Observations from a strange planet
It is hard to escape the fear, even the despair, that this whole area - all of Naples, all of southern Italy - is suitable only for a rain of fire from the heavens, or maybe a 1,000-year quarantine, like an ethical or indeed literal Chernobyl.-- from a review of Gomorrah.
posted by Caspar Henderson at 8:27 AM
Caspar is working on a Book of Barely Imagined Beings. A blog named Grains of Sand may occasionally contain notes (and nuts) useful when thinking about some 21st century problems. Coral Bones is on hold.
God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built -- Sarah Palin, 2008
"We can reach with a rocket engine to every point in the world." -- Isaac Ben-Israel, 17 Jan 2008.
"9/11 is not a way to scare up votes but a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century [which are] terrorism and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease." -- Barack Obama, 4 Jan 2008.
"What we do in the next two or three years will define our future." -- Rajendra Pachauri, November 2007
"Ridiculing idealism is shortsighted, but idealism without the rigours of pessimism is misleading." -- from the 2007 State of the Future report
"What shocks the conscience is in the eye of the beholder." -- Dick Cheney, 2006
"Remember that our lives on this planet are too short; and the work to be done too great; that those who live with us are our brothers and sisters; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they want like us to live that life in happiness and fulfilment. " -- Robert Kennedy, 1968
"Your commie has no regard for human life, not even his own. And for this reason, men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness." -- General Jack D. Ripper
"Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues." -- Benedictus de Spinoza
"Really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under". -- Thomas Rainsborough, 1647
"Nay yet I will not from hence depart till I see where ye shall be come." -- Knowledge in Everyman, circa 1520
"We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right." -- Clause 39/40 of Magna Carta, 1215 (and 1297)
"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly." - Epicurus, 341 - 270 BC
"The straight tree is the first to be felled; First drained dry, the well of sweet water." - Zhuangzi, circa 320 BC
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