First you take some clay and mold it ’til it’s hollow, Then you make some air holes that your fingers ought to follow, Then you play a ditty or a paean to Apollo… Hey, ocarina! — ptkh 09.27.10
Author: Clio
Hills and valleys
This weekend, I noticed that I hadn’t noticed something. For years, climbing hills was a source of great anxiety for me. When I approached a hill by foot, I would be nervous of twisting my ankle and not having the ability to go up. Even in a car, I was anxious that the engine would…
Life’s what you make it
… being some thoughts on today’s moment of enlightenment … Let us accept for the sake of this discussion the broader atheist premise that there is no god, no supernatural force, no afterlife, no transcendent soul, no extrinsic purpose to life whatsoever. We are, in this perspective, highly evolved ants going about our time on…
Hello Kitty Party (DS)
Since I’ve become a father, I’ve gone from fretting from the paucity of AO games to the paucity of EC games. Nintendo, the most family-friendly of the three major console producers, lists only six EC-rated games on its site, three for the DS and three for the Wii. That leaves us to look for E…
Brave New World vs Atlas Shrugged
Brave New World took me longer to re-read than I’d expected, given its length, and on reflection, the similarities between it and Atlas Shrugged are more tenuous than I’d remembered. I think this is in part because, as Huxley himself notes in the preface to my edition (a Bantam paperback), he spends no time whatsoever…
Just a skosh
Elsewhere today, somebody used the word skosh in a blog comment, although he spelled it scoce. It took me a second to recognize it, at which point it occurred to me that I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen the word in print (under any spelling). The word is fairly common in spoken English: “Move…
Atlas Shrugged Chapter 30: In the Name of the Best Within Us
Let’s go to a movie where everybody fights But in the end there’s dancing, songs, and smiles You need lots of smiles — Boomtown Rats, “Wind Chill Factor Minus Zero” It is finished. — Jesus of Nazareth Chapter summary: The Scooby Gang (except for Velma, who drowned in the East River) release Galt from the…
Atlas Shrugged Chapter 29: The Generator
What a strange and silly chapter. It feels like Rand is getting as tired of this book as I am. Chapter summary: Stadler decides to seize power by taking over Project X. He gets there to find Cuffy Meigs, drunk and also trying to seize power through Project X. There’s a brief argument during which…
Atlas Shrugged Chapter 28: The Egoist
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s obviously not one of Dagny’s trains, since those tunnels have all collapsed. Chapter summary: Following John’s speech, the antagonists decide to fail to address the event at all, neither sanctioning nor sanctioning it (I love contranyms!). The President puts a tail on Dagny, hoping…
Atlas Shrugged Chapter 27: “This is John Galt Speaking”
I had a joke to put here, but I decided: I’m tired of the smarmy jokes. This book is having an odd effect on me, this chapter in particular. Chapter summary: The Powers that Be have set up a global broadcast so that the President can make a state of the world announcement, but John…