"There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted." - Miss Manners

One for Remote:

I am in no way interested in immortality /
But only in the taste of tea.

— Lu Tung, Tang Dynasty Poet

"Different societies have different cultural traditions; thus, while you, sitting in your cubicle, might feel bad if you had spent the prior night chewing khat and gambling away your children with the preserved bones of your enemies killed in ritual sacrifice, the denizens of the primitive culture I just pulled out of my ass wouldn't bat a richly tattooed eyelid. Conversely, they might feel really bad if they, say, had eaten their food with their left hand, and then they'd swear to themselves, secretly, for the fortieth time, that they really, really have to stop doing that, especially because Barb was sniffing at their left hand during the solace feast the other night and they're sure she suspects.
But within the realm of recognizable, Western culture, which we will define herein as the stuff I know about, I would argue that this essential shame is actually an extension of the pleasure referred to in Element Two. Both flow from the essentially optional nature of all vices."

-Peter Sagal, The Book of Vice

quote:

Making something secret makes it too important, elevates it to the point where it runs your lifefrom the shadows. If you hide what's at your core from other people for too long, sooner or later you end up hiding it from yourself and waking up with no idea of who you are.

Michael Marshall Smith, One of us.

Excellent.

Michael Marshall Smith is indubitably The Guy

quote:

We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.

British military spokesman Mike Shearer, denying rumors that spread after local farmers killed several aggressive honey badgers near Basra in Iraq, BBC News, July 12, 2007

Iraqi conspiracy theorists make even East European conspiracy theorists look like amateurs. Splitcoil Rule 12: The more powerless a people are, the more powerful their conspiracy theories are.

Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a
lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight
it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or
physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must
shine light on it.
Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (b. 1948)

Maybe?

Whatever the outcome of the experiments, we've got the math to back it up.

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.
-bob newhart

Adding this as an intro to episode 4:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die." -- Max Planck

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one criminal.
Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author (1900-1980)

"God doesn't play dice." --Einstein Aphorism

"He plays marbles." --Reutersvärd Rejoinder

"To try and be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly."

J. Robert Oppenheimer

"I was educated and worked for a while in an astrophysics lab, but I found that civilization is willing to pay me a lot more to be interesting rather than right." --David Brinn, science fiction writer, author of The Postman.

quote:

You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.

George Bernard Shaw to T.E. Lawrence, on The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Quoted in this defense of the semicolon found via Coudal Partners, natch.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:

quote:

You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.

George Bernard Shaw to T.E. Lawrence, on The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Quoted in this defense of the semicolon found via Coudal Partners, natch.

Lots of colons in them 7 Pillars. And some magnificently evocative prose, too.

"Conan will cleave his skull to this teeth."

Dr. Denton Crest

quote:

Originally posted by colin:

quote:

You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life.

George Bernard Shaw to T.E. Lawrence, on The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Quoted in this defense of the semicolon found via Coudal Partners, natch.

Conan will cleave his skull to the teeth too.