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
H.G.Wells On Haggling
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
