Fish for Friday

"I am Charlie," the signs say,
in solidarity with those killed in Paris

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

We are too. "Terrorists Strike Charlie Hebdo Newspaper in Paris, Leaving 12 Dead." Excerpt:

Officials said late Wednesday that the suspects in an assault on a satirical newspaper in Paris had been identified as two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, 32 and 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18.
    A manhunt for the suspects continues across Paris after the brazen and methodical slaughter at the paper, Charlie Hebdo, left 12 people dead, including the top editor, prominent cartoonists and police officers. It was among the deadliest attacks in postwar France.
    The assault threatened to deepen the distrust of France’s large Muslim population, coming at a time when Islamic radicalism has become a central concern of security officials across Europe.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali commented:

After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.
    This was not an attack by a mentally deranged, lone-wolf gunman. This was not an “un-Islamic” attack by a bunch of thugs.... ["How to Answer the Paris Terror Attack: The West must stand up for freedom—and acknowledge the link between Islamists’ political ideology and their religious beliefs."]

A curious incident prior to a concert in The Hague: Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands was attending a concert in the capitol. The Conductor, who was Muslim, proceeded to give the Queen a lecture, which he seemed to admit was inappropriate, on the "beauty" of Islam. Shortly into his statement, the entire orchestra got up and proceeded to walk off the stage. Staff members of the music hall escorted the conductor off-stage and, after questioning, out of the building. Now, that took courage. Watch the walkout, which you probably didn't see on your local news [video published on Youtube in 2012]:

So much for the relentless “you can do it” attitude that pervades our culture. Apparently, being mindful of the real barriers that are placed in the way of your dreams is a far more effective way of achieving your goals – "Dare to Dream of Falling Short."

Conventional wisdom has it that dreams are supposed to excite us and inspire us to act. Putting this to the test, Dr. Oettingen recruits a group of undergraduate college students and randomly assigns them to two groups. She instructs the first group to fantasize that the coming week will be a knockout: good grades, great parties and the like; students in the second group are asked to record all their thoughts and daydreams about the coming week, good and bad.
    Strikingly, the students who were told to think positively felt far less energized and accomplished than those who were instructed to have a neutral fantasy. Blind optimism, it turns out, does not motivate people....
    In one study, she taught a group of third graders a mental-contrast exercise: They were told to imagine a candy prize they would receive if they finished a language assignment, and then to imagine several of their own behaviors that could prevent them from winning....
    ...an extension of her empirically validated mental contrasting exercise...WOOP — which stands for “wish, outcome, obstacle, plan”...a free app for your smartphone, called, appropriately, WOOP.

May your day be full of reflection, productivity, and refreshment.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu & Michael Keaton

"Mike Nichols Told Him Not to Do It: Iñárritu Turns ‘Birdman’ Into Risk Central." Interview with the director of Birdman. One of Alejandro G. Iñárritu's answers:

All my life I have always loved to collaborate. I invite Nicolás [Giacobone] and Armando [Bo] and Alexander [Dinelaris], which if you know what we have done in our work, you would never think this is a good idea. I said, guys, I am going to propose you the worst idea ever. I told them what was the concept; they love it. We get together in New York, we get together in San Miguel de Allende, in L.A., like sessions of one week or 10 days, and then over two years we get together over Skype. It was a fascinating process, because it was hilarious, it was confessional. It was a meta process. If somebody wanted to give credit — “I said that,” “I did that” — when that kind of hints of ego come out, it became material. The basic rule I wanted to play all the time: I didn’t write this movie to fulfill the major source of pop culture now, which is the irony and the cynicism. I see it in my teenagers; anything that’s serious, anything that’s emotional, it’s absolutely rejected. Everything has to be taken with an intellectual approach and a comment about that. I’m a little bit tired of that. I tried to be truthful and be seriously honest. Seriously funny means that it’s true.

Having a bad day?

"How My Mom Got Hacked." Opening paragraph:

MY mother received the ransom note on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It popped up on her computer screen soon after she’d discovered that all of her files had been locked. “Your files are encrypted,” it announced. “To get the key to decrypt files you have to pay 500 USD.” If my mother failed to pay within a week, the price would go up to $1,000. After that, her decryption key would be destroyed and any chance of accessing the 5,726 files on her PC — all of her data — would be lost forever.

There is always tomorrow and, if not, we won't give a [expletive deleted] anyway.

"Nice, decent man. Everyone in the Secret Service was surprised by his downfall." –Quotation from In the President's Secret Service, by Alan Sklar.

One of the problems with police is that often individuals who join the force are motivated by a need to have power and a desire to show off.

Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined. Canada is an Indian word meaning “Big Village.”

The whole nine yards:
    American fighter planes in WW2 had machine guns that were fed by a belt of cartridges. The average plane held belts that were 27 feet (9 yards) long. If the pilot used up all his ammo he was said to have given it the whole nine yards.

Ancient Music, by Ezra Pound:

Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm.
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm.

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm.
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMN.

Explanation of the above: "Fox News Is OFF the Air and the Foul Odor of Deception Has Ceased."

Elizabeth Warren on the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. Here's a sample:

The titans of Wall Street have succeeded in pushing government policies that made the megabanks rich beyond imagination, while leaving working families to struggle from payday to payday. So long as the revolving door keeps spinning, government policies will favor Wall Street over Main Street. I hope you'll all join me in saying "enough is enough."

Still more paraprosdokians – figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected:

• In filling out an application, where it says, "In case of emergency, notify," I put "DOCTOR."
• I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
• Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

Loved it ["William the Conjuror"]! Look, man, you keep writing stories – you’re very good at it, and it is not an easy thing to be good at.

"Proulx Says She Regrets 'Brokeback Mountain'." Excerpt:

I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience, but unfortunately the audience that ‘Brokeback’ reached most strongly have powerful fantasy lives,” she said. “And one of the reasons we keep the gates locked here is that a lot of men have decided that the story should have had a happy ending. They can’t bear the way it ends — they just can’t stand it. So they rewrite the story, including all kinds of boyfriends and new lovers and so forth after Jack is killed. And it just drives me wild. They can’t understand that the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis. It’s about homophobia; it’s about a social situation; it’s about a place and a particular mindset and morality. They just don’t get it.

Scary road. Sani Pass, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa:

    Sani Pass is located in the western end of KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa on the road between Underberg and Mokhotlong, Lesotho. Sani Pass is a notoriously dangerous road that requires the use of a 4×4 vehicle. The pass is approximately 9 km in length and requires above average driving experience. While South African immigration at the bottom of the pass prohibits vehicles deemed unsuitable for the journey, the Lesotho border agents at the top generally allow vehicles of all types to attempt the descent. Border between the two countries closes at 4:00 pm every day and the Pass is often closed due to weather conditions, especially during winter.

We went to Virginia Beach Christmas week. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Going to the beach at the end of the year started as a new tradition for us last year at Myrtle Beach. We enjoy the quietness of the beach in winter. The hotel rates were unbeatable. Virginia Beach beach had a lights show along its 5-mile boardwalk every night, very pretty.

Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.

George Bernard Shaw said:

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

Some more things Albert Einstein said:

• We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
• The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
• Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

Winston Churchill said:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.

Limerick of the week:

Believers opposed in heterodoxies
go to war, in person or by proxies,
    fighting over what gets said,
    sometimes chopping off a head,
the winners proclaiming orthodoxies.

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean