Thomas

“There is an old saying: "If appearance and essence were the same thing, there would be no need for science”
― Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

“Anyone who visits Aalsmeer will be struck at first by the absurdity of the arrangement. Why go to all the trouble to put something as perishable as a daisy on an airplane, fly it to another country so it can sit on the auction floor, and then put it back on a plane and fly it to its final destination? ... [I]t seemed obvious that an Internet-based system would simplify things. Sure, the flowers would still need to come together in some kind of distribution center...but the actual bidding and ordering wouldn't have to happen in the same building where the flowers are.
...
When I asked one importer this question, he just shrugged and said, 'Why are there still brokers on Wall Street?”
― Amy Stewart, Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers

“Obama argued to the press in mid-June that the decision to withdraw even a residual force was made not by him but by the Iraqis when they refused to sign a new Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, early in his presidency. As had been the case with his attempt to argue that it was the world and not he who set the Syria red line, within twenty-four hours the Washington Post published an article noting that during the [2012] campaign in a debate with opponent Mitt Romney, Obama had in fact taken credit for making the decision to get all US troops out of Iraq.”
― David Rothkopf, National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear

“The trouble that public unions could potentially cause for citizens was one reason that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hero of Democrats and union organizers alike, opposed them for government workers. Republican Fiorello La Guardia, a great mayor of New York, opposed them, too. Unlike in the private sector, where unions were a needed counterweight to strong management, in the public sector unions had a big say in selecting management through the election process. As a result, they had a lot of power on both sides of the labor-management negotiating process. Roosevelt and La Guardia thus feared that, when government officials and unions battled over power, citizens could lose out.”
― Joel Klein