People From California

""as the IE homeland problem involves a spatial definition of a prehistoric linguistic construct, the utility of any other discipline, such as archaeology, depends on whether a linguistic entity can be translated into something discernable in the archaeological record. In short, any solution not purely linguistic must involve some form of indirect inference whose own premises are usually, if not invariably, far from demonstrated" (Mallory 1997, 94)."

"Mallory (1997) agrees that there is solid evidence in both European and Asiatic stocks for Proto-Indo-European cereals, as well as the agricultural terminology required to process them. He notes that "while the economic emphasis of the immediate ancestors of the Indo-Iranians may have been towards pastoralism there is good evidence that they too are derived from a mixed agricultural population" (236-237)"

"In any event, all three models [Anatolian Neolithic, Near Eastern, Pontic-Caspian] require some form of major language shift despite there being no credible archaeological evidence to demonstrate, through elite dominance or any other mechanism, the type of language shift required to explain, for example, the arrival and dominance of the Indo-Aryans in India."

"If there are any lessons to be learned, it is that every model of Indo-European origins can be found to reveal serious deficiencies as we increase our scrutiny."

"‘The temptation to read every cline on a map of genetic features as a migration and tie it to a putative linguistic movement has led to ostensibly circular reasoning. … [T]here is an assumed correlation between language and human physical type. … [But] there is no requirement whatsoever that the trail of language shift should also leave a clearly defined genetic trail as well. Nor for that matter can we assume that if we do find a genetic trail, this necessarily resulted in a language shift favourable for those carrying the gene rather than their absorption by local populations’"

"Elsewhere, Mallory (1997) complains that the "argument of archaeological continuity could probably be supported for every IE-speaking region of Eurasia where any archaeologist can effortlessly pen such statements as 'while there may be some evidence for the diffusion of ideas, there is no evidence for the diffusion of population movement'" (104)."

"Mallory (1998) offers a Kulturkugel (culture bullet) as a possible explanatory model for the Indo-Aryan incursions, although remarking that "German is employed here to enhance the respectability of an already shaky model" (192). This conceptual pro- jectile is envisioned as an Indo-Iranian linguistic bullet propelled by the social organization of the steppes outlined previously and tipped with a nose of malleable Andronovo material culture. After impacting the BMAC culture, the projectile continues on its trajectory, but now as an Indo-Aryan linguistic bullet with a BMAC cultural tip. In other words, the steppe tribes entered the BMAC, shed the trappings of their Andronovo heritage, and then, reacculturated, continued on their way toward India after having adopted the cultural baggage of the BMAC and undergone the linguistic transformations separating the language of the Indo-Iranians from that of the Indo- Aryans. Mallory is too good of a scholar not to immediately include an addendum, stating that "the introduction of the kulturkugel emphasizes the tendentious nature of any arguments for the dispersals of the Indo-Iranians into their historic seats south of Central Asia" (193). He is also candid enough to point out that "it is ... difficult to imagine how such a concept could be verified in the archaeological record or, to continue the metaphor, could be traced back to the original 'smoking gun'" (194). Mallory's Kulturkugel is the type of gymnastics incumbent on anyone attempting to find archaeological evidence of the Indo-Aryans all the way across Asia and into the subcontinent."

"The problem here, of course, is that over time we have come to know more and more and that our earlier, simpler and more alluring narratives of Indo-European origins and dispersals are all falling victim to our increasing knowledge. We have obviously moved on from the time when Nikolai Merpert first published his analyses of the role of the steppelands within the context of the Indo-European homeland but it is evident that we still have a very long way to go."

"One linguist’s Indo-European names become another’s proto-Basque, or Caucasian or anything else."

"The westward expansion of the Kurgan culture has been mapped with some degree of accuracy: “If an archaeologist is set the problem of examining the archaeological record for a cultural horizon that is both suitably early and of reasonable uniformity to postulate as the common prehistoric ancestor of the later Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and possibly some of the Indo-European languages of Italy, then the history of research indicates that the candidate will normally be the Corded Ware culture. At about 3200-2300 BC this Corded Ware horizon is sufficiently early to predate the emergence of any of the specific proto-languages. In addition, it is universally accepted as the common component if not the very basis of the later Bronze Age cultures that are specifically identified with the different proto-languages. Furthermore, its geographical distribution from Holland and Switzerland on the west across northern and central Europe to the upper Volga and middle Dniepr encompasses all those areas which [have been] assigned as the “homelands” of these European proto-languages.”"

"He epitomizedeverything a Berkeley professor should be: visionary and innovative, but always focusing onhelping those who were poor and disenfranchised."

"If you reduce the amount of , the level in the atmosphere goes down fairly quickly, within decades, as opposed to CO2, if you reduce the emissions to the atmosphere, you don’t really see a signal in the atmosphere for a hundred years or so. […] I had an invite to a meeting with Al Gore, some years ago now, and made these methane arguments, and he was really pushback. That’s just his argument, “It’s hard enough to get people to think about CO2. Don’t confuse them.” […] Some people say, “Well, let’s fix CO2, and then we can worry about methane.” Well, that’s the wrong. It’s the other way around that actually makes sense. Do something about methane, because you’ll get a response right away."

"“Our investment in prevention and research is an investment in our nations … it all depends on healthy people, the result of our knowledge must be prevention. If we trust treatment without an investment in prevention, then we have failed.”"

"This is my charge to everyone: We have to be better, we have to love more and hate less. It is our responsibility to make this world a better place."

"I started the day with some nothin’ tea. Nothin’ tea is easy to make. First, get some hot water, then add nothin’."

"Then I sat for a moment, dumbstruck that my plan had actually worked."

"As a chemist, Vogel knew how to make a bomb. In fact, much of his training was to avoid making them by mistake."

"“It just goes to show,” Teddy said. “Love of science is universal across all cultures.”"

"“But seeing his status doesn’t help,” Mindy said. “It’s not like we can do anything about it if he falls behind. This is a pointless task.” “How long have you worked for the government?” Venkat sighed."

"This allowed me to do what writers treasure more than anything else: catch the reader off-guard. There’s nothing better than knowing you’re going to outwit with the reader. And the type of people who read sci-fi are very difficult to outwit."

"As you can see, this plan provides many opportunities for me to die in a fiery explosion."

"There is no one else," I said. "In this universe, there's just you and me." You stared blankly at me. "But all the people on earth…" "All you. Different incarnations of you." "Wait. I'm everyone!?" "Now you're getting it," I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back. "I'm every human being who ever lived?" "Or who will ever live, yes." "I'm Abraham Lincoln?" "And you're John Wilkes Booth, too," I added. "I'm Hitler?" You said, appalled. "And you're the millions he killed." "I'm Jesus?" "And you're everyone who followed him." You fell silent. "Every time you victimized someone," I said, "you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you've done, you've done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you."

"You started my training by buying me a beer. For breakfast. Germans are awesome."

"Amazingly, some of the bacteria survived. The population is strong and growing. That’s pretty impressive, when you consider it was exposed to near-vacuum and subarctic temperatures for over twenty-four hours. My guess is pockets of ice formed around some of the bacteria, leaving a bubble of survivable pressure inside, and the cold wasn’t quite enough to kill them. With hundreds of millions of bacteria, it only takes one survivor to stave off extinction. Life is amazingly tenacious. They don’t want to die any more than I do."

"What's your name?" The computer asks. I look down at my sheet toga. "I am the great philosopher Pendulus!" "Incorrect."

"I think the “young adult” age is such a critical period of our lives. Young adults are still young enough to dream of magic and possibility, yet old enough to think for themselves and to begin to make real change in the world."

"It might feel safer to stay hidden away, but safer is not always better. We all have things to say. Learning how to speak up helps us feel valued and a part of the community. And by honing our voices, we can change the world."

"I just did not feel like there were any Asian women out there who I could identify with…I thought it was our role to be quiet and that people would look down on me if I ever spoke out."

"My parents never overtly pushed us to marry Chinese (in fact, my dad was an equal opportunity dater in his time). However, they always encouraged us to value our Chinese-ness. It was never something to be ashamed of. I grew up in a very Chinese American household; Mom cooked Chinese food almost every night, yet she loved her French cooking classes. We all played multiple classical instruments, but were also avid Broadway fans."

"…When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Even when I started playing music, I had no idea that I would get to this point in my professional life…"

"That did it for me, the applause, the vibe…I said, “that’s it man, that’s what I want to do. Forget the art.”"

"If you can strum the guitar a little, hit the drums — it’s always fun and a good way to release tensions…You can have a hard day at work, pick up your instrument and just feel better. You also can appreciate why a performer is up on stage and see how they have spent their life learning their craft."

"Family is very important to me because my own family was so disruptive ... Me and my brothers and sister were like ping pong balls, we didn’t know where we would end up."

"…As curanderas say when a patient suffers from susto (the separation of the soul from the body), “Vente. No te quedes allí. Come back. Don't stay over there.” As playwrights we have no choice but to raise our dead."

"…universities are worried about diversifying and are wondering how. Playwrights want students exposed to their work and wondering how. The educator in me fights with the playwright in me. Should universities who do not have students of color still be able to do my plays? The educator says yes and the playwright says no. If universities produce ethnically specific plays with any of the available swap-out options, what are we teaching the next generation of theatre artists? Experience has taught me that artists will duplicate whatever they have learned in school…"

"…Truth is, my colleagues are my heroes, my fellow Latinx playwrights and directors. We’ve created this landscape together. We’ve elbowed a space for ourselves, and each other, in the American theatre. I think only we know what it was like when we could barely get a crumb, and honestly, we had to just keep going…"

"I would want a dreaming machine that dreams up the most beautiful dreams and then show me exactly how to make them a reality…This is the eternal conundrum: the visualization of desires (dreams), and then the dissonance between that and reality."

"The ambiguity when the performance of self becomes self-destructive, or when performance of self becomes pathological. That gray area interests me as a poet because it’s so wrapped up in everyday life now that it’s almost mundane. So much of this performance is tied to feelings of worth and value; in essence, it becomes ongoing, an entire existence all on its own…"

"History books are necessary in order for us to know and perceive the truth, and there’s always a question of perspective and who gets to tell the story…"

"Visibility is not enough—we need actual complexity. Visibility can quickly turn into invisibility when the stories that make us visible actually reduce our humanity and complexity. This is especially true if we prop up token stories—tokenism is a big problem when it comes to the film industry—or any industry…"

"Frances and Sebastian accept each other right from the get go, and the world the characters live in is one that is willing to change. I think you buy it because it’s wrapped in this fairy tale theme and playing off these Disney Princess movie tropes. It would be a lot harder if I went for a strict historical theme."

"I come up with a concept and might doodle a little bit to get some ideas flowing, but I mostly write and take notes. I write an outline. In a way, I feel like I can make the art fit the story that needs to be told, so I start with the story first."

"By the time I get to coloring it’s usually the last step and I’m a little creatively tapped out. So I don’t spend a ton of time building a concept for the coloring, but I do love seeing things take final form. A lot of it is thinking about the scene, what the mood is, and how to light it. By that point I’ve spent enough time with the book I already know what I want to achieve when I get to it."

"I wrote this book for my teenage self, so it’s all about themes that were important to my young self: questioning your identity and gender, but also your creative aspirations and the person you want to be."

"When I started investigating my relationship to my identity and what my identity means, it was in the context of artists doing identity-based art. I envy and have a love for people who research in great detail history or some moment in history (say, feminist history), and then present it in a way that’s somewhat didactic and matter-of-fact—and, really, with an effort, a sincere effort to throw meaning out to an audience that, maybe, isn’t conscious of this aspect of history. But I’m incredibly suspicious of that impulse, too. I think that it’s all going to be filtered through one’s subjectivity. And my subjectivity—as a young person, as a person at the end of the twentieth century—my subjectivity is of a sexual woman, as a person who makes sometimes really bad decisions. There was no nobility in trying to do research like that, and in trying to filter my sense of self through the lens of a larger history. It was going to get complicated, and I liked the complications that I was finding. "Kara Walker Projecting Fictions: 'Insurrection! Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On'" in Art21 (interview originally published on PBS in September 2003, and later republished by Art21 in November 2011)"

"I think there are many open-ended questions that artists can pose and we can ask communities to feel empowered enough to reply, respond, rebel, and feel amazed by the relentless spiraling of thought and image and action that is the artist's profession."

"There is I suppose, historically, this seminal moment in the lives of African Americans where one becomes black. Frantz Fanon and everyone talks about it. There is a moment when you go from subject to object and I guess that was my moment…"

"There’s no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist. It’s not like becoming a doctor or something. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist."

"Expectations on the performance of race and gender are simultaneously high and low, depending on who is looking or asking. I prefer to keep all the options in the air, to try and better understand the conundrum that inequality creates---not just in culture, but internally."

"I’ve been really intrigued by the idea of the end of the world — how it’s never really real, though it may feel like it is to us living in the midst of climate change as we are. Except on the scale of billions of years, according to the kind of timeline where suns birth and die and so on, worlds are quite adaptive creatures. Earth has had five or so ice ages. Dinosaurs have come and gone, many dying, others living on as birds. Mass extinction is par for the planet’s course…"