Mass incarceration did not happen because of some drastic shift in human nature. It happened because the private prison industry was able to change our laws that allows us to lock up a lot more normal people. Climate activist Tim DeChristopher on Letterman  (via liberatingreality)

Posted by Michael Kirkham on July 1, 2013 10:49 pm / 0 Comments

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. Carl Sagan

Posted by Michael Kirkham on June 28, 2013 5:19 pm / 0 Comments

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. Kurt Vonnegut

Posted by Michael Kirkham on June 28, 2013 3:21 pm / 0 Comments

Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity. Peter Singer (via liberatingreality)

Posted by Michael Kirkham on June 27, 2013 11:26 pm / 0 Comments

His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? Has he any self-respect or pride in himself? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realizes that he has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? Hunter S. Thompson, Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

Posted by Michael Kirkham on June 23, 2013 2:57 pm / 0 Comments

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.  Robert Green Ingersol

Posted by Michael Kirkham on June 23, 2013 2:09 pm / 0 Comments