People From Chicago

"I think and speak clearer since I cut the dairy out. I can breathe better and perform at a better rate, and my voice is clearer. I can explore different things with my voice that I couldn’t do because of my meat and dairy ingestion. I am proud and blessed to be a vegetarian, everything became clear."

"This is street rad-i-o, For unsung hero, Driving in the regal, trying to stay legal, My daughter found Nemo, I found the new primo, Yeah, you know how we do, we do it for the people.""

"Took a picture of the truth and tried to develop it Had proof, but it was only recognized by the intelligent Took the negative and positive, cause niggas got to live Said I got to get more than I'm given Cause truth'll never be heard in religion After searching the world, on the inside what was hidden?It was the truth"

"Let the truth be told from young souls that become old From days spent in the jungle, where must one go To find it, time is real, we can't rewind it Out of everybody I met, who told the truth? Time did"

"Tried to call, or at least beep the lord, but didn't have a touch-tone"

"Yo...on the amen, corner I stood lookin' at my former hood Felt the spirit in the wind, knew my friend was gone for good Threw dirt on the casket, the hurt, I couldn't mask it Mixin down emotions, struggle I hadn't mastered I choreographed seven steps to heaven and hell, waiting to exhale and make the bread leavened Veteran of a cold war its Chica-i-go for What I know or, whats known"

"I look into my daughter's eyes. And realize that I'ma learn through her. The Messiah, might even return through her. If I'ma do it, I gotta change the world through her"

"We write songs about wrong cause its hard to see right"

"Be the author of your own horoscope"

"We got arms but wont reach for the skies"

"Never looking back, or too far in front of me. The present is a gift, and I just wanna be."

"The chosen one from the land of the frozen sun, where drunk nights get remembered more than sober ones"

"Cause federal and state was built for a black fate Her emptiness was filled with beatings and court dates They fabricated cases, hoping one would stick And said she robbed places that didn't exist In the midst of threats on her life and being caged with Aryan whites Through dark halls of hate she carried the light"

"This industry will make you lose intensity"

"I'm the truth, across the table from corporate lies Immortilized by the realness I bring to it If revolution had a movie I'd be theme music My music, you can either fight, fuck, or dream to it"

"The perseverence of a rebel, I drop heavier levels of unseen or heard, a king with words Can't knock the hustle, but I've seen street dreams deferred Dark spots in my mind where the scene occurred Some say I'm too deep, but I'm in too deep to sleep"

"Granted we known each other for some time but it don't take a whole day to recognize sunshine"

"I fight, with myself in the ring of doubt and fear The rain ain't gone, but I can still see clear As a child, given religion with no answer to why Just told believe in Jesus cause for me he did die Curiosity killed the catechism Understanding and wisdom became the rhythm that I played to And became a slave to master self A rich man is one with knowledge, happiness and his health My mind had dealt with the books of Zen, Tao the lessons of the Koran and Bible, to me they all vital And got truth within 'em, gotta read them boys You just can't skim 'em, different branches of belief But one root that stem 'em, but people of the venom try to trim 'em And use religion as an emblem When it should be a natural way of life Who am I or they to say to whom you pray ain't right? That's who got you doin' right and got you this far Whether you say "in Jesus name" or "Al hum du'Allah" Long as you know it's a being that's supreme to you You let that show towards others in the things you do Cause when the trumpets blowin', 24 elders surround the throne Only 144,000 gon get home"

"But once the man got you well he altered the native Told her if she got an image and a gimmick That she could make money, and she did it like a dummy Now I see her in commercials, she's universal She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle Now she be in the burbs lickin' rock and dressin' hip And on some dumb shit"

"My style is too developed to be arrested It's the freestyle, so now it's out on parole They tried to hold my soul in a holding cell so I would sell but I bonded with a break and had enough to make bail"

"I hope, that in our archives and historical filings of the future, we do not allow the techie traditions of hierarchy and false regularity to be superimposed to the teeming, fantastic disorderlyness of human life."

"HOW TO LEARN ANYTHINGAs far as I can tell these are the techniques used by bright people who want to learn something other than by taking courses in it. [...]1. DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN. But you can't know this exactly, because you don't know exactly how any field is structured until you know all about it.2. READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON IT, especially what you enjoy, since that way you can read more of it and faster.3. GRAB FOR INSIGHTS. Regardless of points others are trying to make, when you recognize an insight that has meaning for you, make it your own [...] Its importance is not how central it is, but how clear and interesting and memorable to you. REMEMBER IT. Then go for another.4. TIE INSIGHTS TOGETHER. Soon you will have your own string of insights in a field. [...]5. CONCENTRATE ON MAGAZINES, NOT BOOKS. Magazines have far more insights per inch of text, and can be read much faster. But when a book really speaks to you, lavish attention on it.6. FIND YOUR OWN SPECIAL TOPICS, AND PURSUE THEM.7. GO TO CONVENTIONS. For some reason, conventions are a splendid concentrated way to learn things; talking to people helps. [...]8. "FIND YOUR MAN." Somewhere in the world is someone who will answer your questions extraordinarily well. If you find him, dog him. [...]9. KEEP IMPROVING YOUR QUESTIONS. Probably in your head there are questions that don't seem to line up with what your hearing. Don't assume that you don't understand; keep adjusting the questions till you get an answer that relates to what you wanted.10. YOUR FIELD IS BOUNDED WHERE YOU WANT IT TO BE. Just because others group and stereotype things in conventional ways does not mean they are necessarily right. Intellectual subjects are connected every which way; your field is what you think it is. [...]"

"Everybody has only a 24-hour day. Most people, if they increase consumption of one medium (like magazines or books) will cut down on another (like TV). This drastically reduces the sort of growth some people have been expecting."

"In order for something to Catch On, it has to be standardized. Unfortunately, there is motivation for different companies to make their own little changes in order to restrict users to their own products. The best example of how to avoid this: Philips patented its audio cartridge [i.e. the standard audio "cassette"] to the teeth, but then granted everyone free use of the patent provided they adhered to the exact standard. The result has been the system's spectacular success, and Philips, rather than dominating a small market, has a share of a far larger market, and hence makes more money. That's a virtue-rewarded kind of story."

"If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards."

"I see Professionalism as a spreading disease of the present-day world, a sort of poly-oligarchy by which various groups (subway conductors, social workers, bricklayers) can bring things to a halt if their particular demands are not met. (Meanwhile, the irrelevance of each profession increases, in proportion to its increasing rigidity.) Such lucky groups demand more in each go-round - but meantime, the number who are permanently unemployed grows and grows."

"It is imperative for many reasons that the appalling gap between public and computer insider be closed. As the saying goes, war is too important to be left to the generals. Guardianship of the computer can no longer be left to a priesthood. I see this as just one example of the creeping evil of Professionalism, the control of aspects of society by cliques of insiders. There may be some chance, though, that Professionalism can be turned around. Doctors, for example, are being told that they no longer own people’s bodies. And this book may suggest to some computer professionals that their position should not be as sacrosanct as they have thought, either."

"Everything is deeply intertwingled."

"You can and must understand computers now!"

"I have long been alarmed by people’s sheeplike acceptance of the term ‘computer technology’ — it sounds so objective and inexorable — when most computer technology is really a bunch of ideas turned into conventions and packages."

"We should not impose regularity where it does not exist."

"After all, dumbing down Xanadu sure worked well for Tim Berners-Lee!"

"[Of the web] It's massively successful. It is trivially simple. Massively successful like karaoke - anybody can do it."

"A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within 10 seconds."

"The World Wide Web was precisely what we were trying to PREVENT— ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management."

"Most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong."

"On occasion, quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent."

"Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. … It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation--and their ideas from suppression--at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."

"Great works of literature have frequently been produced by authors writing under assumed names. Despite readers' curiosity and the public's interest in identifying the creator of a work of art, an author generally is free to decide whether or not to disclose her true identity. The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one's privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry."

"Even worse than the short-term effect of a corporation’s dominating an election or a ballot initiative, Stevens said (as if he had a time machine to look at us now), was the fact that corporations corrupting politics would, inevitably, cause average working Americans — the 95 percent who make less than $100,000 a year — to conclude that their “democracy” is now rigged. The result, Stevens wrote, is that average people would simply stop participating in politics, stop being informed about politics, and stop voting…or become angry and cynical. Our democracy, he suggested, would be immeasurably damaged and ultimately vulnerable to corporate-supported demagogues and oligarchs. Our constitutional republic, if Citizens United stands, could wither and could die."

"In addition to this immediate drowning out of noncorporate voices, there may be deleterious effects that follow soon thereafter. Corporate ‘domination’ of electioneering can generate the impression that corporations dominate our democracy. When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A Government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing. The predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders ‘call the tune’ and a reduced ‘willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance.’ To the extent that corporations are allowed to exert undue influence in electoral races, the speech of the eventual winners of those races may also be chilled. Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation. On a variety of levels, unregulated corporate electioneering might diminish the ability of citizens to ‘hold officials accountable to the people,’ and disserve the goal of a public debate that is ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.’"

"(TH: In Justice Stevens’ dissent in Citizens United, he pointed out that corporations in their modern form didn’t even exist when the Constitution was written in 1787 and got its first ten amendments in 1791, including the First which protects free speech)"

"All general business corporation statues appear to date from well after 1800.. The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans they had in mind. The fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides it…. Unlike natural persons, corporations have ‘limited liability’ for their owners and managers, ‘perpetual life,’ separation of ownership and control, ‘and favorable treatment of the accumulation of assets….’ Unlike voters in U.S. elections, corporations may be foreign controlled. ...It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed."

"[B]y requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based."

"At bottom, the court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

"A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold."

"After all, a district judge who gives harsh sentences to Yankees fans and lenient sentences to Red Sox fans would not be acting reasonably even if her procedural rulings were impeccable."

"Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

"The ideas of liberty and equality have been an irresistible force in motivating leaders like Patrick Henry, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln, schoolteachers like Nathan Hale and Booker T. Washington, the Philippine Scouts who fought at Bataan, and the soldiers who scaled the bluff at Omaha Beach. If those ideas are worth fighting for -- and our history demonstrates that they are -- it cannot be true that the flag that uniquely symbolizes their power is not itself worthy of protection from unnecessary desecration."