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The actual quote is from Benjamin Franklin, and is:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Historical Review of Pennsylvania.
source:
John Bartlett, comp.(1820-1905).
Familiar Quotations, 9th ed.1901.
Benjamin Franklin. --1706-1790.

just one note - I noticed you're using the same quote as me ( or almost the same ) - but It's a Benjamin Franklin quote, not Thomas Jefferson. See: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations - Benjamin Franklin

It's Ben Franklin, not Jefferson...

See the first reference on this page.

But Ms. Watney blamed the oversight on "administrative staff" -

Some unnamed staff employee is always screwing things up for top officials. Fire someone from the secretarial pool, that usually satisfies the public.

It's like this King who kept several heads of cabbage on his privy counsel, so that whenever one of the King's projects conspiciously miscarriages, he could assuage his subjects by revealing that several members of the royal counsel have just been beheaded.

Despite your sophomoric response, I double-checked with Strunk & White. I can find no reference to -wise anywhere in the book. Feel free to point out an actual reference.
________________

• Leeches -> Hirudin
• Foxglove -> Digitalis
• Nightshade -> Atropine

More like "" :) :)

SEE: DIGITAL VERSATILE DISC. The Columbia Encyclopedia: Sixth Edition. 2000

"Stealing is when you take something from someone without their permission"

Semantics. Take the Ten Commandments - God didn't feel that is was necessary to say:

"Tho Shalt Not Steal (or purloin, filch, snitch, pilfer, cop, hook, swipe, lift, pinch, plagerize, or borrow with the intent to return it later without the owner's permission, or short-change, or swap those little bar-code stickers in the aisle before you get to the cashier)"

...because it's all stealing

I tell you what - don't take MY word for it: See for yourself

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Firstly, a few notes on your punctuation:

• There's no need to capitalize the first word after a semi-colon [first sentence, second paragraph].
• In "Come on Cliff, break things ...", Cliff is a vocative phrase, so it needs to be set off with a pair of commas.
• In "it does make sense but has too many prepositional phrases", but introduces an independent clause, so it should be preceded by a comma (please see rule #4 in Strunk's Guide. BTW, if you're not already familiar with Strunk's Guide, take a look. You'll dig it).

I thought I was going to be blind before I could finish the story

With these in mind, the sentence could be better recast: I nearly went blind, finishing the story.

Finally, unless you have a particular (quantitative) quality metric in mind, it doesn't make sense to maintain an amount of quality [final sentence]; amount of is unneeded.

Firstly, a few notes on your punctuation:

• There's no need to capitalize the first word after a semi-colon [first sentence, second paragraph].
• In "Come on Cliff, break things ...", Cliff is a vocative phrase, so it needs to be set off with a pair of commas.
• In "it does make sense but has too many prepositional phrases", but introduces an independent clause, so it should be preceded by a comma (please see rule #4 in Strunk's Guide. BTW, if you're not already familiar with Strunk's Guide, take a look. You'll dig it).

I thought I was going to be blind before I could finish the story

With these in mind, the sentence could be better recast: I nearly went blind, finishing the story.

Finally, unless you have a particular (quantitative) quality metric in mind, it doesn't make sense to maintain an amount of quality [final sentence]; amount of is unneeded.

Firstly, a few notes on your punctuation:

• There's no need to capitalize the first word after a semi-colon [first sentence, second paragraph].
• In "Come on Cliff, break things ...", Cliff is a vocative phrase, so it needs to be set off with a pair of commas.
• In "it does make sense but has too many prepositional phrases", but introduces an independent clause, so it should be preceded by a comma (please see rule #4 in Strunk's Guide. BTW, if you're not already familiar with Strunk's Guide, take a look. You'll dig it).

I thought I was going to be blind before I could finish the story

With these in mind, the sentence could be better recast: I nearly went blind, finishing the story.

Finally, unless you have a particular (quantitative) quality metric in mind, it doesn't make sense to maintain an amount of quality [final sentence]; amount of is unneeded.

Unsurprisingly, nearly all of the discussion is emphasizing where we disagree with Billington than where we agree.

He's clearly misguided in his belief that reading a physical book is necessarily better than reading an online book. I'd agree with him that when reading for enjoyment, a physical book beats online text every time. There is something different about flipping pages than scrolling. He discusses the advantages of having a physical book over having digitized text in this article. He doesn't discuss the disadvantages. That doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't know of the disadvantages, as many /.ers assert.

It is certainly true that reading a physical book is a more reverent action than digitized text, because a physical book is an entity unto itself. To read part of a book one must pick up the entire book.

The context of reading digitized text read on a computer is much less "reverent" because it is not as a separate entity, but as a mutable part of a larger whole. That which we can change, edit and control is not that which we will have reverence towards. (Unless, perhaps, the process of change is highly formalized, as in Torah study.)

The controllable nature of digitized text, while under certain particular circumstances can be thought of as a disadvantage (the circumstances which Bellington considers in his arguments), is also its great advantage. One can do word analysis of Shakespeare vs. the Bible vs. Chaucer and come to new understandings of language, etc. etc.

That said, let's look at the parts of the article where he talks not about philosophy about action. He says that the Library of Congress will digitize the rare items (pamphlets, maps, etc.) of its collection instead of the books which can be gotten at local libraries.

Wait a second! That makes perfect sense. The Library of Congress has finite resources, and they should be certainly allocated to that which it can uniquely do. Anybody can start digitizing freely available texts, and people are doing so (see the Bartleby project). Only the Library of Congress has the capability to digitize the stuff that only it has a copy of.

Also, he thinks that libraries should be founts of uncensored information. I know that a bunch of you are thinking (because that's what you said) "He's asserting two irrationally opposing viewpoints!" And to a degree, I agree. However, if we look at his arguments, you can see his conceptualization of the issues is consistent (though incomplete).

Here is a (rather incomplete and interpretational) list of his asserted beliefs:
a) someone else can digitize books
b) the Library of Congress has a mission to preserve the "sacred" nature of the printed word.
c) free and uncensored libraries are an absolutely necessary component to the American democracy
d) television promotes social decay
e) the Internet has the power to promote social decay
f) if the same information can be gleaned from the Internet and a public library, Billington (and thus the LoC) would encourage the use of the library

Implicit in these stated beliefs are:
a) the physical and discrete nature of books adds intrinsic value to text
b) the Internet can behave like television
c) participation in democratic institutions builds societal values
d) the Library of Congress has a mission to promote the American democracy
e) community is necessary to a functioning democracy
f) people having a sense of personal humility, in respect to history, is necessary to a functioning democracy
g) the act of going to a library builds community
h) the act of dealing with physical books builds a sense of personal humility in respect to history

From a), b) and f) of his asserted beliefs he concludes the Library of Congress should not digitize books. A perfectly reasonable syllogism.

A basic problem with the article is that it concentrates on the debatable (to /.) parts of his assertions, and not the parts we'd agree with. For example, the article describes what he thinks the problems with the Internet are, but not what he thinks the benefits of the Internet are. We can attempt to infer what he thinks the Internet is good for from his statements, but there's no way of knowing that we'd be right. Obviously he doesn't think that it's not good for anything, though that's the tone of many /. posts.

I believe the basic flaw in his beliefs comes from this: he thinks that the LoC has a responsibility to protect the sanctity of books and the mission of public libraries, and the digitizing of books freely available at libraries is antithetical to that responsibility. I don't think it's antithetical, and I hope it's clear what my position is (see PP's 3-5).

However, his fears are realized on /. when people argue "Going to a library is more difficult than looking something up on the Web; therefore, there's no value in going to a library."

That argument is deeply flawed--if you can't immediately see it, let me replace some of the words:
"Installing Linux is more difficult than buying a computer with Windows installed; therefore, there's no value in installing Linux."

Dissing libraries is just as reactionary as dissing the Internet.

See the above post for that kind of dismissive argument (asserting that libraries are "isolating" and cause "ignorance" and "non-disclosure" is utterly misguided). Libraries and books shouldn't be attacked, they should be celebrated, just as the Internet should be celebrated.

So don't be a hypocrite: don't be as reactionary as Billington. Mindless futurism is just as bad as mindless romanticism.

When Billington celebrates libraries and denigrates the Internet, don't denigrate libraries in response: celebrate them both, and show him and people like him how to do both.

"Was" and "were" can both be used to signify the subjunctive. Fowler's "The King's English" was debunking your myth as far back as 1921.

You're a braver man than I am Gunga Din.

Step in line for that DOS attack. It seems like it's been tried and failed. (Funny, you just don't here people complaining about bandwith limitations anymore...)

____________________________________

1. Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles's friend
Burns's poems
the witch's malice

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. But such forms as Achilles' heel, Moses' laws, Isis' temple are commonly replaced by

the heel of Achilles
the laws of Moses
the temple of Isis

his reminds me of a poem from the Spoon River Anthology about all these people seeing a rich man and wishing to be him. Then, the man shoots himslef in the head.

Wheneve Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Simon and Ganfunkle did a good song of the same title, based on the poem.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (Historical Review of Pennsylvania.) as found here.

I did not find any quotes by Twain in the online version of Bartlett's ninth edition (1901), but Michael Moncur attributes it to both Lincoln and Twain. Search Michael Moncur's quotes here.

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