McCormick On Obey Giant
Georges Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations
Supplication
Deliverance
Vengeance of a crime
Vengeance taken for kindred upon kindred
Pursuit
Disaster
Falling prey to cruelty or misfortune
Revolt
Daring enterprise
Abduction
Enigma
Obtaining
Enmity of kinsmen
Rivalry of kinsmen
Murderous adultery
Madness
Fatal imprudence
Involuntary crimes of love
Slaying of a kinsman unrecognized
Self-sacrificing for an ideal
Self-sacrifice for kindred
All sacrificed for a passion
Necessity of sacrificing loved ones
Rivalry of superior and inferior
Adultery
Crimes of love
Discovery of the dishonor of a loved one
Obstacles to love
An enemy loved
Ambition
Conflict with a god
Mistaken jealousy
Erroneous judgment
Remorse
Recovery of a lost one
Loss of loved ones
William Lyon Phelps On Courtesy
The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.
Michael A. Ledeen On China's Fascism
This is neither socialism nor capitalism; it is the infamous "third way" of the corporate state, first institutionalized in the 1920s by the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, then copied by other fascists in Europe.
[...] Like the early fascist regimes, China uses nationalism--not the standard communist slogans of "proletarian internationalism"--to rally the masses. And, like the early fascisms, the rulers of the People's Republic insist that virtue consists in sublimating individual interests to the greater good of the nation.
[...] Unlike communist leaders, who extirpated traditional culture and replaced it with a sterile Marxist-Leninism, the Chinese enthusiastically mine the millennia of Chinese thought to provide legitimacy for their own actions. No socialist realism here! Indeed, this open embrace of ancient Chinese culture is one of the things that has most entranced Western observers. Many believe that a country with such ancient roots will inevitably demonstrate its profound humanity in social and political practice. Yet the fascist leaders of the 1920s and '30s did the same. Mussolini rebuilt Rome to provide a dramatic visual reminder of ancient glory, and Hitler's favorite architect built neoclassical buildings throughout the Third Reich.
Like their European predecessors, the Chinese claim a major role in the world because of their history and culture, not because of their current power, or their scientific or cultural accomplishments. Just like Germany and Italy in the interwar period, China feels betrayed and humiliated, and seeks to avenge historic wounds. China even toys with some of the more bizarre notions of the earlier fascisms, like the program to make the country self-sufficient in wheat production--the same quest for "autarky" that obsessed both Hitler and Mussolini.
Mad-cat On Police Paramilitarism
I'm a police officer in Florida. There are several principles I follow which have resulted in my getting only two complaints against me in the past two years.
1. I'm a peace officer, not a law enforcement officer. My goal is the peaceful resolution of conflict, using the law to do so.
2. You cannot insult me. I take offense at nothing while on the job.
3. I will never threaten to arrest someone: I will only warn them that they can be arrested for their actions and will give them several options for peacefully resolving the issue.
4. I will always explain my reasons behind my actions to anyone who asks, so long as safety permits.
5. I will never blindly follow the rules.
6. When in doubt, ask myself if I could talk with my family about what I was about to do to someone without feeling ashamed.
The military mindset is POISON to the civilian police service. If I could do only one thing to improve police relations with the community and performance levels, I would eliminate everything remotely resembling the military. No sergeants, no lieutenants, no military-looking uniforms. Cops should look, think, and act like the civilians they are.
alan_dershowitz (586542) On The Kennewick Man
It has the amazing ability to make anyone associated with it act like an asshole, as represented by white supremacist groups claiming that white people colonized the continent before the Native Americans; and Native American groups attempting to prevent research on the skull by asserting tribal affiliation despite the fact that it doesn't look like any modern Indian, and could not possibly be a former member of any existing tribe.
They object to research possibly in part in fright of an invalidation of their origination claim to the continent, but also because of a general (and somewhat justified, based on Native American history) distrust of the impartiality of white man science.
I am going to go out on a trollish limb here, but their passed-down "history" is unfalsifiable mythological fiction, and just because science has screwed over Indians doesn't mean they have the right to have their fake history uncritically accepted by the scientific community when it comes to Native American origins. they don't know where the skull came from, but at least scientists have the tools to find out, unlike someone just waving their hands and saying "discussion over, it's a Blackfoot and we were still here first" (or whatever.)
By all accounts it was NOT a white man, but it wasn't a modern Indian either, it seems.
Fruit Instructions
Congratulation! You have a fruit!
A fruit is not ready currently. You must prepare a fruit. The color of a fruit is green. The color of a fruit to taste great and put inside your body is red.
-Zack Parsons, from Something Awful
Jean Reno Arrives
Je suis Victor. Nettoyer
(I am Victor. Cleaner)
-La Femme Nikita, directed by Luc Besson
Brazilian Bachelor On Confidence
This includes women. Women KNOW that they want a man who is able to decide things with confidence. They may TALK about "repression", but that's just talk.
Never lose your temper. Act like you can take care of anything. In fact, you can. You know you do. You are the only one who have power over your life. Never give it away.
Your woman says: I AM LEAVING YOU!
You: well...ok!
(supposing you're not marriage/co-habitating, cause if you do... well, god bless you!)
You can NOT control NO ONE -- EXCEPT yourself. Remember that.
Brazilian Bachelor
Frost On Good Neighbors
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
-Robert Frost
Christians' Moral Compass
Suppose Omega makes a credible threat that if you ever step inside a bathroom between 7AM and 10AM in the morning, he'll kill you. Would you be panicked by the prospect of Omega withdrawing his threat? Would you cower in existential terror and cry: "If Omega withdraws his threat, then what's to keep me from going to the bathroom?" No; you'd probably be quite relieved at your increased opportunity to, ahem, relieve yourself.
Which is to say: The very fact that a religious person would be afraid of God withdrawing Its threat to punish them for committing murder, shows that they have a revulsion of murder which is independent of whether God punishes murder or not. 
-Eliezer Yudkowsky, heavily edited from Overcoming Bias
Dawes On What Doesn't Matter In Therapy
Second, they discovered that the type of therapy given was unrelated to its effectiveness, with the possible exception of behavioral techniques, which seemed superior for well-circumscribed behavioral problems.
They also discovered that length of therapy was unrelated to its success.
-Robyn Dawes quoted by Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias.
Ell On Dexterity
I'm Good With My Hands
I’m good with my hands
I can make, grow, mend and tend things
I can embroider and darn and crochet – knit, paint and draw
My fine motor control is very fine indeed
One finger tip on my clit, a zero to orgasm high speed chase
I am good with my hands
My slick grip, my swirling, steady stroke
Makes him sigh and moan and groan and spurt great streams
I am very good with my hands
Ell at Wilful Damage
Krueger On Terrorists
Hassan concluded that “none of them were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle class and, unless they were fugitives, held paying jobs. Two were the sons of millionaires.”
The evidence suggests that terrorists care about influencing political outcomes. They are often motivated by geopolitical grievances. To understand who joins terrorist organizations, instead of asking who has a low salary and few opportunities, we should ask: Who holds strong political views and is confident enough to try to impose an extremist vision by violent means?
Heavily Edited From Alan Krueger's "What Makes A Terrorist"
Stan Rogers On Hatred
All rights and all wrongs have long since blown away,
For causes are ashes where children lie slain.
Yet the damned U.D.L. and the cruel I.R.A.
Will tomorrow go murdering again.
But no penny of mine will I add to the fray.
"Remember the Boyne!" they will cry out in vain,
For I've given my heart to the place I was born
And forgiven the whole House of Orange
King Billy and the whole House of Orange.
Stan Rogers, "The House Of Orange"
Sample: Amazon
Stan Rogers On Struggle
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
Stan Rogers, "The Mary Ellen Carter"
Sample: Amazon
Tom Clancy On Certainty
Admiral Greer: Excuse me, Jack, tell me one thing in life that is absolutely for certain.
Jack Ryan: My daughter's love.
Cyrano de Bergerac On Challenge
I am going to be a storm -a flame-
I need to fight whole armies alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;
I feel too strong to war with mortals-
Bring me giants!
Robert Jordon On Longing
I would burn the world and use my soul for tinder to hear her laugh again.
Robert Jordon, The Fires of Heaven, Chapter 44
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds On Flying
You know what the first rule of flyin' is?
[...] Love. You can know all the math in the 'Verse, but take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds.
Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her home.
Dog Trainer On Guilt-Fear
Set boundaries, I tell them, but Chihuahua owners, more than all other dog owners, find boundary-setting impossible. They come back to me week after week with confessions of failure. You don't know the faces she gives me. She's depressed. She won't eat. Well of course your dog is sulking, I tell them. She's been demoted and her ego will now have to match her body size.
The truth is, I love (and sometimes hate) Chihuahua owners for this reason: they are honest about the paralyzing power of guilt. Guilt is short-hand for veiled fear, for the conflicted feeling we get when our needs compete with someone else's. What we want most in the world is to be approved of and loved, and to get that we will very quickly put our needs second. Put simply, we're afraid other people (or our dogs) won't like us if we stand up for ourselves. We're afraid they'll find out we're horrible inside, that we don't deserve anyone's love, except maybe the runt of the metaphoric dog litter, and no, not really, we don't deserve even that. [Ed.: Ephasis Added]
-Leslie Blanco, The Huffington Post
H.G.Wells On Haggling
But I've learnt differently since. The whole trend of modern money-making is to foresee something that will presently be needed and put it out of reach, and then to haggle yourself wealthy.
You buy up land upon which people will presently want to build houses, you secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, and so on, and so on.... I will confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I had a clear impression that any one who contrived to do that would pretty certainly go to jail.
Now I know that any one who could really bring it off would be much more likely to go to the House of Lords!
H.G.Wells, Tono-Bungay
Bega On Polygamous Monogamy
a little bit of Erica by my side
a little bit of Rita is all I need
a little bit of Tina is what I see
a little bit of Sandra in the sun
a little bit of Mary all night long
a little bit of Jessica here I am
a little bit of you makes me your man
Audio Sample: Amazon
Yudkowsky On Evil (Overcoming Bias)
When you accurately estimate the Enemy's psychology - when you know what is really in the Enemy's mind - that knowledge won't feel like landing a delicious punch on the opposing side. It won't give you a warm feeling of righteous indignation. It won't make you feel good about yourself. If your estimate makes you feel unbearably sad, you may be seeing the world as it really is. More rarely, an accurate estimate may send shivers of serious horror down your spine, as when dealing with true psychopaths, or neurologically intact people with beliefs that have utterly destroyed their sanity (Scientologists or Jesus Camp).
Eddie Setser On Divine Omnipresence
There were seven Spanish Angels,
At the alter of the Sun.
They were prayin' for the lovers,
In the valley of the gun.
"Seven Spanish Angels"
Audio Sample: Amazon
On Fruit Labelling
We have a national mania for trying to protect ourselves from, well, everything. This one goes too far. Proponents of fruit-labeling will tell me that if such labeling saves even one life, it's worth it. I dispute that. I'm not so sure. Maybe we need to sacrifice someone occasionally on the altar of common f**king sense.Meganut notices in Food & Wine:
[...] Better to draw lots, sacrifice the occasional consumer, and let the rest go free. They will thank you, the trees will thank you. Makers of little tiny fruit stickers and shrink-wrap will not.
The numbers tell you how the fruit was grown. Conventionally grown fruit has four digits; organically grown fruit has five and starts with a nine; genetically engineered has five numbers and starts with an eight.
Walter Wink On The Myth Of Redemptive Violence
Something about this mythic structure rang familiar. Suddenly I remembered: this cartoon pattern mirrored one of the oldest continually enacted myths in the world, the Babylonian creation story (the Enuma Elish) from around 1250 BCE.
[...]
The biblical myth in Genesis 1 is diametrically opposed to all this (Genesis 1, it should be noted, was developed in Babylon during the Jewish captivity there as a direct rebuttal to the Babylonian myth). The Bible portrays a good God who creates a good creation. Chaos does not resist order. Good is prior to evil. Neither evil nor violence is part of the creation, but enter later, as a result of the first couple’s sin and the connivance of the serpent (Genesis 3). A basically good reality is thus corrupted by free decisions reached by creatures. In this far more complex and subtle explanation of the origins of things, violence emerges for the first time as a problem requiring solution.
[Heavily edited from Wink's Facing the Myth Of Redemptive Violence]
Uncle Bob On Painting
If your better half ever casually mentions that she’s having the entire house painted, don’t just grunt and say “Yes dear” allowing this tidbit to pass untouched through the hollow orb rampant upon your shoulders.
Have her committed or take a long trip.
Seth Roberts On Transsexuals (The Huffington Post)
Both are men who become women or who want to become women; but they are otherwise quite different. There are many surface differences -- so many that it is no surprise that, as Bailey says, the two types almost never mix socially. Type 1 appear far more like other women than Type 2, who sometimes resemble men wearing dresses. As children, Type 1 acted feminine; Type 2 did not. Type 1 often work in occupations full of women, such as beautician and hairstylist; Type 2 usually work in male-dominated professions, such as policeman, truck driver, scientist, engineer, and computer programmer. Type 1 usually start living as a female before age 25; Type 2 usually start much later, after age 40. Type 2 have usually been married (to a woman); Type 1 have not.
Blanchard proposed that these surface differences derive from a difference in motivation. Type 1 transsexuals are sexually attracted to men; changing their sex will help them attract men. (They prefer straight men to homosexual men.) Type 2 transsexuals are sexually aroused by thinking of themselves as a woman; this is why they seek sex-change surgery.
Tom Waits On Stealth
Did you bury your fire?
Yes sir
Did you cover your tracks?
Yes sir
Did you bring your knife?
Yes sir
Did they see your face?
No sir
Did the moon see you?
No sir
Did you go 'cross the river?
Yes sir
Did you fix your rake?
Yes sir
Did you stay down wind?
Yes sir
Did you hide your gun?
Yes sir
Did you smuggle your rum?
Yes sir
-"Don't Go Into That Barn", Real Gone
jcr On Environmenalism (Slashdot)
IIRC American Indians, many African cultures, and even our old agricultural society were much respectful of the environment.
-marcello_dl
Bullshit. The American indians simply lacked the technology to have a significant impact on their environment until they got horses, at which point their population expanded and they routinely exhausted hunting grounds, and became far more mobile as a result. As for African cultures, the majority of the Sahara desert became so because of goats, which were protected from predators by humans.
The fact is, it's the industrialized world that first became concerned about the environment, because we're rich enough to have the luxury of considering issues beyond subsistence.
Stan Goff On Needs (Feral Scholar)
Self determination and independence are just abstractions in the absence of local food security.
Mike Gerber On Ingmar Bergman
The intellectual breeds seldom, if at all; Ingmar Bergman helped everybody get laid. And that, to me, is the true definition of genius.
Richard Tedlow On Mental Baggage
Andy proposed a thought experiment to his then boss, Intel CEO Gordon Moore. "What would happen," he asked, "if the board kicked us out and brought in new management?" Moore immediately replied, "They'd get us out of memories." Andy looked at him and said, "Why don't we walk through the door, come back, and do it ourselves?"
By creating a fantasized new management, he was able to escape from the legacy of Intel as the memory company. At least in part because of that moment, the United States today is the world's leading manufacturer of microprocessors.
Orwell On H.G.Wells
But because he belonged to the nineteenth century and to a non-military nation and class, he could not grasp the tremendous strength of the old world which was symbolised in his mind by fox-hunting Tories. He was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity.
The people who have shown the best understanding of Fascism are either those who have suffered under it or those who have a Fascist streak in themselves.
Wells is too sane to understand the modern world. Since 1920 he has squandered his talents in slaying paper dragons. But how much it is, after all, to have any talents to squander.
[Heavily edited from George Orwell: ‘Wells, Hitler and the World State’, August 1941]
For Want Of A Nail
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Steve Earle On Free Speech
"F the CC", Revolution
Been called a traitor and a patriot
Call me anything you want to but
Just don’t forget your history
Dirty Lenny died so we could all be free
-Audio Sample: Amazon
Al Purdy On Flowers
At The Quinte Hotel
I am drinking
I am drinking beer with yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
David Belle On Parkour (Wikipedia)
You have to make the difference between what is useful and what is not in emergency situations. Then you'll know what is parkour and what is not.
Fiounnala's Music Pick: Jonathan Coulton
Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
With big warm fuzzy secret heart:
Code Monkey like you
Scott Thill Defines Fascism
His ratings are lower than ever, yet his power is greater than ever. If that doesn't say dictator, I sincerely don't know what does.
Kendrew Lascelles On War
Once upon a time
in the land of hush-a-bye,
around the wonderous days of yore,
They came across a sort of box
Bound up with chains
and locked with locks
And labeled,
`Kindly do not touch, it's war.'
A decree was issue round about --
All with a flourish and a shout
And a gaily coloured mascot
Tripping lightly on before --
`Don't fiddle with that deadly box
or break the chains or pick the locks
And please don't ever mess
about with war.'
Well the children understood,
Children happen to be good
And were just as good
around the time of yore.
They didn't try to pick the locks
Or break into that deadly box
And never tried to play about with war.
Mommies didn't either
Sisters, Aunts nor Grannies neither
`Cos they were quiet
and sweet and pretty
In those wonderous days of yore,
Well very much the same as now
And not the ones to blame somehow
For opening up that deadly box of war,
But someone did,
Someone battered in the lid
And spilled the insides out
across the floor,
A sort of bouncy bumpy ball
made up of flags and guns and all
The tears and horror and the death
That goes with war.
It bounced right out
And went bashing all about
And bumping into everything in store
And what is sad and most unfair
was that it didn't really seem to care
Much who it bumped, or why,
Or what, or for.
It bumped the children mainly
And I'll tell you this quite plainly,
It bumps them everyday and more and more
And leaves them dead and burned and dying
housands of them sick and crying,
`Cos when it bumps its very very sore.
There is a way to stop the ball,
It isn't very hard at all,
All it takes is wisdom
And I'm absolutely sure
We could get it back into the box
And bind the chains and lock the locks
But no one seems to want to save the children anymore.
Well that's the way it all appears
`Cos it's been bouncing
around for years and years
In spite of all the wisdom wizzed
Since those wonderous days of yore,
And the time they cam across that box
Bound up with chains
and locked with locks
And labeled,
`Kindly do not touch, it's war.'
[Note: The Smothers Brothers presentation of this poem is said to have caused the cancellation of their show]
Andrew Marvel On Romance
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae On War
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields
Superman On Greatness (The Dark Knight Returns)
Diana went back to her people.
Hal went to the stars.
And I have walked the razor's edge for so long... But you, Bruce -- you with your wild obsession --
They'll kill us if they can, Bruce.
Every year they grow smaller. Every year they hate us more.
We must not remind them that giants walk the Earth.
Sean Connery On Success ("The Rock")
Your best? Losers always whine about 'their best'. Winners go home and fuck the Prom Queen.
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Dark Wraith On War
The sonic dimension is a vast drum waiting to be pounded rhythmically, each pulse stunning the ears, confusing the mind. The thermal dimension is an oven waiting to be turned on, crackling the skin, confusing the mind. The shockwave dimension is an ocean of air ready to articulate concussive force through a body as if it were a thin curtain. The emotional dimension is a chessboard waiting for a master to play the fool into a corner of rage, confusing the mind.
The inventory of weapons is a list of fingers, each tuned to stroke one or more dimensions of that zone, each geared to construct a field ripe with enemy combatants ready to be killed.
The battle begins as a symphony of harmonics, with each dimension suddenly, violently revealing itself to the enemy. The dimensions curl down over his world, compressing it into an ever tightening sensorial experience for which he has no response save panic.
Li Po On Loneliness
THE RIVER MERCHANT'S WIFE: A LETTER
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
Played I about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you,
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into fat Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early in autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
by Rihaku [a.k.a. Li Po, Translated by Ezra Pound]
SEWilco On Mileage
even better! do you know how many mpg you can get on PURE EVIL?!?
Only 5 MPG. Running over old people and firing the cannon really slows you down.
Jeff Dorchen On Religion
Now, look at it from the secular humanist point of view, which says that you are all either 1) engaging the same numinous forces but dressing them in your respective cultural masks, or 2) all pretty much equally superstitious, getting it more or less equally wrong.
If you can't tell the difference between Secular Humanism and Religion, you have failed the test, and the true God, who is a Secular Humanist, is very disappointed in you. There are no real consequences to you for disappointing God, who has many genders and will therefore be called "it," except that it shakes its many heads in pity and sometimes mocks you to its friends, the Secular Humanists, homosexuals, and Hollywood Jews.
Now, there are those who have faith but do not consider every other style of attempt at placating or connecting with God, the gods, or godhead to be or have been an utter mistake. These are Ecumenical Religious Humanists, and I suppose many Secular Humanists aren't secular at all but rather fall into the Ecumenical Religious category of Humanist.
And that's fine. God, who is a Secular Humanist, admires the Ecumenical Religious Humanists for finding a way toward a reasonable version of the stupid thing all the mutually exclusive religions got wrong.
Seumas On The Danger Of Duplication
[...] like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Or, if you like another analogy, you go from being Alec Baldwin to Stephen Baldwin to Daniel Baldwin to a pool of primordial goo.
Mooney On Scientific Reporting
A lot of the time, what's prized in [the Washington journalism] world is the ability to make a clever argument--to turn conventional wisdom on its head.
When you apply this approach to science, however, there's an utter mismatch. In science, "conventional wisdom" is a consensus perspective that has withstood repeated expert attempts to unseat it. In this context, being "counterintuitive"--especially when one is doing so well outside of the traditional channels of scientific discourse--usually amounts to little more than being just plain wrong.
ajs318 On Software Licensing (Slashdot)
MS EULA => Sharing is stealing.
BSD => Sharing is not stealing.
GPL => Not sharing is stealing.
Robert Frost On Ragnarok
Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
William Blake On Revenge
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine, -
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Sting On Divorce
The park is full of Sunday fathers and melted ice cream
A kid should be with his mother
Everybody knows that
What can a father do but baby-sit sometimes?
"I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying", EP
Audio Sample: Amazon
Some Smiting Is In Order
A Dutch reality show plans to have three people compete for the kidney of a terminally ill 37-year-old woman.
Frank Herbert On Glory (The Dosadi Experiment)
The Gowachin, a BuSab analysis
For the Gowachin, to stand alone against all adveristy is the most sacred moment of existence.
Enya On Honour (Caribbean Blue)
If every man says all he can,
if every man is true,
do I believe the sky above
is Caribbean blue.
Neil Asher On Trust (Cowl)
Sometime soon the sale would have to be made and in any such transaction there was always a point where one party must, however briefly, be prepared to trust the other party.
And it was in such brief intervals that Tack operated most efficiently.
David Carradine On Humanity (Kill Bill Vol. 2)
Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak... he's unsure of himself... he's a coward.
Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.
