(Image by Signe Wilkinson)

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
--Umberto Eco

"There can hardly be stranger wares in the world than books: printed by people who do not understand them; sold by people who do not understand them; bound, reviewed and read by people who do not understand them; and now even written by people who do not understand them"

"If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies."

"A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments."

"The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special."

"It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar — that I call an achievement"

"We do not think good metaphors are anything very important, but I think that a good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on."

"If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards."

"Why are young widows in mourning so beautiful? (Look into it.)"

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college--when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.

This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her--but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong--something that only pirates would do..."

The Right to Read by Richard Stallman

Pavel Filonov

6000 intriguing people you want to meet online before you die
Ok, well, maybe more like 20... but it's a start.

The great appear great in our eyes
Only because we are kneeling.
Let us rise!

--Loustalot, 1789

Motto of the day:

Lege, lege, lege, labora, ora, et relege

An old alchemist maxim translated as:

Read, read, read, work, take, and reread.

"I have received, Sir, your new book against the human race; for which I thank you... No one has ever used so much intelligence to try to render us Beasts. When one reads your works, it stirs a desire to walk on all fours."

Voltaire upon receiving the Discourse on Inequality from Rousseau

116 houseboats in Amsterdam

Word of the day:

sinecure: A position or office that requires little or no work but provides a salary.

Is Zen Buddhism?

Hans-Werner Sahm

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

“War and the military are, without question, among the very worst of the earth’s afflictions,” an American conservative of distinction once wrote, “responsible for the majority of the torments, oppressions, tyrannies, and suffocations of thought the West has for long been exposed to. In military or war society anything resembling true freedom of thought, true individual initiative in the intellectual and cultural and economic areas, is made impossible—not only cut off when they threaten to appear but, worse, extinguished more or less at root. Between military and civil values there is, and always has been, relentless opposition. Nothing has proved more destructive of kinship, religion, and local patriotisms than has war and the accompanying military mind.”

That was Robert Nisbet in 1975. In The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945, George Nash identified Nisbet, along with Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver, as one of the three most noteworthy of those intellectuals he identified as traditional conservatives

Twilight of Conservatism

Banned and censored album covers

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you" --Leon Trotsky