Energy Utilities Board to include the oil sands as part of Canada's "proven reserves" in 2002, OPEC's share of world petroleum reserves dropped dramatically from 79 to 68 per cent.

Developing Alberta's Oil Sands by Paul Chastko

September 11, 2001

In the picture on ABC News, the North Tower largely blocked their view of the plane hitting the South Tower. Still, they were able to see an enormous blast of smoke behind the North Tower and debris from the explosion falling to the ground below.

"We knew then it was terrorism," Cheney recalls.

p 331, Cheney by Stephen F. Hayes

THE STEPS - CLOSED

Today, the fundamental divisions in American society are not regional or religious but ideological. Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito were not appointed because they were Catholic but because they are conservative. The base of the Republican Party -- from James Dobson and Jay Sekulow among the evangelicals to Ted Olson and Leonard Leo among the Federalists -- recognized that they could use their influence to shape the Court. They organized more, mobilized more, and cared more about the Court than their liberal counterparts. And when their candidate won the presidency, these conservatives demanded more -- a pair of justices who were precisely to their liking (and the ejection of one nominee, Harriet Miers, who was not). With admirable candor, and even greater passion, conservatives have invested in the Court to advance their goals for the country.

In public at least, Roberts himself purports to have a different view of the Court than his conservative sponsors. "Judges are like umpires," he said at his confirmation hearing. "Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them." Elsewhere, Roberts has often said, "Judges are not politicians." None of this is true. Supreme Court justices are nothing at all like baseball umpires. It is folly to pretend that the awesome work of interpreting the Constitution, and thus defining the rights and obligations of American citizenship, is akin to performing the rote, almost mindless task of calling balls and strikes. When it comes to the core of the Court's work, determining the contemporary meaning of the Constitution, it is ideology, not craft or skill, that controls the outcome of cases. As Richard A. Posner, the great conservative judge and law professor, has written, "It is rarely possible to say with a straight face of a Supreme Court constitutional decision that it was decided correctly or incorrectly." Constitutional cases, Posner wrote, "can be decided only on the basis of a political judgment, and a political judgment cannot be called right or wrong by reference to legal norms."

p 338, The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

Our Executive Doesn't

After American and Cuban forces evicted the Spanish from Cuba in 1898, the United States military remained on forty-five square miles along the southern coast of the island. The American presence became official with a treaty signed by the two nations in 1903, eventually setting an annual rent at $4,085. To this day, the American government offers payment to the Cuban government every year, but during the nearly five decades that Fidel Castro has been in power, his government has accepted it only once.

p229, The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

What You Do Not Know

Think of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001: had the risk been reasonably conceivable on September 10, it would not have happened. If such a possibility were deemed worthy of attention, fighter planes would have circled the sky above the twin towers, airplanes would have had locked bulletproof doors, and the attack would not have taken place, period. Something else might have taken place. What? I don't know.

Isn't it strange to see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen?
What kind of defense do we have against that? Whatever you come to know (that New York is an easy terrorist target, for instance) may become inconsequential if your enemy knows that you know it. It may be odd that, in such a strategic game, what you know can be truly inconsequential.

This extends to all businesses. Think about the "secret recipe" to making a killing in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious, then someone next door would have already come up with the idea and it would have become generic. The next killing in the restaurant industry needs to be an idea that is not easily conceived of by the current population of restauranteurs. It has to be at some distance from expectations. The more unexpected the success of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successful the entrepreneur who implements the idea. The same applies to the shoe and the book businesses - or any kind of entrepreneurship. The same applies to scientific theories - nobody has interest in listening to trivialities. The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.

Consider the Pacific tsunami of December 2004. Had it been expected, it would not have caused the damage it did - the areas affected would have been less populated, an early warning system would have been put in place. What you know cannot really hurt you.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Keith Olbermann - Special Comment: Rudy Guiliani

"Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!" - R. Guiliani

There is no room for this. This is terrorism, dressed up, as counter-terrorist. It is not warning, but bullying, substituted for the political discourse now absolutely essential to this country's survival and the freedom of its people. No Democrat has said words like these. None has ever campaigned on the Republicans' flat-footedness of September 11, 2001; none has the requisite, irresponsible, all-consuming ambition; none is willing to say 'I accuse' rather than recognize that, to some degree, all of us share responsibility for our collective stupor. And if it is somehow insufficient - if it is somehow morally, spiritually and politically wrong to screech as Mr. Guiliani has screeched - there is also this: that gaping hole in Mr. Guiliani's argument that Republicans equal life, Democrats equal death.

Not only have the Republicans not lived up to their babbling on this subject, but last fall, the electorate called them on it - as, doubtless, they would call you on it, Mr. Guiliani. Repeat: Go beyond Mr. Bush's rhetorical calamities of 2006. Call attention to the casualties on your watch and your long, waking years of slumber between the two attacks on the World Trade Center. Become the candidate who runs on the 'vote for me or die' platform. Do a Joe McCarthy. Do a Lyndon Johnson. Do a Robespierre. Only, if you choose so to do, do not come back surprised nor remorseful if the voters remind you that terror is not just a matter of casualties. It is just as certainly a matter of the promulgation of fear. Claim a difference between the parties on the voters' chances of survival, and you do Osama bin Laden's work for him. And we, Democrats and Republicans alike, and every variation in between, we, Americans, are sick to death of you and the other terror mongers trying to frighten us into submission - into the surrender of our rights and our reason - and is a betrayal of that for which this country has always stood.

Franklin Roosevelt's words ring true again tonight, and clarified, and amplified. They are just as current now as they were when first he spoke them seventy-four years ago. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and those who would exploit our fear for power, and for their own personal, selfish, cynical gain."