30 April 2007 – 7:34 pm +0800
Of interest mainly to myself (being that I’m unaccountably a bit of a nut for the baronet’s life and works): Sir Walter Scott: A Lecture at the Sorbonne by William Paton Ker.
Of interest to just about everybody (being that most everybody enjoys imbibing from time to time): The Practical Distiller: An Introduction To [...]
30 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
It cannot be overlooked that the jihadi war is a war fought not like a military campaign,but like a PR campaign. The goal in a PR campaign is not as much for territory but for headlines.
— VariFrank, 28 April 2007
27 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
From what I can tell, the Taliban have fled Afghanistan and now run the Human Resources and IT departments at major American corporations.
— Glenn Reynolds, 25 April 2007
26 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that my first two suits had arrived. I’ve been waiting to post about it until I have a few good photos but, for some reason, each photo I have seems to come out wrong. They all have this lanky goof-ball in them instead of a man in [...]
25 April 2007 – 11:39 am +0800
“ACHTUNG!
Ian Hamet may actually be a spider-human hybrid
Username:
From Go-Quiz.com
(þWitNit)
25 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this
— Cormac McCarthy
(Not my favorite writer, but what a great quote.)
24 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
Expository dialog is when characters discuss things both or all of them know, in order to provide background information to the audience. Done correctly, expository dialog can advance a film’s plot and lend a movie texture with a minimum of time expended. Done incorrectly, and you have the audience noticing that the characters are discussing [...]
23 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
— Shel Silverstein, “Hug O’ War”, Where the Sidewalk Ends
16 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
A writer always mistrusts his audience, whether he is conning them or seducing them or ignoring them (and indulging himself); I think a writer especially mistrusts his audience when he discovers that he has one.
— John Irving, “Kurt Vonnegut and His Critics“, The New Republic, 1979
13 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
[... N]o one can possibly fail to admit the universality of the phenomenon of sex. There is no other question, in fact, upon which everyone has so much first-hand experience. If we except infants-in-arms, and a few invalids and very old persons, the whole of our race is subordinated to the phenomena of [...]
12 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
As a whole, I felt it monstrous, gross, and grotesque; but still the worst of it made me laugh, and I trusted the good-natured public would not be less indulgent.
— Sir Walter Scott, on The Bride of Lammermoor, which he dictated while in severe pain from gallstones, and did not remember the details of afterward.
11 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, [...]
10 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplussage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
9 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
“The point is, did she kill that woman? If I thought she did I would bow out quick — I would already have bowed out because it would have been hopeless. But she didn’t One will get you ten that she didn’t. If she had—”
The interruption wasn’t words; it was her [...]
4 April 2007 – 12:01 am +0800
“You really should do some research for a change instead of just listening to the voices in your head.”
— John Ringo, There Will Be Dragons