Pennsylvania Nature Quotes

I will be the first to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. It is, after all, the wisest way to be. We pessimists have everything to gain, whereas optimists have a fifty-fifty chance of being disappointed.

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart… To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty… and to procure for their children an education calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted. [For the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1789]

I told him that I believe all things in nature bear the mark of their Maker. The eagle, the owl, and the wind. We sat silently for a long moment, understanding that we are not so different really.

Does everything have a father? Apparently so. A web search on “the father of” turned up fathers for vasectomy reversal, hillbilly jazz, lichenology, snowmobiling, modern librarianship, Japanese whiskey, hypnosis, Pakistan, natural hair care products, the lobotomy, women’s boxing, Modern Option Pricing Theory, the swamp buggy, Pennsylvania ornithology, Wisconsin bluegrass, tornado research, Fen-Phen, modern dairying, Canada’s permissive society, black power, and the yellow schoolbus.

The cause of liberty is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbulence and tumult. It ought to be maintained in a manner suitable to her nature. Those who engage in it, should breathe a sedate, yet fervent spirit, animating them to actions of prudence, justice, modesty, bravery, humanity and magnanimity.

Justices in the United States believe that their duty is to uphold the Constitution, but if they do not understand that the authority of the Constitution itself rests upon the inalienable natural rights of all human beings, then they not only undermine the Constitution, which they are sworn to uphold but also turn themselves into wielders of arbitrary power. Regrettably, this misuse of power occurred in both the Dred Scott decision and in the Roe v. Wade decision (and its subsequent interpretation in cases such as Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Robert P. Casey).

The autumn leaves were pulverized and the fragrance of leaf-decay was pleasant. The air was empty but good. As the sun went down the landscape was like the still frame of an old movie on sepia film. Sunset. A red wash spreading from remote Pennsylvania, sheep bells clunking, dogs in the brown barnyards. I was trained in Chicago to make something of such a scant setting. In Chicago you became a connoisseur of the near-nothing. With a clear eye I looked at a clear scene, I appreciated the red sumac, the white rocks, the rust of the weeds, the wig of green on the bluff over the crossroads.

There are no racists in America, or at least none that the people who need to be white know personally. In the era of mass lynching, it was so difficult to find who, specifically, served as executioner that such deaths were often reported by the press as having happened “at the hands of persons unknown.” In 1957, the white residents of Levittown, Pennsylvania, argued for their right to keep their town segregated. “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens.” the group wrote, “we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.” This was the attempt to commit a shameful act while escaping all sanction, and I raise it to show you that there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such. “We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren’t any,” writes Solzhenitsyn. “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.” This is the foundation of the Dream—its adherents must not just believe in it but believe that it is just, believe that their possession of the Dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and good works. There

I know how prone we are to censure,” Lee continued, “and how ready [we are] to blame others for the non-fulfillment of our expectations. This is unbecoming in a generous people, and I grieve to see its expression. The general remedy for want of success in a military commander is his removal. This is natural, and in many instances proper. For no matter what may be the ability of the officer, if he loses the confidence of his troops disaster must sooner or later ensue.” For all his basic agreement with the principle here expressed, Davis was by no means prepared for the application Lee made in the sentence that followed: “I have been prompted by these reflections more than once since my return from Pennsylvania to propose to Your Excellency the propriety of selecting another commander for this army.

David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University of Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)

ON THE MODUS OPERANDI OF OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT, DONALD J. TRUMP "According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll, President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a new high." The President's response to this news was "“I don’t do it for the polls. Honestly — people won’t necessarily agree with this — I do nothing for the polls,” the president told reporters on Wednesday. “I do it to do what’s right. I’m here for an extended period of time. I’m here for a period that’s a very important period of time. And we are straightening out this country.” - Both Quotes Taken From Aol News - August 31, 2018 In The United States, as in other Republics, the two main categories of Presidential motivation for their assigned tasks are #1: Self Interest in seeking to attain and to hold on to political power for their own sakes, regarding the welfare of This Republic to be of secondary importance. #2: Seeking to attain and to hold on to the power of that same office for the selfless sake of this Republic's welfare, irregardless of their personal interest, and in the best of cases going against their personal interests to do what is best for this Republic even if it means making profound and extreme personal sacrifices. Abraham Lincoln understood this last mentioned motivation and gave his life for it. The primary information any political scientist needs to ascertain regarding the diagnosis of a particular President's modus operandi is to first take an insightful and detailed look at the individual's past. The litmus test always being what would he or she be willing to sacrifice for the Nation. In the case of our current President, Donald John Trump, he abandoned a life of liberal luxury linked to self imposed limited responsibilities for an intensely grueling, veritably non stop two year nightmare of criss crossing this immense Country's varied terrain, both literally and socially when he could have easily maintained his life of liberal leisure. While my assertion that his personal choice was, in my view, sacrificially done for the sake of a great power in a state of rapid decline can be contradicted by saying it was motivated by selfish reasons, all evidence points to the contrary. For knowing the human condition, fraught with a plentitude of weaknesses, for a man in the end portion of his lifetime to sacrifice an easy life for a hard working incessant schedule of thankless tasks it is entirely doubtful that this choice was made devoid of a special and even exalted inspiration to do so. And while the right motivations are pivotal to a President's success, what is also obviously needed are generic and specific political, military and ministerial skills which must be naturally endowed by Our Creator upon the particular President elected for the purposes of advancing a Nation's general well being for one and all. If one looks at the latest National statistics since President Trump took office, (such as our rising GNP, the booming market, the dramatically shrinking unemployment rate, and the overall positive emotive strains in regards to our Nation's future, on both the left and the right) one can make definitive objective conclusions pertaining to the exceptionally noble character and efficiency of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And if one can drown out the constant communicative assaults on our current Commander In Chief, and especially if one can honestly assess the remarkable lack of substantial mistakes made by the current President, all of these factors point to a leader who is impressively strong, morally and in other imperative ways. And at the most propitious time. For the main reason that so many people in our Republic palpably despise our current President is that his political and especially his social agenda directly threatens their licentious way of life. - John Lars Zwerenz

The Extraordinary Persons Project In fact, Ekman had been so moved personally—and intrigued scientifically—by his experiments with Öser that he announced at the meeting he was planning on pursuing a systematic program of research studies with others as unusual as Öser. The single criterion for selecting apt subjects was that they be “extraordinary.” This announcement was, for modern psychology, an extraordinary moment in itself. Psychology has almost entirely dwelt on the problematic, the abnormal, and the ordinary in its focus. Very rarely have psychologists—particularly ones as eminent as Paul Ekman—shifted their scientific lens to focus on people who were in some sense (other than intellectually) far above normal. And yet Ekman now was proposing to study people who excel in a range of admirable human qualities. His announcement makes one wonder why psychology hasn't done this before. In fact, only in very recent years has psychology explicitly begun a program to study the positive in human nature. Sparked by Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania long famous for his research on optimism, a budding movement has finally begun in what is being called “positive psychology”—the scientific study of well-being and positive human qualities. But even within positive psychology, Ekman's proposed research would stretch science's vision of human goodness by assaying the limits of human positivity Ever the scientist, Ekman became quite specific about what was meant by “extraordinary.” For one, he expects that such people exist in every culture and religious tradition, perhaps most often as contemplatives. But no matter what religion they practice, they share four qualities. The first is that they emanate a sense of goodness, a palpable quality of being that others notice and agree on. This goodness goes beyond some fuzzy, warm aura and reflects with integrity the true person. On this count Ekman proposed a test to weed out charlatans: In extraordinary people “there is a transparency between their personal and public life, unlike many charismatics, who have wonderful public lives and rather deplorable personal ones.” A second quality: selflessness. Such extraordinary people are inspiring in their lack of concern about status, fame, or ego. They are totally unconcerned with whether their position or importance is recognized. Such a lack of egoism, Ekman added, “from the psychological viewpoint, is remarkable.” Third is a compelling personal presence that others find nourishing. “People want to be around them because it feels good—though they can't explain why,” said Ekman. Indeed, the Dalai Lama himself offers an obvious example (though Ekman did not say so to him); the standard Tibetan title is not “Dalai Lama” but rather “Kundun,” which in Tibetan means “presence.” Finally, such extraordinary individuals have “amazing powers of attentiveness and concentration.

One of those settlers was Normandy-born and ornately named J. Hector St John de Crevecoeur, who embarked for America in 1754, purchased an estate in Pennsylvania, and married the daughter of an American merchant. In his Letters from an American Farmer, first published in 1782 in English and translated soon after into French, Crevecoeur described his adoptive country and his countrymen in the most flattering terms: We are the most perfect society now existing in the world... Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world... Here a man is free as he ought to be... An American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence – this is an American. It was partly through such fervent testimonies from men like Crevecoeur, and from foreigners like the even more famous Frenchman de Tocqueville and the less famous German Francis Lieber, that America gained its reputation abroad, because third-party

Part One 1. Mr. B.G. (My Testimony) Mr. B.G. Lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, One of my memories is attending the Mill Creek Baptist Church between the age of 8-10. What I remember most about this church is the way they emphasized working with youth. Occasionally heard preaching before Sunday school. Followed by going downstairs to learn an hour-long Bible Lesson. They invested time with us outside regular church hours; Mr. B.G. And his brother would eat pizza at Sunday school teacher's house. Church even planned an all-night sleepover in the basement one time. Never can forget drinking coffee all night, which caused me to have an energy boost. Followed by overwhelming tiredness the whole evening. Played on tennis tables, among many other events. Thinking back, I did enjoy a church that cared about me at such a young age. Only participated a couple of years then stopped going. Thankful for their kindness to teach me from God's Holy word a way to Jesus for the years attended. John Paul Guras and Mr. B.G. both were blessed to have an excellent Sunday school teacher, Mr. Walt Silman. After making this choice, I could have traveled the remainder of my eternally bound life not seeking a real, living God. Many times, Holy Spirit was trying to speak to me, Ignorantly avoided influences like church, praying, reading the Holy Bible. Lost in the jailhouse of sinful darkness, with no care in the world to allow Jesus to direct my decisions. I wanted to lead the helm of my life the way I thought was best. Choosing our selfish way is like shooting an arrow at a target wholly missing the center of the bulls-eye. Doing what pleases me, me, me, leads us astray. Sin leads us to destruction. Jesus alone can change our inward nature to fulfill the center of the Father's will.

The natural dynamic is to drink less, but drink better. There are no longer masses of workers exiting steel factories in Pennsylvania and coal mines in northern England, ready to wash away the day's work with cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon and the like. Most workers sit at computer screens. They still get thirsty, but not for Pabst Blue Ribbon. They want something better-tasting.

The Marcellus Shale is one of the largest deposits of natural gas in the country, and it’s one of the major fracking sites. In fact, the most fracking sites in the entire country are in Pennsylvania, on the Marcellus in Susquehanna County and a bunch of others. Towns like Dimock, Montrose, Springville, Headley. As you know, the gas companies use explosives to drill and they have the FELs.

By the following year, the rumor had been confirmed. Jefferson then spent much of 1802 contemplating the implications of neighboring a large French holding. His immediate concern was access to New Orleans, where the Mississippi River emptied into the Gulf of Mexico—small streams and rivers as far north as Pennsylvania and New York merged and flowed into the vital Mississippi. Jefferson decided to dispatch James Monroe as a special envoy to negotiate with France. Once in Paris, Monroe was to join the American minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and territories near it. Jefferson authorized up to $10 million. Monroe and Livingston, however, were shocked at the French willingness to cede the entirety of the French holding in North America. As transoceanic communication was only as fast as that of a sailing vessel, and relaying the message back to Washington raised the risk of Napoleon changing his mind, the American negotiators went beyond their mandate and agreed in principle to pay $15 million for the territory ranging from New Orleans up to Canada, with a natural western border ending at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The news of the agreement took well over a month to reach the president. With the details finalized through the remainder of 1803, the United States more than doubled in size.

Bill Thelin, a passionate English professor specializing in rhetoric and composition, is a valuable asset to the academic world. With a firm commitment to teaching well, his professional inspiration lies in delivering impactful lessons and seeking opportunities to explore diverse courses, including creative writing. Armed with a Ph.D. in English from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Bill has authored three books and penned around 30 academic articles. He finds solace in the beauty of nature and indulges in his love for writing and reading.

Exasperated, the navy turned to science for help. On October 2, 1957, Hubert Frings, a Pennsylvania State University professor of zoology, got a call from Washington. Would he be willing to come to Midway Atoll for the December/January nesting season? In other words, would Frings make the supreme sacrifice of spending his between-semester break on a tropical island in lieu of hanging around Altoona, Pennsylvania? You bet. Accompanying him would be his wife, Mable, a librarian and bioacoustician with a special interest in cricket and grasshopper “chirp sequences.

The technology to control and destroy people always has in it the seeds of tyranny, and is forever subject to the lowest angels of human nature.

Research from Pennsylvania State University and the Queensland University of Technology shows that more than 80% of searches are informational in nature, and only about 10% of searches are navigational or transactional.3

To sit on a slab of Pennsylvania rock on the AT and watch a hawk rise dozens of feet above me with a simple tilt of a wing, then circle high above for hours on end was one of the greatest thrills I could imagine. And while it was romantic to believe that I was witnessing this majestic spectacle for free, it really came about because someone before me was willing to make it possible.

Nothing wreaks more havoc in our society than pornography. Dr. Mary Anne Layden, of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program of the University of Pennsylvania, told a U.S. Senate sub-committee in 2004 that pornography is every bit as addictive and destructive as compulsive gambling and heroin use. She pulled no punches in her description: Pornography, by its very nature, is an equal opportunity toxin. It damages the viewer, the performer, and the spouses and children of the viewers and performers. It is toxic mis-education about sex and relationships. It is more toxic the more you consume, the “harder” the variety you

One of the most ambitious scanning projects is the Open Research Scan Archive, which aims to produce a database of high-resolution three-dimensional CT scans of all the crania housed in the Mütter Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History,

could not overcome their fear of bullets and arrows and the scalping knife. Protect us,they hollered to the president and the Supreme Executive Council. Send more money, cried battalion colonels. Despite amendments to the Militia Act, Pennsylvania's Revolutionary government failed to win the hearts of Northampton's militiamen. The farmers had grown weary of their role as soldiers. Moreover, a byzantine relationship between Northampton's county lieutenant, a civilian commander of the militia who had been appointed by the president, and battalion officers, who had been elected by their men, foiled the dictates of the law. Isolated by natural boundaries, hampered by poor communications, red tape, and intramural disputes, each Northampton battalion became a fiefdom whose leaders distanced themselves from the county lieutenant, county officials, the president, and the Council. Apprized of mutinous rumblings in Northampton, the president pleaded with the militia: "Let there be one dispute:who shall serve his country best?"" But pep talks and patriotic slogans had lost their sizzle in Northampton. Fearing for his life, the sheriff refused to collect fines from 300 delinquent militiamen. "They wont suffer no sheriff, constable, or any other fit person to serve any executions on them,"he reported." Later, when Indians and Tories threatened to clear settlers from the frontier, the president promised battalion commanders ammunition and money for scouting parties and scalps,but he warned them that the militia could not be useful if "they meet at taverns and spend their time in amusement and frolick."'$ In the months ahead, the mutiny escalated.

One of the surprising lessons of this research is that trying to force an insight can actually prevent the insight. While it’s commonly assumed that the best way to solve a difficult problem is to relentlessly focus, this clenched state of mind comes with a hidden cost: it inhibits the sort of creative connections that lead to breakthroughs. We suppress the very type of brain activity that should be encouraged. For instance, many stimulants taken to increase attention, such as caffeine, Adderall, and Ritalin, seem to make epiphanies much less likely. According to a recent online poll conducted by Nature, nearly 20 percent of scientists and researchers regularly take prescription drugs in order to improve mental performance. The most popular reason given was “to enhance concentration. Because these stimulants shift attention away from the networks of the right hemisphere, they cause people to ignore those neurons that might provide the solution. “People assume that increased focus is always better,” says Martha Farah, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “But what they don’t realize is that intense focus comes with real tradeoffs. You might be able to work for eight hours straight on these drugs, but you’re probably not going to have many big insights.” Marijuana, by contrast, seems to make insights more likely. It not only leads to states of relaxation but also increases brain activity in the right hemisphere.

Matter, Anne, and John Coakley, editors. Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy. University of Pennsylvania Press. McNamara, Jo Ann Kay. Sisters in Arms. Harvard University Press. Monson, Craig A., editor. The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe. University of Michigan Press. ________. Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent. University of California Press. Mooney, C. M., editor. Gendered Voices. University of Pennsylvania Press. Nutton, Vivian. “The Rise of Medical Humanism in Ferrara” (essay). Renaissance Studies. Park, Katharine, and Lorraine Daston, editors. Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750. Zone Books. Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: Medical History of Humanity. HarperCollins.

I am skeptical, only because I have read the 1978 paper by researchers at Pennsylvania State University who tried to warn away white-tailed deer by erecting roadside plywood cutouts of deer rear ends with tails a-flagging. On some, the raised tail was painted white; on others, an actual deer tail had been nailed in place. Sadly, because who wouldn’t want to see our nation’s highways lined with plywood deer asses with decomposing tails, none of it worked.

In 1984, a psychologist named Roger Ulrich studied patients recuperating from gallbladder surgery at a Pennsylvania hospital. Some patients were assigned to a room overlooking a small strand of deciduous trees. Others were assigned to rooms that overlooked a brick wall. Urlich describes the results: “Patients with the natural window view had shorter post-operative hospital stays, had fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes . . . and tended to have lower scores for minor post-surgical complications such as persistent headache or nausea requiring medication. Moreover, the wall-view patients required many more injections of potent painkillers.

town gas boosted to higher heat content with natural gas. By 1940, the national network of gas pipelines, though far from complete, spidered from Texas and Louisiana up through the Middle West and eastward into Pennsylvania.

Poet W.S. Merwin once mused that in order to adequately describe the forests of eastern Pennsylvania where he grew up, he’d “have to speak in a forgotten language.” He was aware that a shift in consciousness is necessary for certain forms of communication and that it’s easy to lose ancient languages we’ve long ceased to practice. How, then, do we speak of the languages that we may need in renewing the Great Conversation?

But the fact that she’d had to push unions to whip up their members to vote was indicative of how little natural support she had in the ranks. The lack of enthusiasm for her candidacy among labor’s foot soldiers in Maryland should have been one of that day’s major warning signs. She also lost Rhode Island, a haven for working-class whites. But the outcome there was overshadowed by Hillary’s victories in more populous states, including Pennsylvania.

energy scholar Vaclav Smil observes, “Even with the rise of industrial machines, the nineteenth century was not run on coal. It ran on wood, charcoal, and crop residues.” It was not until 1900 that coal reached the point of supplying half of the world’s energy demand. Oil was discovered in northwest Pennsylvania in 1859. But it took more than a century—not until the 1960s—for it to supplant coal as the world’s number one energy source. Even so, that hardly meant the end of coal, for consumption has continued to grow. As for natural gas, global consumption has increased 60 percent since 2000.

In 1984, a psychologist named Roger Ulrich studied patients recuperating from gallbladder surgery at a Pennsylvania hospital. Some patients were assigned to a room overlooking a small strand of deciduous trees. Others were assigned to rooms that overlooked a brick wall. Urlich describes the results: “Patients with the natural window view had shorter post-operative hospital stays, had fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes . . . and tended to have lower scores for minor post-surgical complications such as persistent headache or nausea requiring medication. Moreover, the wall-view patients required many more injections of potent painkillers.” The implications of this obscure study are enormous. Proximity to nature doesn’t just give us a warm, fuzzy feeling. It affects our physiology in real, measurable ways. It’s not a giant leap to conclude that proximity to nature makes us happier. That’s why even the most no-nonsense office building includes a park or atrium (in the belief, no doubt, that a happy worker is a productive one).

Early gas pipelines in Pennsylvania were cast iron, screwed together and caulked. Wrought iron replaced cast iron in the last decade of the century. 19 But natural gas was far cheaper than coal and its heat more uniform, qualities which made it desirable for process heating in Pittsburgh’s many glass factories and steel mills. The Great Western Iron Company was the first in the Pittsburgh area to use natural gas, around 1870.20 Many other manufacturers followed. By 1885, Pittsburgh had acquired about five hundred miles of natural-gas pipelines. 21

Thinking probabilistically can be hard. As Howard Kunreuther, emeritus professor and codirector of Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, puts it: “I now believe that even if people understand probability theory, it is challenging to learn how to apply these concepts when making decisions, particularly when dealing with extreme events, such as natural disasters, few people think probabilistically when deciding whether to protect themselves against future losses.

To help members of Congress and their staffs understand the nature of the risk, I invited a computer science and engineering professor from the University of Michigan to visit the Capitol and demonstrate the ease with which a hacker could change an election’s outcome. We gathered in a room in the Capitol Visitor Center, where the professor had set up a paperless voting machine used in numerous states, including swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Four senators participated—Senators Lankford, Richard Burr, Claire McCaskill, and me—and the room was filled with staffers who had come to better understand the process. The professor simulated a vote for president, where we were given a choice between George Washington and the infamous Revolutionary War traitor Benedict Arnold. As you might imagine, all four of us voted for George Washington. But when the result came back, Benedict Arnold had prevailed. The professor had used malicious code to hack the software of the voting machine in a way that assured Arnold’s victory, no matter how the four of us had voted. He told us that the machine was very easily hacked, enough so that, in a demonstration elsewhere, he turned one into a video game console and played Pac-Man on it. Can you imagine?