I notice that my blog theme isn’t loading properly – No masthead, the side bars are all at the bottom and it’s pretty much just text in the middle. Sometimes these things resolve themselves. Hopefully I’ll get time to look for the problem before too long. Just wanted to let you guys know, it’s me, not you.

Via In the Agora:

“Do you think America wants hope right now? Because fear seems to be winning.”

— Stephen Colbert, April 24, 2008

Other quotes about fear. The big one:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

—FDR, 1933

For my fellow geeks out there, we have the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

(Which, of course, brings to mind the Litany of Beer: Beer is the mind-killer. Beer is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my beer. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see it’s path. When the beer has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.)

There is the instant-classic (if momentarily inconvenient) statement by Bill Clinton:

Now one of Clinton’s Laws of Politics is this: If one candidate’s trying to scare you and the other one’s trying to get you to think; if one candidate’s appealing to your fears and the other one’s appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope. That’s the best.

There is Bertrand Russell:

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Dorothy Thompson:

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

James Bymes:

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death

Marcus Aurelius:

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

Thomas Jefferson:

I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.

Helen Keller:

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Eric Hoffer:

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Unknown:

It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon:

Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength.

Edward R. Murrow:

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.

(And, who could forget Blue Oyster Cult: Don’t fear the reaper; baby, I’m your man; La, la la, la la, La, la la, la la.)

I’m not really a hippy-granola type who believes every challenge is simply a new opportunity and every stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet. I know there is hell to pay for misplaced hope. But there is also hell to pay for fearing needlessly. Reject fear and those who peddle it.

I appreciate the effort, but the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette seems to have gone above and beyond – going to the Kinsey Institute to evaluate a throw away article in Men’s Health giving Fort Wayne a high ranking in terms of the sexual satisfaction of its residents. Men’s Health took a look at condom sales, births, and sex toy sales to come up with a list of most sexually satisfied cities:

Most
1. Indianapolis
2. Columbus, Ohio
3. Fort Wayne
4. Cincinnati
5. Salt Lake City

I’m a subscriber to Men’s Health. No one is going to confuse it with a scientific journal. Nevertheless, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette went to the Kinsey Institute which concluded that its findings were suspect. Shocking.

My e-mail client of choice is Mozilla Thunderbird. By and large, it’s a good piece of software. Turns out, however:

Thunderbird has a nasty habit of once in a great while forgetting about the existence of a profile if it uses the default name. When this occurs you suddenly start up in the new account wizard and it looks like you lost everything. You haven’t. Its just lost track of your profile, which is probably intact.

So, I spent the better part of this morning recovering my e-mail settings and restoring access to my saved messages and whatnot. Who needs to do paying work, anyway?

Strange Maps has an interesting map of where news breaks in the lower 48 states. Even allowing for population densities, certain areas of the country — notably D.C. and New York City — account for a disproportionate number of the stories. D.C. makes sense due to the number of stories about the federal government. New York City makes less sense when compared to, say, Chicago. By population, Chicago should be about 1/2 of the “news size” of New York, but, in reality, it’s only about 1/5 the size.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates as moderated by ABC.

LINCOLN: Thank you very much, Charlie and George, and thanks to all in the audience and who are out there. I appear before you today for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public mind.

We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you think Mr. Douglas loves America as much you do?

LINCOLN: Sure I do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But who loves America more?

LINCOLN: I’d prefer to get on with my opening statement George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: If your love for America were eight apples, how many apples would Senator Douglas’s love be?

LINCOLN: Eight.

. . .

LINCOLN: Ahem, I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect slavery will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you love America this much (extending fingers), this much (extending hands slightly), or thiiiiiis much (extending hands broadly)?

LINCOLN: I think we covered this…

GIBSON: If I may interrupt…

LINCOLN: Please.

GIBSON: I noticed, Mr. Lincoln, that your American flag pin was upside down…

LINCOLN: Yes, the wind caught it. Now, as I was saying…

GIBSON: We get questions about this all the time over at Powerline and on Hannity’s talk show. Mr. Douglas has said this is a major vulnerability for you in the fall. So I’ll ask again – do you love America?

LINCOLN: (scowling with a forced smile). Yes.

GIBSON: If your love for America were ice cream, what flavor would it be?

Ok, the allcaps may not be appropriate in the title. Looks like there was a magnitude 5.2 earthquake about 26 miles southwest of Vincennes at 5:30 this morning.

Update Wow, I hadn’t checked the blogs this morning, but it looks like the local blogosphere is abuzz about the earthquake:

Fort Wayne Observed.
Marc Rust.
Berry Street Beacon.
Advance Indiana.
Indiana Barrister.

Update 2 I had thought I’d slept through the earthquake entirely, but Amy reminded me of an incident during the night that must’ve been the earthquake, but which I had forgotten. We have a bookshelf next to the bed with some sliding doors that rattle when the bookshelf is jostled. At some point, I remember thinking that one of the dogs was up against the bookshelf and scratching because the doors kept rattling and rattling. I vaguely recall noticing that none of the dogs were there and trying to move the door into a position that wouldn’t rattle, then laying down and zonking out again. Clearly I wasn’t fully awake.

Sherpas are interesting. Here is “how they work”.

My boy sure does love the firefighter stuff.

Will Statom, the Delaware County GOP voter registration official who assaulted a reporter at the Delaware County Building received a 3 day suspension for his attack. I never tried it, but the places I worked, I would’ve gotten fired if I’d attacked a member of the public. Statom’s reasoning is laughable. He says that he was mad at the Muncie Star Press reporter he tackled for “promoting” a public meeting that he says was “illegal.” The reason the meeting was illegal, according to Statom was because it wasn’t publicized 48 hours in advance. The reason for the notice requirements is to make sure that the public knows about public meetings.

So, if I have this straight, Statom was pissed off because the Star Press publicized a meeting that Statom felt was insufficiently publicized.

Now, I can’t say what Statom’s motivations are; I’m not a mind reader. But, his actions and aggravation make a whole lot more sense if you suppose that delay in processing a flood of new voter registrations generated by the Obama campaign is politically advantageous for the Delaware County GOP. That’d make more sense than his stated position, in any case.