C Span Inauguration 2005 Quotes

I think that all filth is local ... and that a joke isn't a joke unless it's at somebody's expense ~ Christopher Hitchens

All week Senate will be on the Stimulus/Porkulus Bill. Tune in C SPAN ~ Chuck Grassley

I try to watch only real things, which basically amounts to C-Span for me. I like real people in real situations. I learn from that. ~ William Devane

Tacticians attempt to limit the options of opponents while increasing their own. Increasing one's options is the result of deeper understanding of the limits and enablers at hand. The boundaries of the battle or campaign limit the span of choices available only to the novice. To the master tactician, the more the boundaries appear to limit choice, the more options become available. The rules become enabling. To be sure, perceived limits and restraints are the source of surprise. When one side believes a thing cannot or will not be done, it is vulnerable to a master tactician who finds a way to do so. Knowledge of the opponent's perceptions of the boundaries of war increases the options available. When one can find no means to overcome the boundaries of battle, the conflict is lost. Military genius is conferred upon the tactician who can limit the opponent's options. Victory or defeat comes when one side perceives that the only option left is surrender, the renouncement of the capacity to choose for oneself and the transference of it to the other. This outcome occurs only because structure and context create the corners into which the opponent can be backed. ~ Everett C. Dolman

We wanted to hear from viewers about why they watch or participate in call-ins on C-SPAN, ... Viewers of all ages and walks of life wrote to us, including actresses, stand-up comics, parents and students. What's clear after reading the entries is the impact that call-ins have had on the political conversation on the network. ~ Brian Lamb

Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN. ~ Thomas Frank

Borders are semiporous. Capital flows more freely than people across them. on C Span. ~ Noam Chomsky

I'm an expert on surfing the channels, so I'm always able to find something strange. Or I watch C-Span. I can watch a conference on oceanography, or whatever, for hours. ~ Rafael Vinoly

Behind Alystra was the known world, full of wonder yet empty of surprise, drifting like a brilliant but tightly closed bubble down the river of time. Ahead, separated from her by no more than the span of a few footsteps, was the empty wilderness - the world of the desert - the world of the Invaders. Alvin ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Much of the colony's musical experimenting was, quite consciously, concerned with what might be called "time span." What was the briefest note that the mind could grasp - or the longest that it could tolerate without boredom? Could the result be varied by conditioning or by the use of appropriate orchestration? Such problems were discussed endlessly, and the arguments were not purely academic. They had resulted in some extremely interesting compositions. But it was in the art of the cartoon film, with its limitless possibilities, that New Athens had made its most successful experiments. The hundred years since the time of Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all mediums. On the purely realistic side, results could be produced indistinguishable from actual photography - much to the contempt of those who were developing the cartoon along abstract lines. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the straight narratives. p60 ~ Chuck Klosterman

I watch way too much C-SPAN. ~ Michael Moore

After watching Donald Trump on C-Span the other day, one can see it being easy to be convinced that what the public sees, at least from the press coverage, is just a bit of "reality television" spilling over into real life. His performance at the gathering was reminiscent of what may have happened had Archie Bunker walked out of the cartoon world of the television sitcom and went to speak at posh affair filled with the wax museum of Washington politicos and the buzzard-esque scowls of the press. All eyes fixed on the performer giving yet another exhibition of theatrical prowess. ~ Robert Montgomerie

It had always felt to me as though Washington, D.C., to Boston was one span of stuff. You never really leave Springsteenland, you're just in this unbroken highway and strip-mall landscape. ~ William Gibson

Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts:

ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz,
Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies (climactic moments of high grace or realization) that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts.

LIFE ROLLED UP. (Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.') In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short.

SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. (Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.) In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome ~ Irving Howe

I like the normal things of life: I like the Mets, and the Celtics, and the N.Y. Rangers. I like to watch C-Span; I love Costco. ~ Robert Morse

I don't know what's wrong with my television set. I was getting C-Span and the Home Shopping Network on the same station. I actually bought a congressman. ~ Bruce Baum

I think I'm pretty politically informed, and I find myself watching Senate hearings on C-SPAN. ~ Powers Boothe

The Wright brothers' first flight was shorter than a Boeing 747's wing span. We've just begun with heart transplants. ~ C. Walton Lillehei

I grew up on hip-hop. I grew up on Run-D.M.C., Whodini, LL when I was in college, so I'm more of a music fan. I probably have the most eclectic collection of music in my Grand Cherokee. Literally, in a span of a week, I'll go from 2Pac to Boyz II Men to Sister Hazel, right down to West Side Story or the Wiz. I love show tunes. ~ Stuart Scott

I grew up addicted to 'Star Trek' and 'Mission: Impossible.' Now I switch between 'South Park' and 'C-Span.' ~ Lawrence Blume

When I joined Google, they asked me what title I wanted. I said, 'What about archduke?' They said, 'Well, that didn't meet our nomenclature. Why don't you be our Chief Internet Evangelist?' This was in 2005. ~ Vint Cerf

In 2005, I had one more year of college left, and I was taking a summer class in Barbados. I got discovered in the airport on my way back and started modeling at the beginning of my senior year at Bucknell. ~ Garrett Neff

the life span of any particular emotion is only one and a half minutes. After that we have to revive the emotion and get it going again. ~ Pema Chodron

He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom. ~ Joseph Heller

Fairytales are stories that span every generation and they've been around for a long time. ~ Jamie Dornan

To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The brief span of our poor unhappy life to its final hour Is hastening on; and while we drink and call for gay wreaths, Perfumes, and young girls, old age creeps upon us, unperceived. ~ Juvenal

The letter writers span the spectrum from left to right. Members say they don't want this to become a partisan political issue. In fact, there are reasons administration officials have been cautious in making a genocide declaration. ~ Tom Gjelten

The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

Limits of survival are set by climate, those long drifts of change which a generation may fail to notice. And it is the extremes of climate which set the pattern. Lonely, finite humans may observe climatic provinces, fluctuations of annual weather and, occasionally may observe such things as "This is a colder year than I've ever known." Such things are sensible. But humans are seldom alerted to the shifting average through a great span of years. And it is precisely in this alerting that humans learn how to survive on any planet. They must learn climate. - ~ Frank Herbert

When it was just you and your fight to live, the only thing that mattered was time. Time was the only thing reminding you to propel forward and find your next meal, the next roof over your head, or those few hours of crucial sleep, because your days were numbered and they wouldn't stop for anyone, no matter how rich, privileged, or smart you were.
If there was one thing I'd learned in my short span of twenty-three years, it was that time didn't discriminate. ~ Rachael Wade

I wrote 'The Match,' my cricket novel, between 2002 and 2005. In retrospect, almost an age of innocence in cricket and a time when it was rare to find the game deep in fiction. ~ Romesh Gunesekera

Anything made out of destructible matter Infinite time would have devoured before. But if the atoms that make and replenish the world Have endured through the immense span of the past Their natures are immortal-that is clear. Never can things revert to nothingness! ~ Lucretius