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Reflections

Thoughts for 2008

by Ralph R. Reiland,
Professor of Free Enterprise

First, shut off the TV. Here's how we stack up in average daily viewing hours per household: Sweden, 2.5; Britain, 3.1; Italy, 4.1; Turkey, 5.0; United States, 8.2 hours. "Television," said Fred Allen, "is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything."

Second, don't file those new gift cards in the junk drawer in the kitchen. From
Harper's Index, December 2007: "Estimated amount that Americans lose every year by not redeeming gift cards -- $8 billion."

And third, some thoughts for the new year:

• Regarding government, from Larry Hardiman: "The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly,' meaning 'many,' and the word 'ticks,' meaning 'blood-sucking parasites.'"

• On abstemiousness, from H.L. Mencken: "Puritanism is the haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy."

• On efficiency, from W.C. Fields: "The laziest man I ever met put popcorn in his pancakes so they would turn over by themselves."

• On subjectivity, from Albert Einstein: "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

• On health care, from Henny Youngman: "I told the doctor I broke my leg in two
places. He told me to quit going to those places."

• From Princess Margaret, in 1939: "Who is this Hitler, spoiling everything?"

• On living, from a letter by Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, 1918: "Heaven preserve me from littleness and pleasantness and smoothness. Give me great glaring vices and great glaring virtues, but preserve me from the neat little neutral ambiguities. Be wicked, be brave, be drunk, be reckless, be dissolute, be despotic, be an anarchist, be a suffragette, be anything you like -- but for pity's sake be it to the top of your bent."

• On age, from Claude D. Pepper: "A stockbroker urged me to buy a stock that would triple its value every year. I told him, 'At my age, I don't even buy green bananas.'"

• On dinner, by Demetri Martin: "Every fight is a food fight when you're a
cannibal."

• On nuts, from Samuel Goldwyn: "Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined."

• On imperialism, from John Wayne: "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."

• On political parties, from Oscar Levant: "The only difference between the
Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too."

• From an editorial in the current issue of Adbusters: Journal of the Mental
Environment, saying we're getting too hot and crazy and can no longer be trusted to be free: "Global warming kicked in with a vengeance in 2007 and ecosystems crashed like never before. The number of marketing messages hitting our brain soared to an astonishing 5,000 per day. Mental health statistics flew off the charts. Teenagers cut and burned themselves and committed suicide in record numbers Waves of euphoria, waves of despair, day by day we came to realize that the simplest, most elegant solution to living in a warming world is to rethink freedom, rethink the idea that each one of us has the God-given right to drive to the supermarket, fly to Mexico on a whim and keep our living spaces toasty warm all winter. What we, the rich one billion people in the First World, need before it's too late is a good whack to the head, something bigger than a real estate crisis, bigger than oil costing over $100
a barrel, bigger even than the crash of 1929. We need to be prodded, shocked,
terrorized "

• On what's upcoming, from George Orwell: "If you want a picture of the future,
imagine a boot stomping on a human face -- forever."

• On exercise, by John Waters: "Joggers should run in a wheel, like hamsters,
because I don't want to look at them."

• On socialism, from Derek Jameson: "Can you imagine lying in bed on a Sunday
morning with the love of your life, a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich, and all you had to read was the Socialist Worker?"

• On martyrs, from George Bernard Shaw: "Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability."

• On being precise, from Drew Carey: "It isn't premarital sex if you have no
intention of getting married."

• On life, from Malcolm Forbes: "It's a very short trip. While alive, live!"

-------- Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.

Ralph R. Reiland
E-mail: rrreiland@aol.com
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"Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon Professor of Free Enterprise at Robert Morris University, the owner Amel's Restaurant, and a columnist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review."