Reporting Stupid Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Reporting Stupid. Here they are! All 100 of them:

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy)
I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
We have to report this." Kai sighed deeply in relief. "I was afraid you were going to say that we had to investigate it ourselves." "Don't be ridiculous," Irene said briskly. "We may collect fiction, but we are not required to imitate the stupider parts of it.
Genevieve Cogman (The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library, #1))
He could be so charming and irreverent and witty, and then-bam!-a switch flipped and he reverted right back to the cocky asshole everyone reported him to be.
Lauren Weisberger (Chasing Harry Winston)
I still remember the day I got my first calculator Teacher: All right, children, welcome to fourth grade math. Everyone take a calculator out of the bin. Me: What are these? Teacher: From now on we'll be using calculators. Me: What do these things do? Teacher: Simple operations, like multiplication and division. Me: You mean this device just...does them? By itself? Teacher: Yes. You enter in the problem and press equal. Me: You...you knew about this machine all along, didn't you? This whole time, while we were going through this...this charade with the pencils and the line paper and the stupid multiplication tables!...I'm sorry for shouting...It's just...I'm a little blown away. Teacher: Okay, everyone, today we're going to go over some word problems. Me: What the hell else do you have back there? A magical pen that writes book reports by itself? Some kind of automatic social studies worksheet that...that fills itself out? What the hell is going on? Teacher: If a farmer farms five acres of land a day-- Me: So that's it, then. The past three years have been a total farce. All this time I've been thinking, "Well, this is pretty hard and frustrating but I guess these are useful skills to have." Meanwhile, there was a whole bin of these things in your desk. We could have jumped straight to graphing. Unless, of course, there's some kind of graphing calculator! Teacher: There is. You get one in ninth grade. Me: Is this...Am I on TV? Is this a prank show? Teacher: No.
Simon Rich (Ant Farm and Other Desperate Situations)
For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is 'banal' and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.
Hannah Arendt (Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil)
We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant. He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way.
Christopher Hitchens
Periclean Greeks employed the term idiotis, without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect the idiocy of politicization—of the professional pol and power broker. The two idiocies make a perfect match, with the apathy of the first permitting the depredations of the second.
Christopher Hitchens (Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports)
So he said to young Sam: "if you lose your cow you should report this to the Watch under Demonic & Farmyard Animals (Lost) Act of 1804. They will swing into action with keenness and speed. Your cow will be found. If it has been impersonating other animals, it may be arrested. If you are a stupid person, do not look for your cow yourself. Never try to milk a chicken. It hardly ever works.
Terry Pratchett (Where's My Cow? (Discworld, #34.5))
I always hated it when TV reporters stuck a microphone in the faces of people who'd just lost a home or a loved one, wanting to know how they felt. They felt like shit. They hurt, and they didn't know how they were going to get through the night. They wanted to scream and cry and hit the guy with the microphone.
Suzanne Johnson (Royal Street (Sentinels of New Orleans, #1))
Instead of finding myself in the future, I traveled about fifty metres along the sidewalk at 200mph before finding myself in a bush. When asked by the nurse filling out the hospital accident reports 'Cause of accident?' I stated, 'time travel attempt' but she wrote down 'stupidity'.
David Thorne (I'll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs. The Unpublished Emails.)
For most of my life, I would have automatically said that I would opt for conscientious objector status, and in general, I still would. But the spirit of the question is would I ever, and there are instances where I might. If immediate intervention would have circumvented the genocide in Rwanda or stopped the Janjaweed in Darfur, would I choose pacifism? Of course not. Scott Simon, the reporter for National Public Radio and a committed lifelong Quaker, has written that it took looking into mass graves in former Yugoslavia to convince him that force is sometimes the only option to deter our species' murderous impulses. While we're on the subject of the horrors of war, and humanity's most poisonous and least charitable attributes, let me not forget to mention Barbara Bush (that would be former First Lady and presidential mother as opposed to W's liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter. I'm sorry, that's not fair. I've no idea if she smokes.) When the administration censored images of the flag-draped coffins of the young men and women being killed in Iraq - purportedly to respect "the privacy of the families" and not to minimize and cover up the true nature and consequences of the war - the family matriarch expressed her support for what was ultimately her son's decision by saying on Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? I mean it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Mrs. Bush is not getting any younger. When she eventually ceases to walk among us we will undoubtedly see photographs of her flag-draped coffin. Whatever obituaries that run will admiringly mention those wizened, dynastic loins of hers and praise her staunch refusal to color her hair or glamorize her image. But will they remember this particular statement of hers, this "Let them eat cake" for the twenty-first century? Unlikely, since it received far too little play and definitely insufficient outrage when she said it. So let us promise herewith to never forget her callous disregard for other parents' children while her own son was sending them to make the ultimate sacrifice, while asking of the rest of us little more than to promise to go shopping. Commit the quote to memory and say it whenever her name comes up. Remind others how she lacked even the bare minimum of human integrity, the most basic requirement of decency that says if you support a war, you should be willing, if not to join those nineteen-year-olds yourself, then at least, at the very least, to acknowledge that said war was actually going on. Stupid fucking cow.
David Rakoff (Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems)
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.
Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day)
I spent the rest of the workday on routine paperwork, snarling at misplaced files and seething at the stupidity of everyone else's report writing--when did Grammar die?
Jeff Lindsay (Double Dexter (Dexter, #6))
And the German society of eighty million people had been shielded against reality and factuality by exactly the same means, the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become engrained in Eichmann's mentality. These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the Party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self-deception had become so common, almost a moral prerequisite for survival, that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character.
Hannah Arendt (Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil)
She’ll probably have all the work made up and a dozen stories written for The Oracle before I finish that one stupid book report on Moby Dick. I mean, Todd, who really cares about whales?' Todd did, but he let the comment slide by.
Francine Pascal (Dear Sister (Sweet Valley High, #7))
Dr. Bar David?” A young man with black eyes and curly hair came toward him. Carrying a digital recorder. He looked familiar. “Richard Falco, North Richardson High. I took algebra and Calc I from you.” “Oh, yes, of course. Good to see you.” “I’m now reporting for Anchor Media. Just started a couple of months ago.” David started walking away. “Good for you. What a good course of action.” “Listen, I need to get a couple of quotes anyway. I wonder if—Oh, wait! I’m so sorry. You were at the North Richardson school shooting, five years ago.” David nodded. And began to panic. “That’s why you’re here, right?” the stupid student asked. “Protesting gun laws?” “I really need to be going, now. Good luck with your interviews.” Hyperventilating. Richard grabbed David’s shoulder. “But Dr. Bar David. Your story, tragic as it is, ends up being the reason for this whole public gun melting, right? A few words from you about—” David lost it. “Listen! My whole life changed that day. When that meshugener killed my entire family, my wife and my son, in an instant! With a gun he purchased the week before!” David grabbed the kid’s throat. “I do not want to talk about it. Don’t mention me in your article. I will sue you! Leave me alone.” Richard swallowed and nodded, fast. “Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry—” David started shouting, “The bullets! The bullets! The bullets!” His head pounded. His ears roared.
Michael Grigsby (Segment of One)
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand. I would rather be reported by my bitterest enemy among philosophers than by a friend innocent of philosophy.
Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy: And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day)
Twenty-five years from now all religion will be fundamentalist religion, even the Church of England. Wild-eyed “Tutuist” Anglicans will riot in Anzania (formerly the Union of South Africa). They’ll force people to play contract bridge at gunpoint and make unbelievers eat little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. No woman will dare appear in the street without a small, stupid hat like Queen Di’s.
P.J. O'Rourke (Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This?" (O'Rourke, P. J.))
But those reports and stuff aren’t just saying things are unhealthy—they’re saying they’re morally wrong. Like you’re somehow a better person, spiritually, if you have the right body-fat percentage and exercise for an hour a day—and there’s that awful condescending set of ads where smoking isn’t just a stupid thing to do, it’s literally the devil. People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it’s all backwards. It’s not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
Yet like many other human traits that made sense in past ages but cause trouble in the modern age, the knowledge illusion has its downside. The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realise just how ignorant they are of what’s going on. Consequently some who know next to nothing about meteorology or biology nevertheless propose policies regarding climate change and genetically modified crops, while others hold extremely strong views about what should be done in Iraq or Ukraine without being able to locate these countries on a map. People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming newsfeeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged. Providing people with more and better information is unlikely to improve matters. Scientists hope to dispel wrong views by better science education, and pundits hope to sway public opinion on issues such as Obamacare or global warming by presenting the public with accurate facts and expert reports. Such hopes are grounded in a misunderstanding of how humans actually think. Most of our views are shaped by communal groupthink rather than individual rationality, and we hold on to these views out of group loyalty. Bombarding people with facts and exposing their individual ignorance is likely to backfire. Most people don’t like too many facts, and they certainly don’t like to feel stupid. Don’t be so sure that you can convince Tea Party supporters of the truth of global warming by presenting them with sheets of statistical data.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
Noah our first confirmed alcoholic Noah became a farmer and he was the first guy to grow grapes and make wine that he apparently liked to drink, because one day his son Ham stopped by Noah's tent and found him passed out drunk and naked, I guess on the floor. Ham was horrified and ran right out and reported to his brothers.
Steve Ebling (Holy Bible - Best God Damned Version - Genesis: For atheists, agnostics, and fans of religious stupidity)
But it appears that many reporters and news professionals believe their job is to distort racial reality, drive up the ratings, and cape for white supremacy.
Crystal Marie Fleming (How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide)
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.
Ward Farnsworth (The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook)
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.
Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy)
It was something Brynna had done a report on in school last year. At the time he’d thought it stupid, but he finally got it. Visualization. In order to make something happen, to become something else, you had to see it clearly in your mind. That was the first step of achieving success. Vague dreams never amounted to anything. Only those that were fully seen could manifest.
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1))
If the Baudelaire orphans had been stalks of celery, they would not have been small children in great distress, and if they had been lucky, Carmelita Spats would have not approached their table at this particular moment and delivered another unfortunate message. "Hello, you cakesniffers," she said, "although judging from the baby brat you're more like saladsniffers. I have another message for you from Coach Genghis. I get to be his Special Messenger because I'm the cutest, prettiest, nicest little girl in the whole school." "If you were really the nicest person in the whole school," Isadora said, "you wouldn't make fun of a sleeping infant. But never mind, what is the message?" "It's actually the same as last time," Carmelita said, "but I'll repeat it in case you're too stupid to remember. The three Baudelaire orphans are to report to the front lawn tonight, immediately after dinner." "What?" Klaus asked. "Are you deaf as well as cakesniffy?" Carmelita asked.
Lemony Snicket (The Austere Academy (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #5))
Things I Used to Get Hit For: Talking back. Being smart. Acting stupid. Not listening. Not answering the first time. Not doing what I’m told. Not doing it the second time I’m told. Running, jumping, yelling, laughing, falling down, skipping stairs, lying in the snow, rolling in the grass, playing in the dirt, walking in mud, not wiping my feet, not taking my shoes off. Sliding down the banister, acting like a wild Indian in the hallway. Making a mess and leaving it. Pissing my pants, just a little. Peeing the bed, hardly at all. Sleeping with a butter knife under my pillow. Shitting the bed because I was sick and it just ran out of me, but still my fault because I’m old enough to know better. Saying shit instead of crap or poop or number two. Not knowing better. Knowing something and doing it wrong anyway. Lying. Not confessing the truth even when I don’t know it. Telling white lies, even little ones, because fibbing isn’t fooling and not the least bit funny. Laughing at anything that’s not funny, especially cripples and retards. Covering up my white lies with more lies, black lies. Not coming the exact second I’m called. Getting out of bed too early, sometimes before the birds, and turning on the TV, which is one reason the picture tube died. Wearing out the cheap plastic hole on the channel selector by turning it so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Playing flip-and-catch with the TV’s volume button then losing it down the hole next to the radiator pipe. Vomiting. Gagging like I’m going to vomit. Saying puke instead of vomit. Throwing up anyplace but in the toilet or in a designated throw-up bucket. Using scissors on my hair. Cutting Kelly’s doll’s hair really short. Pinching Kelly. Punching Kelly even though she kicked me first. Tickling her too hard. Taking food without asking. Eating sugar from the sugar bowl. Not sharing. Not remembering to say please and thank you. Mumbling like an idiot. Using the emergency flashlight to read a comic book in bed because batteries don’t grow on trees. Splashing in puddles, even the puddles I don’t see until it’s too late. Giving my mother’s good rhinestone earrings to the teacher for Valentine’s Day. Splashing in the bathtub and getting the floor wet. Using the good towels. Leaving the good towels on the floor, though sometimes they fall all by themselves. Eating crackers in bed. Staining my shirt, tearing the knee in my pants, ruining my good clothes. Not changing into old clothes that don’t fit the minute I get home. Wasting food. Not eating everything on my plate. Hiding lumpy mashed potatoes and butternut squash and rubbery string beans or any food I don’t like under the vinyl seat cushions Mom bought for the wooden kitchen chairs. Leaving the butter dish out in summer and ruining the tablecloth. Making bubbles in my milk. Using a straw like a pee shooter. Throwing tooth picks at my sister. Wasting toothpicks and glue making junky little things that no one wants. School papers. Notes from the teacher. Report cards. Whispering in church. Sleeping in church. Notes from the assistant principal. Being late for anything. Walking out of Woolworth’s eating a candy bar I didn’t pay for. Riding my bike in the street. Leaving my bike out in the rain. Getting my bike stolen while visiting Grandpa Rudy at the hospital because I didn’t put a lock on it. Not washing my feet. Spitting. Getting a nosebleed in church. Embarrassing my mother in any way, anywhere, anytime, especially in public. Being a jerk. Acting shy. Being impolite. Forgetting what good manners are for. Being alive in all the wrong places with all the wrong people at all the wrong times.
Bob Thurber (Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel)
As I feel less overwhelmed, my fear softens and begins to subside. I feel a flicker of hope, then a rolling wave of fiery rage. My body continues to shake and tremble. It is alternately icy cold and feverishly hot. A burning red fury erupts from deep within my belly: How could that stupid kid hit me in a crosswalk? Wasn’t she paying attention? Damn her! A blast of shrill sirens and flashing red lights block out everything. My belly tightens, and my eyes again reach to find the woman’s kind gaze. We squeeze hands, and the knot in my gut loosens. I hear my shirt ripping. I am startled and again jump to the vantage of an observer hovering above my sprawling body. I watch uniformed strangers methodically attach electrodes to my chest. The Good Samaritan paramedic reports to someone that my pulse was 170. I hear my shirt ripping even more. I see the emergency team slip a collar onto my neck and then cautiously slide me onto a board. While they strap me down, I hear some garbled radio communication. The paramedics are requesting a full trauma team. Alarm jolts me. I ask to be taken to the nearest hospital only a mile away, but they tell me that my injuries may require the major trauma center in La Jolla, some thirty miles farther. My heart sinks.
Peter A. Levine (In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness)
Janet Malcolm had famously described journalism as the art of seduction and betrayal. Any reporter who didn't see journalism as "morally indefensible" was either "too stupid" or "too full of himself," she wrote. I disagreed. Without shutting the door on the possibility that I was both stupid and full of myself, I'd never bought into the seduction and betrayal conceit. At most, journalism - particularly when writing about media-hungry public figures - was like the seduction of a prostitute. The relationship was transactional. They weren't talking to me because they liked me or because I impressed them; they were talking to me because they wanted the cover of Rolling Stone.
Michael Hastings (The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan)
For Eric, Columbine was a performance. Homicidal art. He actually referred to his audience in his journal: “the majority of the audience wont even understand my motives,” he complained. He scripted Columbine as made-for-TV murder, and his chief concern was that we would be too stupid to see the point. Fear was Eric’s ultimate weapon. He wanted to maximize the terror. He didn’t want kids to fear isolated events like a sporting event or a dance; he wanted them to fear their daily lives. It worked. Parents across the country were afraid to send their kids to school. Eric didn’t have the political agenda of a terrorist, but he had adopted terrorist tactics. Sociology professor Mark Juergensmeyer identified the central characteristic of terrorism as “performance violence.” Terrorists design events “to be spectacular in their viciousness and awesome in their destructive power. Such instances of exaggerated violence are constructed events: they are mind-numbing, mesmerizing theater.” The audience—for Timothy McVeigh, Eric Harris, or the Palestine Liberation Organization—was always miles away, watching on TV. Terrorists rarely settle for just shooting; that limits the damage to individuals. They prefer to blow up things—buildings, usually, and the smart ones choose carefully. “During that brief dramatic moment when a terrorist act levels a building or damages some entity that a society regards as central to its existence, the perpetrators of the act assert that they—and not the secular government—have ultimate control over that entity and its centrality,” Juergensmeyer wrote. He pointed out that during the same day as the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993, a deadlier attack was leveled against a coffee shop in Cairo. The attacks were presumably coordinated by the same group. The body count was worse in Egypt, yet the explosion was barely reported outside that country. “A coffeehouse is not the World Trade Center,” he explained. Most terrorists target symbols of the system they abhor—generally, iconic government buildings. Eric followed the same logic. He understood that the cornerstone of his plan was the explosives. When all his bombs fizzled, everything about his attack was misread. He didn’t just fail to top Timothy McVeigh’s record—he wasn’t even recognized for trying. He was never categorized with his peer group. We lumped him in with the pathetic loners who shot people.
Dave Cullen (Columbine)
And although better coverage of the outbreak’s evolution in the press couldn’t have stopped the influenza virus, a single newspaper headline in Philadelphia saying “Don’t Go to Any Parades; for the Love of God Cancel Your Stupid Parade” could have saved hundreds of lives. It would have done a lot more than those telling people, “Don’t Get Scared!” Telling people that things are fine is not the same as making them fine. This failure is in the past. Journalists and editors had their reasons. Risking jail time is no joke. But learning from this breakdown in truth-telling is important because the fourth estate can’t fail again. We are fortunate today to have organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that track how diseases are progressing and report these findings. In the event of an outbreak similar to the Spanish flu, they will be wonderful resources. I hope we’ll be similarly lucky to have journalists who will be able to share necessary information with the public. The public is at its strongest when it is well informed. Despite Lippmann’s claims to the contrary, we are smart, and we are good, and we are always stronger when we work together. If there is a next time, it would be very much to our benefit to remember that.
Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
It was something Brynna had done a report on in school last year. At the time he’d thought it stupid, but he finally got it. Visualization. In order to make something happen, to become something else, you had to see it clearly in your mind. That was the first step of achieving success. Vague dreams never amounted to anything. Only those that were fully seen could manifest. Just like with the dagger. Thoughts had power. Negative and positive. They influenced everything. They could empower a person or rip them to shreds.
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1))
I’d learned that Holtzer Point was a top secret facility in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’d gathered that much already, but it was nice to have it confirmed by a series of websites that appeared to have been composed by middle-school-aged conspiracy theorists with a passion for stupid-looking animated graphics.
Cherie Priest (Bloodshot (Cheshire Red Reports, #1))
Taking these things into consideration, while blinking stupidly at Dr. Z, I resolved to retire gracefully, if I must; so, with a valedictory to my boys, a private lecture to Mrs. Waldman, and a fervent wish that I could take off my body and work in my soul, I mournfully ascended to my apartment, and Nurse P. was reported off-duty.
Louisa May Alcott (Hospital Sketches)
And Schyogolev launched on a discussion of politics. Like many unpaid windbags he thought that he could combine the reports he read in the papers by paid windbags into an orderly scheme, upon following which a logical and sober mind (in this case his mind) could with no effort explain and foresee a multitude of world events. The names of countries and of their leading representatives became in his hands something in the nature of labels for more or less full but essentially identical vessels, whose contents he poured this way and that. France was AFRAID of something or other and therefore would never allow it. England was AIMING at something. This statesman CRAVED a rapprochement, while that one wanted to increase his PRESTIGE. Someone was PLOTTING and someone was STRIVING for something. In short, the world Schyogolev created came out as some kind of collection of limited, humorless, faceless and abstract bullies, and the more brains, cunning and circumspection he found in their mutual activities the more stupid, vulgar and simple his world became.
Vladimir Nabokov (The Gift)
Sit down," she ordered Peabody. "I prefer to stand." "And I prefer to give you a good boot in the ass, but I'm restraining myself." Eve reached up, fisted her hands in her own hair and yanked until the pain cleared most of the rage. "Okay, stand. You couldn't sit with that stick up your butt, anyway. One you shove up it every time Subject Monroe, Charles, is mentioned. You want to be filled in, you want to be briefed? Fine. Here it is." She had to take another deep breath to insure her tone was professional. "On the evening of March twenty-six, at or about nineteen-thirty, I, accompanied by Roarke, had occasion to visit Areena Mansfield's penthouse suite at The Palace Hotel, this city. Upon entering said premises, investigation officer found subject Mansfield in the company of one Charles Monroe, licensed companion. It was ascertained and confirmed that LC Monroe was there in a professional capacity and had no links to the deceased or the current investigation. His presence, and the salient details pertaining to it, were noted in the report of the interview and marked Level Five in a stupid, ill-conceived attempt by the investigating officer to spare her fat-headed aide any unnecessary embarrassment." Eve stomped back to her desk, snatched up her coffee, gulped some down. "Record that," she snapped. Peabody's lip trembled. She sat. She sniffled. "Oh, no." In genuine panic, Eve stabbed out a finger. "No, you don't. No crying. We're on duty. There is no crying on duty.
J.D. Robb (Witness in Death (In Death, #10))
I have a guy in my office—sensitive. When I got passed over for a promotion, he suggested I sue for discrimination. I wasn’t discriminated against, I was a mediocre reporter. And sometimes drunk women aren’t raped; they just make stupid choices—and to say we deserve special treatment when we’re drunk because we’re women, to say we need to be looked after, I find offensive.
Gillian Flynn (Sharp Objects)
virus, a single newspaper headline in Philadelphia saying “Don’t Go to Any Parades; for the Love of God Cancel Your Stupid Parade” could have saved hundreds of lives. It would have done a lot more than those telling people, “Don’t Get Scared!” Telling people that things are fine is not the same as making them fine. This failure is in the past. Journalists and editors had their reasons. Risking jail time is no joke. But learning from this breakdown in truth-telling is important because the fourth estate can’t fail again. We are fortunate today to have organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that track how diseases are progressing and report these findings. In the event of an outbreak similar to the Spanish flu, they will be wonderful resources. I hope we’ll be similarly lucky to have journalists who will be able to share necessary information with the public. The public is at its strongest when it is well informed. Despite Lippmann’s claims to the contrary, we are smart, and we are good, and we are always stronger when we work together. If there is a next time, it would be very much to our benefit to remember that.
Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
Editors and readers of the New York Daily News want us to know that race had nothing to do with the ten black people who stopped a car and beat a young white couple in Brooklyn. All the while yelling racial epithets. “It’s not just a black and white thing,” reported the Daily News. “It’s stupid teenagers thinking they can do whatever they want.”[806] They just happen to be black. And the fact they just happen to be black astronomically out of proportion has no meaning. Got it? The attack happened Monday, in October 2013, six days before the Daily News got around to doing a story on it. A group of 10 black youths — one of them a 12-year-old girl — pummeled a husband and wife in Brooklyn after peppering the couple with racial slurs, authorities said. “Get those crackers!” some of them screamed, according to court papers. “Get that white whore!
Colin Flaherty ('Don't Make the Black Kids Angry': The hoax of black victimization and those who enable it.)
So what are people actually referring to when they talk about "deregulation"? In ordinary usage, the word seems to mean "changing the regulatory structure in a way that I like." In practice this can refer to almost anything. In the case of airlines or telecommunications in the seventies and eighties, it meant changing the system of regulation from one that encouraged a few large firms to one that fostered carefully supervised competition between midsize firms. In the case of banking, "deregulation" has usually meant exactly the opposite: moving away from a situation of managed competition between mid-sized firms to one where a handful of financial conglomerates are allowed to completely dominate the market. This is what makes the term so handy. Simply by labeling a new regulatory measure "deregulation," you can frame it in the public mind as a way to reduce bureaucracy and set individual initiative free, even if the result is a fivefold increase in the actual number of forms to be filled in, reports to be filed, rules and regulations for lawyers to interpret, and officious people in offices whose entire job seems to be to provide convoluted explanations for why you're not allowed to do things. (p. 17)
David Graeber (The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy)
Try to imagine the calamity of that: Zack, age twenty-eight, with no management experience, gets training from Dave, a weekend rock guitarist, on how to apply a set of fundamentally unsound psychological principles as a way to manipulate the people who report to him. If you put a room full of journalists into this situation they would immediately begin ripping on each other, taking the piss out of the instructors, asking intentionally stupid questions. If the boss wants us to waste half a day on Romper Room bullshit, we could at least have some fun. My HubSpot colleagues, however, seem to take the DISC personality assessment seriously. The
Dan Lyons (Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble)
When they first developed the organs of exploration, there was no there there. So they built timid, stupid machines and hurled them into the airless void to report back. Then they built idiot phone exchanges and put them in orbit to fill the void with chatter. Obsessed with biological replicators, they ignored the most interesting corners of the solar system and focused on dull, arid Mars. They periodically scurried up above the atmosphere and hunkered down in tunnels on Luna or ventured on expedition to domes on Mars, and they died in significant numbers before the end, simply because canned primates couldn’t thrive in vacuum or survive solar flares.
Charles Stross (Saturn's Children (A Freyaverse Novel))
All A players have six common denominators. They have a scoreboard that tells them if they are winning or losing and what needs to be done to change their performance. They will not play if they can’t see the scoreboard. They have a high internal, emotional need to succeed. They do not need to be externally motivated or begged to do their job. They want to succeed because it is who they are . . . winners. People often ask me how I motivate my employees. My response is, “I hire them.” Motivation is for amateurs. Pros never need motivating. (Inspiration is another story.) Instead of trying to design a pep talk to motivate your people, why not create a challenge for them? A players love being tested and challenged. They love to be measured and held accountable for their results. Like the straight-A classmate in your high school geometry class, an A player can hardly wait for report card day. C players dread report card day because they are reminded of how average or deficient they are. To an A player, a report card with a B or a C is devastating and a call for renewed commitment and remedial actions. They have the technical chops to do the job. This is not their first rodeo. They have been there, done that, and they are technically very good at what they do. They are humble enough to ask for coaching. The three most important questions an employee can ask are: What else can I do? Where can I get better? What do I need to do or learn so that I continue to grow? If you have someone on your team asking all three of these questions, you have an A player in the making. If you agree these three questions would fundamentally change the game for your team, why not enroll them in asking these questions? They see opportunities. C players see only problems. Every situation is asking a very simple question: Do you want me to be a problem or an opportunity? Your choice. You know the job has outgrown the person when all you hear are problems. The cost of a bad employee is never the salary. My rules for hiring and retaining A players are: Interview rigorously. (Who by Geoff Smart is a spectacular resource on this subject.) Compensate generously. Onboard effectively. Measure consistently. Coach continuously.
Keith J. Cunningham (The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board)
LIVE FROM THE PASTA FARMS, THIS HAS BEEN AL DENTE: The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired a documentary on its new show Panorama about Spaghetti growers in Switzerland-- on April 1, 1957. The joke broadcast showed Swiss spaghetti farmers picking fresh spaghetti from 'spaghetti trees' and preparing the spaghetti for market. It also mentioned that the pasta farmers had a bumper crop partly because of the 'virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.' Soon after the broadcast, the BBC received phone calls from viewers eager to know if spaghetti really grew on trees and how they might grow a spaghetti tree of their own. To the last question, the BBC reportedly replied that they should 'place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
Leland Gregory (Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages)
Fucking stupid to park there to begin with.” “Usually the bigger worry is regular people and the media thinking they can poke around. But no marked car? Okay. There goes your deterrent. Have it your way. You got any idea why the entrance lights weren’t on last night?” Marino said. “I only know that they weren’t. It’s in my report.” “They’re on now.” Gusts of wind hit them like invisible waves of a stormy surf, and Marino felt as if he was about to be washed off the roof. His hands were stiff, and he pulled his sleeves over them. “Then my guess would be the killer turned them off last night,” Morales said. “Kind of a strange thing to do once he’s already inside the building.” “Maybe he turned them off when he was leaving. So nobody would see him, in case someone was walking by, driving by.” “Then you’re probably not talking about Oscar doing it. Since he never left.
Patricia Cornwell (Scarpetta (Kay Scarpetta, #16))
Stewart, with the help of his incredibly astute staff, was combining reporting with commentary, pointing a finger at stupidity and hollowness, and devising a creative hand grenade. All of it had political purpose and direction. It wasn’t strictly ideological, although he’s obviously left of center. And he was fearless, not in the sense that anybody was going to make him a political prisoner. But he punched up. He punched up, and the shots landed. I don’t think the world is any more absurd now than it’s ever been, or more tragic, or more beautiful. But Jon took advantage of these new ways of seeing the world and took out his magic marker and drew circles around the idiocy. He set out to be a working comedian, and he ended up an invaluable patriot. He wants his country to be better, more decent, and to think harder. ~ DAVID REMNICK, editor in chief, the New Yorker
Chris Smith (The Daily Show (The Audiobook): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests)
Prince Arctic?” A silvery white dragon poked her head around the door, tapping three times lightly on the ice wall. Arctic couldn’t remember her name, which was the kind of faux pas his mother was always yelling at him about. He was a prince; it was his duty to have all the noble dragons memorized along with their ranks so he could treat them according to exactly where they fit in the hierarchy. It was stupid and frustrating and if his mother yelled at him about it one more time, he would seriously enchant something to freeze her mouth shut forever. Oooo. What a beautiful image. Queen Diamond with a chain of silver circles wound around her snout and frozen to her scales. He closed his eyes and imagined the blissful quiet. The dragon at his door shifted slightly, her claws making little scraping sounds to remind him she was there. What was she waiting for? Permission to give him a message? Or was she waiting for him to say her name — and if he didn’t, would she go scurrying back to the queen to report that he had failed again? Perhaps he should enchant a talisman to whisper in his ear whenever he needed to know something. Another tempting idea, but strictly against the rules of IceWing animus magic. Animus dragons are so rare; appreciate your gift and respect the limits the tribe has set. Never use your power frivolously. Never use it for yourself. This power is extremely dangerous. The tribe’s rules are there to protect you. Only the IceWings have figured out how to use animus magic safely. Save it all for your gifting ceremony. Use it only once in your life, to create a glorious gift to benefit the whole tribe, and then never again; that is the only way to be safe. Arctic shifted his shoulders, feeling stuck inside his scales. Rules, rules, and more rules: that was the IceWing way of life. Every direction he turned, every thought he had, was restricted by rules and limits and judgmental faces, particularly his mother’s. The rules about animus magic were just one more way to keep him trapped under her claws. “What is it?” he barked at the strange dragon. Annoyed face, try that. As if he were very busy and she’d interrupted him and that was why he was skipping the usual politic rituals. He was very busy, actually. The gifting ceremony was only three weeks away. It was bad enough that his mother had dragged him here, to their southernmost palace, near the ocean and the border with the Kingdom of Sand. She’d promised to leave him alone to work while she conducted whatever vital royal business required her presence. Everyone should know better than to disturb him right now. The messenger looked disappointed. Maybe he really was supposed to know who she was. “Your mother sent me to tell you that the NightWing delegation has arrived.” Aaarrrrgh. Not another boring diplomatic meeting.
Tui T. Sutherland (Darkstalker (Wings of Fire: Legends, #1))
Was I mad at being “outed” by him as sexually active? No. To be honest with you, I liked that Justin said that. Why did my managers work so hard to claim I was some kind of young-girl virgin even into my twenties? Whose business was it if I’d had sex or not? I’d appreciated it when Oprah told me on her show that my sexuality was no one else’s business, and that when it came to virginity, “you don’t need a world announcement if you change your mind.” Yes, as a teenager I played into that portrayal, because everyone was making such a big deal out of it. But if you think about it, it was pretty stupid for people to describe my body in that way, for them to point to me and say, “Look! A virgin!” It’s nobody’s business at all. And it took the focus off me as a musician and performer. I worked so hard on my music and on my stage shows. But all some reporters could think of to ask me was whether or not my breasts were real (they were, actually) and whether or not my hymen was intact.
Britney Spears (The Woman in Me)
Pastor Max Lucado of San Antonio, Texas, said in an editorial for the Washington Post in February 2016 that he was “chagrined” by Trump’s antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made a mockery of a reporter’s menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to a former first lady, Barbara Bush, as “mommy” and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people “stupid” and “dummy.” One writer catalogued 64 occasions that he called someone “loser.” These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded and presented.18 Lucado went on to question how Christians could support a man doing these things as a candidate for president, much less as someone who repeatedly attempted to capture evangelical audiences by portraying himself as similarly committed to Christian values. He continued, “If a public personality calls on Christ one day and calls someone a ‘bimbo’ the next, is something not awry? And to do so, not once, but repeatedly, unrepentantly and unapologetically? We stand against bullying in schools. Shouldn’t we do the same in presidential politics?” Rolling Stone reported on several evangelical leaders pushing against a Trump nomination, including North Carolina radio host and evangelical Dr. Michael Brown, who wrote an open letter to Jerry Falwell Jr., blasting his endorsement of Donald Trump. Brown wrote, “As an evangelical follower of Jesus, the contrast is between putting nationalism first or the kingdom of God first. From my vantage point, you and other evangelicals seem to have put nationalism first, and that is what deeply concerns me.”19 John Stemberger, president and general counsel for Florida Family Action, lamented to CNN, “The really puzzling thing is that Donald Trump defies every stereotype of a candidate you would typically expect Christians to vote for.” He wondered, “Should evangelical Christians choose to elect a man I believe would be the most immoral and ungodly person ever to be president of the United States?”20 A
Ben Howe (The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power Over Christian Values)
It was a wise policy in that false prophet, Alexander, who though now forgotten, was once so famous, to lay the first scene of his impostures in Paphlagonia, where, as Lucian tells us, the people were extremely ignorant and stupid, and ready to swallow even the grossest delusion. People at a distance, who are weak enough to think the matter at all worth enquiry, have no opportunity of receiving better information. The stories come magnified to them by a hundred circumstances. Fools are industrious in propagating the imposture; while the wise and learned are contented, in general, to deride its absurdity, without informing themselves of the particular facts, by which it may be distinctly refuted. And thus the impostor above mentioned was enabled to proceed, from his ignorant Paphlagonians, to the enlisting of votaries, even among the Grecian philosophers, and men of the most eminent rank and distinction in Rome; nay, could engage the attention of that sage emperor Marcus Aurelius; so far as to make him trust the success of a military expedition to his delusive prophecies. 23 The advantages are so great, of starting an imposture among an ignorant people, that, even though the delusion should be too gross to impose on the generality of them (which, though seldom, is sometimes the case) it has a much better chance for succeeding in remote countries, than if the first scene had been laid in a city renowned for arts and knowledge. The most ignorant and barbarous of these barbarians carry the report abroad. None of their countrymen have a large correspondence, or sufficient credit and authority to contradict and beat down the delusion. Men’s inclination to the marvellous has full opportunity to display itself. And thus a story, which is universally exploded in the place where it was first started, shall pass for certain at a thousand miles distance. But had Alexander fixed his residence at Athens, the philosophers of that renowned mart of learning had immediately spread, throughout the whole Roman empire, their sense of the matter; which, being supported by so great authority, and displayed by all the force of reason and eloquence, had entirely opened the eyes of mankind. It is true; Lucian, passing by chance through Paphlagonia, had an opportunity of performing this good office. But, though much to be wished, it does not always happen, that every Alexander meets with a Lucian, ready to expose and detect his impostures.
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
Akimov, prevailed upon by Dyatlov that the reactor could be saved, tried to start the diesel generators before witnessing his superior send two young trainees - Viktor Proskuryakov and Aleksandr Kudyavtsev - to the reactor hall with instructions to lower the control rods by hand. He sent them to their deaths. Dyatlov spent the rest of his life regretting the moment. “When they ran out into the corridor, I realized it was a stupid thing to do. If the rods had not come down by electricity or gravity, there would be no way of getting them down manually. I rushed after them, but they had disappeared,” he said a few years before his death.130 The trainees made it to the massive reactor hall, having navigated their way past destroyed rooms and elevators, and only remained in the vicinity for a minute - stunned by what they saw - but that was enough. They died a few weeks later. Returning to the Unit 4 control room, tanned deep brown by the massive dose of radiation they had absorbed, the pair reported that the reactor was simply no longer there. Dyatlov refused to believe them, insisting they were mistaken: the reactor was intact, the explosion had come from an oxygen/hydrogen mix in an emergency tank. Water had to be supplied to the core!
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
But if her idiot suitors were staying at Halstead Hall with her, then by thunder, he'd be here, too. They wouldn't take advantage of her on his watch. "We're agreed that you won't do any of that foolish nonsense you mentioned, like spying on them, right?" "Of course not. That's what I have you for." Her private lackey to jump at her commands. He was already regretting this. "Surely the gentlemen will accept the invitation," she went on, blithely ignoring his disgruntlement. "It's hunting season, and the estate has some excellent coveys." "I wouldn't know." She cast him an easy smile. "Because you generally hunt men, not grouse. And apparently you do it very well." A compliment? From her "No need to flatter me, my lady," he said dryly. "I've already agreed to your scheme." Her smile vanished. "Really, Mr. Pinter, sometimes you can be so..." "Honest?" he prodded. "Irritating." She tipped up her chin. "It will be easier to work together if you're not always so prickly." He felt more than prickly, and for the most foolish reasons imaginable. Because he didn't like her trawling for suitors. Or using him to do it. And because he hated her "lady of the manor" role. It reminded him too forcibly of the difference in their stations. "I am who I am, madam," he bit out, as much a reminder for himself as for her. "You knew what you were purchasing when you set out to do this." She frowned. "Must you make it sound so sordid?" He stepped as close as he dared. "You want me to gather information you can use in playing a false role to catch s husband. I am not the one making it sordid." "Tell me, sir, will I have to endure your moralizing at every turn?" she said in a voice dripping with sugar. "Because I'd happily pay extra to have you keep your opinions to yourself." "There isn't enough money in all the world for that." Her eyes blazed up at him. Good. He much preferred her in a temper. At least then she was herself, not putting on some show. She seemed to catch herself, pasting an utterly false smile to her lips. "I see. Well then, can you manage to be civil for the house party? It does me no good to bring suitors here if you'll be skulking about, making them uncomfortable." He tamped down the urge to provoke her further. If he did she'd strike off on her own, and that would be disastrous. "I shall try to keep my 'skulking' to a minimum." "Thank you." She thrust out her hand. "Shall we shake on it?" The minute his fingers closed about hers, he wished he'd refused. Because having her soft hand in his roused everything he'd been trying to suppress during this interview. He couldn't seem to let go. For such a small-boned female, she had a surprisingly firm grip. Her hand was like her-fragility and strength all wrapped in beauty. He had a mad impulse to lift it to his lips and press a kiss to her creamy skin. But he was no Lancelot to her Guinevere. Only in legend did lowly knights dare to court queens. Releasing her hand before he could do something stupid, he sketched a bow. "Good day, my lady. I'll begin my investigation at once and report to you as soon as I learn something." He left her standing there, a goddess surrounded by the aging glories of an aristocrat's mansion. God save him-this had to be the worst mission he'd ever undertaken, one he was sure to regret.
Sabrina Jeffries (A Lady Never Surrenders (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #5))
Statement on Hamas (October 10th, 2023) When Israel strikes, it's "national security" - when Palestine strikes back, it's "terrorism". Just like over two hundred years ago when native americans resisted their homeland being stolen, it was called "Indian Attack". Or like over a hundred years ago when Indian soldiers in the British Army revolted against the empire, in defense of their homeland, it was called "Sepoy Mutiny". The narrative never changes - when the colonizer terrorizes the world, it's given glorious sounding names like "exploration" and "conquest", but if the oppressed so much as utters a word in resistance, it is branded as attack, mutiny and terrorism - so that, the real terrorists can keep on colonizing as the self-appointed ruler of land, life and morality, without ever being held accountable for violating the rights of what they deem second rate lifeforms, such as the arabs, indians, latinos and so on. After all this, some apes will still only be interested in one stupid question. Do I support Hamas? To which I say this. Until you've spent a lifetime under an oppressive regime, you are not qualified to ask that question. An ape can ask anything its puny brain fancies, but it's up to the human to decide whether the ape is worthy of a response. What do you think, by the way - colonizers can just keep coming as they please, to wipe their filthy feet on us like doormat, and we should do nothing - just stay quiet! For creatures who call themselves civilized, you guys have a weird sense of morality. Yet all these might not get through your thick binary skull, so let me put it to you bluntly. I don't stand with Hamas, I am Hamas, just like, I don't stand with Ukraine, I am Ukraine. Russia stops fighting, war ends - Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Israel ends invasion, war ends - Palestine ends resistance, Palestine ends. However, I do have one problem here. Why do civilians have to die, if that is indeed the case - which I have no way of confirming, because news reports are not like reputed scientific data, that a scientist can naively trust. During humankind's gravest conflicts news outlets have always peddled a narrative benefiting the occupier and demonizing the resistance, either consciously or subconsciously. So never go by news reports, particularly on exception circumstances like this. No matter the cause, no civilian must die, that is my one unimpeachable law. But the hard and horrific fact of the matter is, only the occupier can put an end to the death and destruction peacefully - the resistance does not have that luxury.
Abhijit Naskar (Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch)
Dick Tracy is a hayseed nightmare, a petrified hick’s vision of big city America. While Tracy and his gal Tess Trueheart are drawn taut and chalk white, the crooks are fat, greasy, beady-eyed, and beastly. Gould’s city is full of physical mutants who look funny, who talk funny, have funny names — like Flattop, B.O. Plenty, The Brow, and the Blank. It’s the kind of thing you see when Pat Robertson’s 700 Club does an investigative report on raves or porn, hysteria boiled down to four panels a day and ten on Sunday. As street hoods turned into executive syndicates, “Dick Tracy” turned to 50s-60s sci-fi two-way wrist radios, moon girls, and Gould lecturing interviewers on how stupid NASA was with its clunky jet propulsion systems. If the aliens weren’t on the city streets, Gould sent Tracy into space to find more.
Anonymous
Shaselle!” he cried, eliciting another spasm of giggles from me. “You’ve spilled the wine.” “No, no, no. You’re the one who spilled the wine.” I tossed my hair back, my upper body weirdly following the motion, and would probably have hit the cobblestone street had he not caught my arm. “Don’t worry--I have something.” He dropped his hands to his belt and untied his water flask, presenting it to me like it was the legendary Holy Grail, and I stared stupidly at him. “Do you know what this is?” he crowed, his words slurring together. “That’s your water, silly!” I leaned back against him, craning my neck in an attempt to see his face. His balance was fortunately better than mine, and he managed to keep us both upright. “Do you really think I would keep water in here?” he asked. I gasped and lunged for his great discovery. He stepped away, laughing. “Come and get it!” I did my best, zigzagging after him down the street, while he dodged and stole swigs from the flask. “You’re going to drink it all!” I shouted, then pointed helplessly at him, trying to find the words to tell him we were no longer alone. He took another step backward, right into the horse of the Cokyrian soldier we had avoided earlier, bouncing off to land gracelessly upon the ground on his rear end. He stared up at the woman, making no attempt to stand. “Your horse is very solid,” he slurred. “Congratulations on having such a fine mount.” “Saadi, what are you doing?” she muttered, banishing my initial fear that we would be taken to Rava. I should have remembered how well known he was among the Cokyrians. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “A friend of mine!” He brandished an arm toward me, struggling to his feet. “She’s a friend of mine, too. That…that girl over there. She’s helping me take care of important business.” “I can see that,” the woman said, humoring her young comrade. “I’ll leave you to get on with it. But, Saadi, let me remind you that you’re to report to Rava first thing in the morning.” He nodded, giving a small salute. “Yes, I plan to do that very thing.” The soldier sighed wistfully. “Oh, how I wish I could be there.” She nudged her horse forward, adding, “Enjoy the rest of your night.” She headed up the street, continuing her patrol, and Saadi turned to me. “See how I handled that?” he proudly said. “She didn’t have a clue.
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
The media’s personal attacks on me were a sign of things to come. For a long time, the left has had two caricatures of conservatives: that we are either stupid or evil. I take it as a backhanded compliment that they have, to some extent, invented a third category for me: “crazy.” Conservatives spend a lot of time complaining about the press, and it’s not always productive. Yes, almost all journalists are Democrats. Yes, reporters have a double standard when it comes to conservatives. But the public is smarter than many elites assume, and time and again, the people see right through the media’s bias.
Ted Cruz (A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America)
stopped by Ruth’s house after school, just as the sun was setting, incredibly jittery from playing Pokémon with narcotics at school and hoping this stupid report would be worth all the anxiety. She
Anna Breslaw (Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here)
Broadcaster's Poem I used to broadcast at night alone in a radio station but I was never good at it partly because my voice wasn't right but mostly because my peculiar metaphysical stupidity made it impossible for me to keep believing their was somebody listening when it seemed I was talking only to myself in a room no bigger than an ordinary bathroom I could believe it for a while and then I'd get somewhat the same feeling as when you start to suspect you're the victim of a practical joke So one part of me was afraid another part might blurt out something about myself so terrible that even I had never until that moment suspected it This was like the fear of bridges and other high places: Will I take off my glasses and throw them into the water, although I'm half blind without them? Will I sneak up behind myself and push? Another thing: As a reporter I covered an accident in which a train ran into a car, killing three young men, one of whom was beheaded. The bodies looked boneless, as such bodies do More like mounds of rags and inside the wreckage where nobody could get at it the car radio was still playing I thought about places the disc jockey's voice goes and the things that happen there and of how impossible it would be for him to continue if he really knew.
Alden Nowlan
in Canada, Hawaii, Chicago, or Washington, D.C., police are unable to point to a single instance of gun registration aiding the investigation of a violent crime. In a 2013 deposition, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said that the department could not “recall any specific instance where registration records were used to determine who committed a crime.”1 The idea behind a registry is that guns left at a crime scene can be used to trace back to the criminals. Unfortunately, guns are very rarely left at the scene of the crime. Those that are left behind are virtually never registered—criminals are not stupid enough to leave behind guns registered to them. In the few cases where registered guns were left at the scene, the criminal had usually been killed or seriously injured. Canada keeps some of the most thorough data on gun registration. From 2003 to 2009, a weapon was identified in fewer than a third of the country’s 1,314 firearm homicides. Of these identified weapons, only about a quarter were registered. Roughly half of these registered guns were registered to someone other than the person accused of the homicide. In just sixty-two cases—4.7 percent of all firearm homicides—was the gun identified as being registered to the accused. Since most Canadian homicides are not committed with a gun, these sixty-two cases correspond to only about 1 percent of all homicides. From 2003 to 2009, there were only sixty-two cases—just nine a year—where registration made any conceivable difference. But apparently, the registry was not important even in those cases. Despite a handgun registry in effect since 1934, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police have not yet provided a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a case. No more successful was the long-gun registry that started in 1997 and cost Canadians $2.7 billion before being scrapped. In February 2000, I testified before the Hawaii State Senate joint hearing between the Judiciary and Transportation committees on changes that were being proposed to the state gun registration laws.2 I suggested two questions to the state senators: (1) how many crimes had been solved by their current registration and licensing system, and (2) how much time did it currently take police to register guns? The Honolulu police chief was notified in advance about those questions to give him time to research them. He told the committee that he could not point to any crimes that had been solved by registration, and he estimated that his officers spent over 50,000 hours each year on registering guns. But those aren’t the only failings of gun registration. Ballistic fingerprinting was all the rage fifteen years ago. This process requires keeping a database of the markings that a particular gun makes on a bullet—its unique fingerprint, so to speak. Maryland led the way in ballistic investigation, and New York soon followed. The days of criminal gun use were supposedly numbered. It didn’t work.3 Registering guns’ ballistic fingerprints never solved a single crime. New York scrapped its program in 2012.4 In November 2015, Maryland announced it would be doing the same.5 But the programs were costly. Between 2000 and 2004, Maryland spent at least $2.5 million setting up and operating its computer database.6 In New York, the total cost of the program was about $40 million.7 Whether one is talking about D.C., Canada, or these other jurisdictions, think of all the other police activities that this money could have funded. How many more police officers could have been hired? How many more crimes could have been solved? A 2005 Maryland State Police report labeled the operation “ineffective and expensive.”8 These programs didn’t work.
John R. Lott Jr. (The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies)
I’m not thrilled with the word ‘fornicating,’ but that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Chief Terry said. “Just … be on the lookout. I don’t think anyone is plotting world domination or doing anything worse than drinking and carousing, but you should keep your eyes open. “If I’ve learned anything doing this job, it’s that kids will be kids,” he continued. “I’ve also learned that sometimes kids don’t think things through before they do something stupid. Be careful, and report any vandalism. In fact, report anything out of the ordinary, just to
Amanda M. Lee (Bewitched (Wicked Witches of the Midwest Shorts, #6))
When the prosecutor finally did issue his report in November 1995, he cleared the Baker team, saying some of them had acted stupidly but not illegally. Indeed, diGenova went on to say that Barr should never have sought his appointment in the first place.
Peter Baker (The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III)
You see I have deduced why Sherlock has a deerstalker cap, why Arthur Conan Doyle chose it. If you some the Jack the Ripper reports the suspect is wearing a dirty deerstalker cap. I believe it is likely because the case was unsolvable he left it on Sherlock Holmes mind forever. I hate to hear him whine so I suppose I shall to return take the stupid hat off his head, that funny author put on him over a century ago.
C.A.A. Savastano
A faint smile touched his lips. “How militant you’re being. What if I don’t choose to stay? Will I be chained to your wrist like a diplomat’s briefcase?” “If necessary.” She blinked back tears of anger and exhaustion. “I’ll do anything I can to keep you here. It’s stupid of you to even think of leaving me when you love me. And you do love me. Why don’t you admit it?” “I love you,” he said obediently. “You’re so damned frightened that I’m going to be hurt—” She stopped and tried to steady her voice. “Well, if you don’t stay with me, I’ll get Penny and Mac to give me the most dangerous assignments they can dredge up. Beirut, investigative reporting, drug running.” The smile disappeared from Jordan’s face. “The hell you will.
Iris Johansen (Man From Half Moon Bay)
[M]any whites flee from diversity, but a few welcome it. Joe and Jessica Sweeney of Peoria, Illinois, had been sending their children to private school but decided the multi-racial experience of public school would be valuable. After the switch, their eight-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter were taunted with racial slurs, and became withdrawn. One day, a black student threatened to kill the girl with a box cutter. The same day, the boy showed his parents a large bruise he got when he was knocked down and called “stupid white boy.” The school reacted with indifference. The Sweeneys sent their children back to private school.” Fourteen-year-old James Tokarski was one of a handful of whites attending Bailly Middle School in Gary, Indiana, in 2006. Black students called him “whitey” and “white trash” and repeatedly beat him up. They knocked him unconscious twice. The school offered James a “lunch buddy,” to be with him whenever he was not in class, but his parents took him out of Bailly. The mother of another white student said it was typical for whites to be called “whitey” or “white boy,” and to get passes to eat lunch in the library rather than face hostile blacks in the lunch room. On Cleveland’s West Side, ever since court-ordered busing began in the 1970s, blacks and Hispanics have celebrated May Day by attacking whites. In 2003, Elsie Morales, a Puerto Rican mother of two, told reporters that when she took part in May Day violence as a student in the 1970s she justified it as payback for white oppression. Her daughter Jasmine said it was still common to attack whites: “It’s like if you don’t jump this person with us, you’re a wimp and we’ll get you next.” In the late 1990s, whites were 41 percent of students in Seattle public schools, blacks were 23, and the rest were Hispanic and Asian. In 1995 and 1999, schools conducted confidential surveys about racial harassment. In both years, a considerably larger percentage of white than black students complained of racial taunts or violence. Only an “alternative” newspaper reported the findings, and school representatives refused to discuss them.
Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)
I thought I was stupid, too dumb for college. Of course, intelligence is as subjective as beauty. But I kept using “objective” standards, like test scores and report cards, to judge myself.
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
If the ‘heathen’ — that is, the German and the French teachers — were regarded with little respect, the teacher of writing, Ebert, who was a German Jew, was a real martyr. To be insolent with him was a sort of chic amongst the pages. His poverty alone must have been the reason why he kept to his lesson in our corps. The old hands, who had stayed for two or three years in the fifth form without moving higher up, treated him very badly; but by some means or other he had made an agreement with them: ‘One frolic during each lesson, but no more’ — an agreement which, I am afraid, was not always honestly kept on our side. One day, one of the residents of the remote peninsula soaked the blackboard sponge with ink and chalk and flung it at the calligraphy martyr. ‘Get it, Ebert!’ he shouted, with a stupid smile. The sponge touched Ebert’s shoulder, the grimy ink spirted into his face and down on to his white shirt. We were sure that this time Ebert would leave the room and report the fact to the inspector. But he only exclaimed, as he took out his cotton handkerchief and wiped his face, ‘Gentlemen, one frolic — no more to-day! The shirt is spoiled,’ he added in a subdued voice, and continued to correct someone’s book. We looked stupefied and ashamed. Why, instead of reporting, he had thought at once of the agreement! The feelings of the whole class turned in his favour. ‘What you have done is stupid,’ we reproached our comrade. ‘He is a poor man, and you have spoiled his shirt! Shame!’ somebody cried. The culprit went at once to make excuses. ‘One must learn, sir,’ was all that Ebert said in reply, with sadness in his voice. All became silent after that, and at the next lesson, as if we had settled it beforehand, most of us wrote in our best possible handwriting, and took our books to Ebert, asking him to correct them. He was radiant, he felt happy that day. This fact deeply impressed me, and was never wiped out from my memory. To this day I feel grateful to that remarkable man for his lesson.
Pyotr Kropotkin (Memoirs of a Revolutionist)
In response, someone (often a board member) says, “It’s time to grow up. This place needs some professional management.” The company begins to hire MBAs and seasoned executives from blue-chip companies. Processes, procedures, checklists, and all the rest begin to sprout up like weeds. What was once an egalitarian environment gets replaced with a hierarchy. Chains of command appear for the first time. Reporting relationships become clear, and an executive class with special perks begins to appear. “We” and “they” segmentations appear—just like in a real company. The professional managers finally rein in the mess. They create order out of chaos, but they also kill the entrepreneurial spirit. Members of the founding team begin to grumble, “This isn’t fun anymore. I used to be able to just get things done. Now I have to fill out these stupid forms
James C. Collins (Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't)
This morning. We got reports from down here that people were doing “stupid sensual things,” were in a state of “uncontrollable frenzy,” were wriggling like fish, doing something called the “Eagle Rock” and the “Sassy Bump”; were cutting a mean “Mooche,” and “lusting after relevance.
Ishmael Reed (Mumbo Jumbo: A Novel)
The report helpfully provided that Quakers are a religious group that pride themselves on their nonviolent beliefs. That was a stupid principle on which to found a religion, Chung-Cha thought. One could not rule out violence, because violence was often necessary. And since other religions routinely employed violence, those that did not were in constant danger of being rendered extinct.
David Baldacci
Harry was so exasperated by his frog experiments that one day he began venting to anyone who would listen. He even told his undergraduate class that he had spent countless hours just to prove that frogs were stupid. One of the students happened to be a reporter for the student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, and the next day, Harry was in print: “Professor Harlow says that the frog is the dumbest of all animals.... Professor Harlow’s experiments showed that the frog does not seem to be able to learn anything at all.” It was a natural story for any journalist. The next day, one of the local papers rewrote the student version. It now carried the headline: “Frog Dumbest of Animals, Experimenters Discover.” That
Deborah Blum (Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection)
Psychotherapy…is rarely as straightforward as textbooks and case reports usually seem to imply…Practicing psychotherapy is a difficult—if also rewarding—way to earn a living. It is no profession for the individual who likes certainty, predictability, or a fairly constant sense that one knows what one is doing. There are few professions in which feeling stupid or stymied is as likely to be part of one’s ordinary professional day, even for those at the pinnacle of their field. Indeed, I would be loathe to refer a patient to any therapist who declared that s/he almost always felt effective and clear about what was going on.
Wachtel
Psychotherapy…is rarely as straightforward as textbooks and case reports usually seem to imply…Practicing psychotherapy is a difficult—if also rewarding—way to earn a living. It is no profession for the individual who likes certainty, predictability, or a fairly constant sense that one knows what one is doing. There are few professions in which feeling stupid or stymied is as likely to be part of one’s ordinary professional day, even for those at the pinnacle of their field. Indeed, I would loathe to refer a patient to any therapist who declared that s/he almost always felt effective and clear about what was going on.
Paul Wachtel
Wrath bared his fangs. “John, as God is my fucking witness, I will cut you if you don’t—” “Easy, there, big guy,” V gritted out. “I’m going to translate. You want to hit the library where we can—” “No, I want to fucking know where my shellan is!” Wrath boomed. John started signing, and whereas most of the time people translated half sentences sequentially, V waited until he’d finished the whole report. A couple of the Brothers muttered in the background as they shook their heads. “In the library,” V ordered the King in a way John never could have. “You’re gonna wanna do this in the library.” Wrong thing to say. Wrath wheeled on the Brother and went for him with such speed and accuracy no one was prepared: One minute V was standing next to the King; the next he was defending himself against an attack that was as unprovoked as it was . . . well, vicious. And then things went shit-wild. Like Wrath knew he was on the thin edge of a bad ledge, he broke off from V, and went total wrecking ball on the billiards room. The first thing he ran into was the pool table Butch was chilling next to—and there was barely any time for the cop to get that ashtray up off the side rails: Wrath grabbed the gunnels and flipped the thing like it was nothing but a card table, the mahogany and slate-topped behemoth flying up so high, it wiped out the hanging light fixture above, its weight so great it splintered the marble floor beneath on landing. Without missing a breath, the King EF5’d into his next victim . . . the heavy leather sofa that Rhage had just leaped up off. Talk about your couch-icopters. The entire thing came at John at about five feet off the floor, the pair of ends trading places as it spun around and around, cushions flying in all directions. He didn’t take it personally—especially as its mate do-si-doed with the bar, smashing the top-shelf bottles, liquor splashing all over the walls, the floor, the fire that was crackling in the hearth. Wrath wasn’t finished. The King picked up a side table, hauled it overhead, and pitched it in the direction of the TV. It missed the plasma screen, but managed to shatter an old-fashioned mirror—although the Sony didn’t last. The coffee table that had been in between the two sofas did that deed, killing the muted image of the two Boston guys and the old man from Southie with the baseball bat shilling for DirectTV. The Brothers just let Wrath go. It wasn’t that they were afraid of getting hurt. Hell, Rhage stepped in and caught the first couch before it tore a hunk off of the archway’s molding. They just weren’t stupid. Wrath - Beth x Overnight = Psycho-hose Beast
J.R. Ward (The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #12))
Marita Lorenz, was born on August 18, 1939, in Bremen, Germany. In January of 1960 Marita, described as an attractive “curvy, black-haired young lady was named American’s “Mata Hari” by New York Daily News reporter Paul Meskil. Having had an affair with Fidel Castro that turned sour, she now returned to Havana where she attempted to take part in an assassination attempt, supposedly orchestrated by the Mafia and the CIA. Marita brought along poison pills in her cold cream jar, which predictably melted in the tropical heat. Besides, she later said that she really did not have the stomach for killing her former lover. Apparently Castro aware of why she returned to Cuba, handed her his pistol with a dare for her to use it. Even after knowing the truth regarding her visit, he allowed her to safely leave Cuba. Returning to Miami, Marita said that Frank Sturgis, presumably a CIA operative, was involved in this attempt, however it was his close associate, Alex Rorke, who was responsible for orchestrating the plan to poison Castro. Sturgis was extremely angry when she returned and rebuked her for putting the pills into the warm cold cream, calling her stupid, over and over again. For a few years after leaving the island, Marita was looked after and protected by a mobster named Ed Levi. It was his job to protect her from, what was considered, a likely attempt on her life by “Cuban Intelligence Operatives.” In 1961, Marita met Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the former President of Venezuela, in Miami. Marcos told her that he was anxious to meet her because he knew she was “Fidel's girl." He successfully pursued Marita, and when she gave in, they had an affair that resulted in the birth of a daughter.
Hank Bracker
Before leaving Austin I heard a radio report on an Englishman who’s giving out awards for stupid security measures. First prize goes to an airport scanner who forced a female passenger to drink from three bottles of her own breast milk. She’d pumped it before boarding, and they wanted to make sure it wasn’t poison. This explains why sperm donors are traveling Greyhound.
David Sedaris (A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020))
When making a decision regarding weather, an effective tool is to ask oneself if this might lead to looking stupid in the NTSB report.
Rick Durden (The Thinking Pilot's Flight Manual: Or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It)
about poison,” Tsunami said. “We need someone who can help us cure him.” “That doesn’t look like something one of us did,” said the queen. “We never use our venom on other dragons!” All of the dragonets shot sideways looks at Glory. She narrowed her eyes back at them. I dare you to tell her what I’ve done to save your stupid scales. “It’s not RainWing venom,” Starflight said hastily. “He was scratched by a SandWing’s tail barb.” “Oh,” said the queen. “I don’t know anything about those.” She took a deep breath to yell “NEXT!,” but Sunny interrupted before she could. “Oh, please, you must have healers,” she pleaded. “Someone who could look at it? Please? We don’t want him to die.” “Well, some of us don’t,” Glory muttered. Queen Magnificent tapped her claws on the treehouse floor. Her sloth seized one of her talons and tried to gnaw on it. “We do have healers,” said the queen, rolling her sloth playfully onto its back. “I guess you could talk to them. They’re about twelve tree lodges down from here, in the one with the red berries growing on the balcony.” She pointed out one of the windows. “They might not be able to do anything, but you may ask.” “Thank you,” Sunny said, backing toward the door. “And don’t forget to report back to me on that investigation,” Magnificent said to Glory. “It’ll be nice to have something to make Mangrove go away. What’s your name, anyhow?
Tui T. Sutherland (The Hidden Kingdom (Wings of Fire, #3))
One of the many ways of contesting level-zero, and one of the best, is to take photographs, an activity in which one should start becoming an adept very early in life, teach it to children since it requires discipline, aesthetic education, a good eye and steady fingers. I’m not talking about waylaying the lie like any old reporter, snapping the stupid silhouette of the VIP leaving number 10 Downing Street, but in all ways when one is walking about with a camera, one has almost a duty to be attentive, to not lose that abrupt and happy rebound of sun’s rays off an old stone, or the pigtails-flying run of a small girl going home with a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk.
Julio Cortázar (Blow-Up: And Other Stories)
All the experts proved what we’ve all known all along. That they are full of shit. They all got it so wrong they needed cover and when they saw something, no matter how asinine, it became gospel to cover their abject failure. Still, the left wouldn’t feel sorry for itself for long. First it picked up the Russian spy story and started pushing it to every devastated reporter who would listen. Then it did everything it had told us the Trump supporters would do if Hillary won. Think about it. For weeks leading up to the election, we had been hearing about all the horrible things Donald Trump would force his supporters to do if he lost. DJT wouldn’t accept the defeat they were all so sure was coming. The editorial boards at the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran many articles warning us about the chaos that was about to ensue. According to popular opinion, Trump supporters were going to riot in the streets, refuse to accept the results of the election, and begin some kind of underground coup against the duly elected president, Hillary Clinton. They would start a second civil war. The streets would become absolute anarchy. And when things didn’t go the way the Democrats had wanted them to go, what happened? Let’s see. They held riots in the streets. (Check.) They refused to accept the results of the election, cooking up one of the strangest spy-movie stories I’ve ever heard in order to maintain their collective delusion. (Check.) Then they formed an underground group of online keyboard warriors called “the Resistance,” dedicated to taking down my father one stupid hashtag at a time. Prominent journalists, liberal activists, and actors have all identified themselves as proud members of “the Resistance” on Twitter. When I’m attacked by an outraged mob online, their voices are usually among the loudest. (And Check.)
Donald Trump Jr. (Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us)
You've been keeping in touch with the reporter?" "He came by the diner the other day. And that reminds me, you told me he was a by-the-book detective. Calhoun has evidence to the contrary." He squared his shoulders and faced me head-on. Betsy was pushed out of the middle. "What are you implying?" he spat. "Hey, y'all," Betsy interjected. "I'm not implying anything. I just want to know if you still think Detective Thornton is a pristine detective." "Do you always believe everything people tell you?" Alex's jaw clenched. "No." I bared my teeth. If he wanted a fight, he'd certainly get one! He took a step closer to me. "You believe the reporter?" I jerked my head. His neck was corded and his arms tensed. Boy, was he angry. "Some asshole floats into town with tall tales, dangling bait in front of your pretty little face, and you just bite? You've known him for two damn seconds. Me, you've known your whole damn life." "Um... y'all," Betsy said louder. "Where is all this anger comin' from?" I shrieked. "Somebody is going around murdering people. And since the department had to march to the tune of a crooked cop, I felt I had to do something." That was a grave allegation I honestly didn't believe. He had ruffled my feathers and I was lashing out. "And your keen investigative skills led you to believe I was dirty? Perhaps you think I'm the one going around killing people?" His voice teetered on unhinged. "Don't be stupid," I said, more calmly. He felt patronized, that was beyond obvious. Guilt washed over me like a tidal wave and I was searching for the appropriate words to apologize effectively, when he said, "What's with you and older men? Daddy issues?" I gasped. "How dare you?" That was the ugliest thing he could have ever said in this moment. And he'd said it. His facial expression changed, and he took a step forward. I took one backward. Eddie's commanding voice boomed, "Enough." "I tried to warn y'all," Betsy said softly.
Kate Young (Southern Sass and Killer Cravings (Marygene Brown Mystery, #1))
There are also no earnest messages in this book. Half the world’s suffering is caused by earnest messages contained in grand theories bearing no relation to reality—Marxism and No-Fault Auto Insurance, to name two. Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college.
P.J. O'Rourke (Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This?" (O'Rourke, P. J.))
The self-destruction of a group always follows the same patterns. You only need to introduce some viruses to the group and poof, it’s all gone. These viruses come in the form of very ignorant narcissists that nobody has the courage to kick off of the group. Quite often, the group even promotes itself as being against the personalities that are in front of their eyes every day, people they praise and even lead them. And well, that’s how you know a group is truly finished. Scientology is a very interesting example of this, because of how clear their books are. For example, they claim to love artists but end up insulting real artists. Scientologists are so obsessed with being perceived as artists, that they downgrade real art in the process. You have many scientologists, for example, that think splashing a random amount of ink into a white board is art. They all want to be artists, and that’s fine, but they are too lazy to see how real art is made, and so, they downgrade the value of art. And in doing this, they actually distort the meaning of art and decrease the value of the real artists. And so, a group that promotes itself as being uplifting and positive, ends up being offensive and destructive. They have all these books on moral codes and moral behavior, and dozens of courses on the same topic, and if you report a scientologist for criminal behavior, they ignore you and deem you an attacker of the group. And there goes the level of sanity of this group down the scale, while they themselves invert the scale and tell you the opposite story. It would be like looking at your mental health through someone suffering with poor mental health. They are as aware of what I am saying as any mentally ill person is aware of his mental illnesses. If anyone confronts them with the facts, they themselves get offended, and then proceed to attack, because that’s what they think their founder told them to do. Except that the founder was talking about attacking insanity and not people. In other words, they should use these facts to look further into their books and their own misinterpretations, and which they don’t. Those people that splash random colors into a white board, will then tell you, the one who has been using techniques, and winning awards, and creating something unique, that you don’t understand art. They remind me of the writers with one book that doesn't sell, trying to tell me how they are better than me, with more than 100 books in best selling charts. How delusional, arrogant and stupid has one to be to not see this? The level of awareness of such individual is comparable to a drunk person going to a Jujitsu dojo, asking the instructor to fight him because he is convinced he can beat anyone with all that alcohol in his head. That, however, is not the cherry on top of the cake. The cherry on top of the cake, is when a religious group listens to a psychopath talking against psychopaths. You can write many academic papers on this topic and never reach a conclusion, because it's really hard to make conclusions on stupidity. So what’s wrong with religion? Why are some religious groups persecuted and attacked? The answer to these questions isn’t as relevant as what we can observe people doing, when denying the most obvious writings, inverting them and distorting the meanings. Christians have already mastered this art.
Dan Desmarques
There appears to be many advertisements for diversity and quotas and report cards out there. Why are you classifying by race? Why don’t you classify by stupid? How many stupid people have you hired? Or how many rage-filled people? Or how many depressed people? Or how many people who always say the wrong thing? Why are you using race to select between people? Doesn’t that make you a racist? Isn’t there some more important categorization that you can use for humans? You’re better off dividing people by profession, or by their free time activities.
Richard Heart (sciVive)
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand. Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)
M. Prefontaine (The Best Smart Quotes Book: Wisdom That Can Change Your Life (Quotes For Every Occasion Book 12))
I was on my own to cover the hundreds of patients there, some of the sickest of the sick. It was on one of those nights that, staggering through a sleep-deprived haze, I got the call. Up until then, all the deaths I had seen were those in which the patient was either dead on arrival or had died during cardiac “codes,” when we try desperately, and nearly always unsuccessfully, to resuscitate. This man was different. He was wide-eyed, gasping for air, his cuffed hands clawing at the bed. The cancer was filling up his lungs with fluid. He was being drowned by lung cancer. While he thrashed desperately, pleading, my mind was in medical mode, all protocols and procedures, but nothing much could be done. The man needed morphine, but that was held on the other side of the ward, and I’d never get to it in time, let alone back to him. I was not popular on the prison floor. I had once reported a guard for beating a sick inmate and was rewarded with death threats. There was no way they’d let me through the gates fast enough. I begged the nurse to try to get some, but she didn’t make it back in time. The man’s coughing turned to gurgling. “Everything’s going to be okay,” I said. Immediately, I thought, What a stupid thing to say to someone choking to death. Just another lie in probably a long line of condescension from other authority figures throughout his life. Helpless, I turned from doctor back to human being. I took his hand in my own, which he then gripped with all his might, tugging me toward his tear-streaked, panic-stricken face. “I’m here,” I said. “I’m right here.” Our gaze remained locked as he suffocated right in front of me. It felt like watching someone being tortured to death. Take a deep breath. Now imagine what it would feel like not to be able to breathe. We all need to take care of our lungs.
Michael Greger MD (How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
There is no one I want to visit except in the Ojibwe heaven, and so at this late age I’m going to convert, stupid dog, and become at long last the pagan that I always was at heart before I was Cecilia, when I was just Agnes, until I was seduced and diverted by the music of Chopin.” “That neurasthenic pierogi snarfer!!”, the dog ranted—it had never liked the composer . . . .
Louise Erdrich (The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse)
was driving home today and heard a news report about a young woman in Springfield Gardens, found murdered this morning. Her brother discovered her battered body. Whoever killed her brutalized this poor woman. My heart hurts to think how much she must have suffered. And then, I began thinking... my God...her family. They have to bury their daughter/sister. Their lives changed overnight. And I thought to myself, nothing...absolutely nothing that I had to deal with this week so far (no matter how negative or trying, or irritating or just downright stupid) would matter AT ALL if I woke up and someone I loved was no longer with me. Which means, the energy I did give to any of the above was (is) wasted. It was just a moment of perspective that really shook me up. I say all of this to, hopefully, inspire anyone who may be focusing on someone or something that is trying to steal your joy, to stop and embrace what really, REALLY matters. Trust and believe, if you were to wake up tomorrow having lost someone who meant everything to you, much of what you are stressing about now, wouldn't even matter.
Liz Faublas
I know I’m awfully stupid,” said Rosemary, “but honestly I can’t see why Tony and you should fight because you love Munich and he loves Moscow. I mean, they both have masses of spies and concentration camps and no religion. I never can see why they can’t kiss and be friends.
Carola Oman (Nothing to Report)
But if you think about it, it was pretty stupid for people to describe my body in that way, for them to point to me and say, “Look! A virgin!” It’s nobody’s business at all. And it took the focus off me as a musician and performer. I worked so hard on my music and on my stage shows. But all some reporters could think of to ask me was whether or not my breasts were real (they were, actually) and whether or not my hymen was intact.
Britney Spears (The Woman in Me)
Yet we consume energy at an average rate of only eighteen terawatts, a miniscule fraction of the 174,000 terawatts rate of power available.121 And that is readily supplemented by wind, geothermal, and tidal energy. The Earth is literally bathed in energy. It’s the same with water; with 71 percent of its surface covered by water, Earth is a water planet. An extraterrestrial watching our news reports would think that humans are either crazy or stupid.
Vivek Wadhwa (The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Your Technology Choices Create the Future)
When Larraine called Pastor Daryl to ask if the church could lend her money so that she might avoid eviction, he said he’d have to think about it. The last time Larraine called, she had said she’d been robbed at gunpoint. Pastor Daryl reached into the church’s coffers and gave her a few hundred dollars for the rent. Larraine had been robbed, but not by a stranger with a gun. Susan and Lane’s cokehead daughter had broken into her trailer when no one was home. Susan phoned Pastor Daryl to report Larraine’s lie. Pastor Daryl felt torn. On the one hand, he thought it was the job of the church, not the government, to care for the poor and hungry. That, to him, was “pure Christianity.” When it came to Larraine, though, Pastor Daryl believed a lot of hardship was self-inflicted. “She made some stupid choices, spending her money foolishly….Making her go without for a while may be the best thing for her, so that she can be reminded, ‘Hey when I make foolish choices there are consequences.’ ” It was easy to go on about helping “the poor.” Helping a poor person with a name, a face, a history, and many needs, a person whose mistakes and lapses of judgment you have recorded—that was a more trying matter.
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
I have seen him laugh in pure delight, standing on the dock at Vorkosigan Surleau and yelling instructions over the water, the morning I first sailed, dumped, and righted the skimmer by myself. I have seen him weep till his nose ran, more dead drunk than you were yesterday, Ahn, the night we got the word Major Duvallier was executed for espionage. I have seen him rage, so brick-red we feared for his heart, when reports came in fully detailing the stupidities that led to the last riots in Solstice. I have seen him wandering around Vorkosigan House at dawn in his underwear, yawning and prodding my sleepy mother into helping him find two matching socks. He's not like anything, Ahn. He's the original.
Lois McMaster Bujold (The Vor Game (Vorkosigan Saga, #6))
Officer Gurney ran a strip of yellow tape around the back area of the café, roping it off so no one could disturb the site. Then he scanned the crowd. His eyes lit on a comfortably plump woman wearing a red down jacket that made her look even plumper. She had a short brownish-blond ponytail that stuck out through a hole in her red baseball hat. “Brenda,” said Officer Gurney. “What do you think?” Grover was in danger of being late for school by this time. He’d already been late twice this month. If he was late again, he might get a note sent home to his parents. But he had to risk it. This was too interesting to miss. The woman stepped forward. Grover knew her, of course; everyone did. Mrs. Brenda Beeson was the one who had figured out the Prophet’s mumbled words and explained what they meant. She and her committee—the Reverend Loomis, Mayor Orville Milton, Police Chief Ralph Gurney, and a few others—were the most important people in the town. Officer Gurney raised the yellow tape so Mrs. Beeson could duck under it. She stood before the window a long time, her back to the crowd, while everyone waited to see what she would say. Clouds sailed slowly across the sun, turning everything dark and light and dark again. To Grover, it seemed like ages they all stood there, holding their breath. He resigned himself to being late for school and started thinking up creative excuses. The front door of his house had stuck and he couldn’t get it open? His father needed him to help fish drowned rats out of flooded basements? His knee had popped out of joint and stayed out for half an hour? Finally Mrs. Beeson turned to face them. “Well, it just goes to show,” she said. “We never used to have people breaking windows and stealing things. For all our hard work, we’ve still got bad eggs among us.” She gave an exasperated sigh, and her breath made a puff of fog in the chilly air. “If this is someone’s idea of fun, that person should be very, very ashamed of himself. This is no time for wild, stupid behavior.” “It’s probably kids,” said a man standing near Grover. Why did people always blame kids for things like this? As far as Grover could tell, grown-ups caused a lot more trouble in the world than kids. “On the other hand,” said Mrs. Beeson, “it could be a threat, or a warning. We’ve heard the reports about someone wandering around in the hills.” She glanced back at the bloody rag hanging in the window. “It might even be a message of some sort. It looks to me like that stain could be a letter, maybe an S, or an R.” Grover squinted at the stain on the cloth. To him it looked more like an A, or maybe even just a random blotch. “It might be a B,” said someone standing near him. “Or an H,” said someone else. Mrs. Beeson nodded. “Could be,” she said. “The S could stand for sin. Or if it’s an R it could stand for ruin. If you’ll let me have that piece of cloth, Ralph, I’ll show it to Althea and see if she has anything to say about it.” Just then Wayne Hollister happened to pass by, saw the crowd, and chimed in about what he’d seen in the night. His story frightened people even more than the blood and the broken glass. All around him, Grover heard them murmuring: Someone’s out there. He’s given us a warning. What does he mean to do? He’s trying to scare us. One woman began to cry. Hoyt McCoy, as usual, said that Brenda Beeson should not pronounce upon things until she was in full possession of the facts, which she was not, and that to him the
Jeanne DuPrau (The Prophet of Yonwood)
My bosses would be beyond pissed if tomorrow's New York Times read: "Solid gold tiger eats stupid couple who were taking photos of it with their camera phone.
R.R. Virdi (Grave Beginnings (The Grave Report, #1))
tolerant of your teens’ misadventures, but make sure you talk to them calmly about their mistakes.         • Don’t be shocked when your teens do something stupid and then say they don’t know why. You now know why, but explain that to them—how their prefrontal lobes haven’t quite come online yet. And remember, even the smartest, most obedient, meekest kids will do something stupid before “graduating” from adolescence.         • Communicate and relate: Emphasize the positive things in your teens’ lives and encourage them to try different activities and new ways of thinking about things. Reinforce that you are there for them when they need advice.         • Social networking tools and websites are an important avenue of communication with your teens. Some parents report that their most successful and meaningful “conversations” with their teens occurred while texting back and forth with them. And if you don’t know how to text yet, ask your teenager.
Frances E. Jensen (The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults)
Something, which the police called a bomb, had exploded in his shed. Investigations were begun, and the efforts of the authorities were soon to be categorized by the appropriate officals as "feverish", for bombs began to go off all over the place. The police collected fragments of the exploded bombs, and the press, anxious to help the police in their work, published impressive pictures of the fragments as well as a drawing of a reconstructed bomb together with a very detailed description of how it had been made.The police had done a really first-rate job. Even my brother and myself, both of us extremely untalented men in technical matters, could easily grasp how the bomb makers had gone to work. A large quantity of ordinary black gunpowder, such as is the be found in the cartridges sold for shoutguns, was encased in plasticine; in it was embedded an explosive cap, of the type used in hand grenades during the war, at the end of a thin wire; the other end of the wire was joined to the battery of a pocket flashlight -- obtainable at any village store -- and thence to the alarm mechanism of an ordinary alarm clock. The whole contratation was packed into a soapbox. Of course my brother did his duty as a journalist.He published the police report, together with the illustrations, on page one. It was not my brother's doing that this issue of the paper had a most spectacular success and that for weeks men were still buying it; no. the credit for that must go to the police; they had done their bit to ensure that the peasantry of Schleswig-Holstein would have a healthy occupation during the long winter evenings. Instead of just sitting and indulging in stupid thoughts, or doing crossword puzzles, or assembling to hear inflamatory speeches, the peasantery was henceforth quetly and busily engaged in procuring soapboxes and alarm clock and flashlight batteries. And then the bombs really began to go of.... Nobody ever asked me what I was actually doing in Schleswig=Holstein, save perhaps Dr. Hirschfeldt, a high official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, who had recently taken to frequenting Salinger's salon. Occasionally, and casually, he would glance at ne with his green eyes an honour me with a question, such as: "And what are the peasants up to in the north?" To which I would usually only reply: "Thank you for your interest. According to the statistics, the standard of living is going up -- in particular, there has been in increased demand for alarm clocks.
Ernst von Salomon (Der Fragebogen (rororo Taschenbücher))
How the fuck can you coach a football team if you’ve never played football in your life?” he continued. “And I’m not talking pro. I’m talking at any level. They don’t have a clue. I don’t care how many hours they spent firing people at Time Inc. or Meredith Corporation. They had this stupid red/yellow/green system, which they explained to me like I was a five-year-old. I wanted to reach across the table, grab one of them, and throw him across the room. And you should have seen them when the press reports of their engagement started piling up. They were bug-eyed, like white-gloved society women who only want to be in the paper when they get married and when they die.” McKinsey
Duff McDonald (The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business)
They wrote the play, as Burnett later told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, in “the white heat of anger—anger at stupid people who refused to acknowledge that Hitler and Nazism were a threat.
Noah Isenberg (We'll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood's Most Beloved Movie: The Legend and Afterlife of Hollywood's Most Beloved Film)
Forgive my skepticism. All the journalists I’ve dealt with have been so poorly informed. They don’t make the slightest effort to understand the science. Journalists are lazy and stupid. I won’t mention any names. But take that young man from Esquire magazine. Did you know his journalism background was in celebrity profiles? He wrote about movie stars, so that gave him the authority to write about Jennie. Why, you see, Jennie was a celebrity. Make me laugh. And you’d think the Boston Globe would be concerned about scientific accuracy. That hapless reporter didn’t even know the difference between an ape and a monkey.
Douglas Preston (Jennie: A Novel)