Next place I move into, I’m buying a big wooden British grandma-sized tea box and filling it with like fifty different kinds of tea. Lord, I know that sounds dorky as hell, but also it would definitely rule???

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time— when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

carl sagan

twenty years from now i really am going to sit down and write a biography about my friend mccune. the dude is one of the last of the independents. he is a national treasure. he is my brother. amen

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.