Martin

“I think that success in life is largely a matter of luck. It has little correlation with merit, and in all fields of life there have been many people of great merit who did not succeed – Popper”
― David Edmonds, Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers

“Campbell’s slideshow lists grim domestic violence statistic after statistic: second leading cause of death for African American women, third leading cause of death for native women, seventh leading cause of death for Caucasian women. Campbell says twelve hundred abused women are killed every year in the United States.1 That figure does not count children. And it does not count the abusers who kill themselves after killing their partners, murder-suicides we see daily in the newspaper. And it does not count same-sex relationships where one or the other partner might not be “out.” And it does not count other family members, like sisters, aunts, grandmothers, who are often killed alongside the primary victim. And it does not count innocent bystanders: the twenty-six churchgoers in Texas, say, after a son-in-law has gone to a service to target his mother-in-law, or the two spa employees in Wisconsin killed alongside their client by her ex. The list is endless. And it does not count the jurisdictions who do not report their homicides, since homicide reporting is voluntary through the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reporting Data. So how many people are killed as a result of domestic violence each year? The bystanders, the other family members, the perpetrators’ suicides? The victims who just can’t take it anymore and kill themselves? The accidents that turn out not to be accidents at all, victims pushed out of cars and from cliffs or driven into trees. Tragedies forever uncategorized.”
― Rachel Louise Snyder, No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“You are who you are when nobody's watching.”
― Stephen Fry