FE Smith

The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

"My heart was filled with joy. I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger... a man on the move... and just sick enough to be totally confident."

The Daily Reckoning - 10-6-08 - Bill Bonner

There’s a crack in every bell God ever made...a little hairline fracture. Perhaps invisible to the human eye. Perhaps unnoticeable for many years. But hit the thing hard enough...and it falls to pieces.

Whiskey and Gunpowder - 10-1-08

In fact, fertile soil — good dirt — may become more important to land values than oil or minerals in the ground. Some say it is already a strategic asset on par with oil. As Lennart Bage, president of a U.N. fund for agricultural development says, “Now fertile land with access to water has become a strategic asset.”

Michael Nutter - WSJ

"Fact is, al Qaeda wouldn't last a day in parts of Philadelphia. I've got gangsters with .45s that would run them outta town."

Joshua Blahyi - General Butt Naked

So, before leading my troops into battle, we would get drunk and drugged up, sacrifice a local teenager, drink their blood, then strip down to our shoes and go into battle wearing colourful wigs and carrying dainty purses we'd looted from civilians. We'd slaughter anyone we saw, chop their heads off and use them as soccer balls. We were nude, fearless, drunk and homicidal. We killed hundreds of people — so many I lost count.

F. Roger Devlin - Home Economics vol III

Those who generate wealth have a better idea of its value than those who are supported by others.

The Itch - The New Yorker

She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.

Random Blog Post

I’ll let your thorough and insightful gem of legal analysis stand on its own eloquent merits.

Random Blog Post - Volokh

Sounds to me as if the "scholars" are not the brightest people around. The people, who are the source of the Constitution, always understood what their Second Amendment said. Perhaps the "scholars" need to clamber down from their tower and engage reality once in a while. That would be the scholarly thing to do.

And you might want to treat the "scholars" with the respect they deserve - very little

Random Blog Post - WSJ

Agree. These pigs have ruined a beautiful farming area. This mansion will make a perfect potato sorting house after the revolution.

A Knight's Tale: Modern Jousting Sees Renaissance - WSJ

Tournament organizers would like to lure more Asian jousters as well, but competitions in such places as Hong Kong and South Korea have been problematic because the local horses are too small to carry men in armor.

Advice to Young Men - William Cobbett

Until very lately, I have had, for the far greater part 
of the time, the whole of the press as my deadly enemy.

The Bubble - Washington Post

"We're having a sales contest, and the winner gets to keep his job," Connelly said.

Life - Diderot

LIFE: "To be born in imbecility, in the midst of pain and crisis to be the plaything of ignorance, error, need, sickness, wickedness, and passions; to return step by step to imbecility, from the time of lisping to that of doting; to live among knaves and charlatans of all kinds; to die between one man who takes your pulse and another who troubles your head; never to know where you come from, why you come and where you are going! That is what is called the most important gift of our parents and nature. Life."

Waiting for the Barbarians: A Novel - JM Coetzee

"Let it at least be said, if it ever comes to be said,
if there is ever anyone in some remote future interested
to know the way we lived, that in this farthest outpost
of the Empire of light there existed one man who
in his heart was not a barbarian."

Random Comment on HalfSigma

Creating the New Soviet Man is always a fun goof, you spend money that's not yours and f-up kids you don't care about while posing as an expert in something you don't understand. What's not to like?

Above The Law - Guest User

Wow, another dissenting opinion where the four neocon stooges basically parrot the bullshit that Bush's legal counsel has been feeding them since 2001 and then justify it with a whole lot of policy based drivel.

Look, dumbfucks, the law is clear on this. You can't just willy nilly grab whomever you'd like from a foreign country, slap a "Hello, I'm a terrorist!" name tag on them and then deny them any right whatsoever to contest their capture and detainment in a non-kangaroo (i.e., military) court.

Art - Pablo Picasso Quote

‘From the moment that art ceases to be the nourishment of the best brains, the artist can use all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. The refined people, the rich ones and the professional layabouts, only want what is sensational or scandalous in modern art. And since the days of cubism I have fed these boys what they wanted and pacified the critics with all the idiotic ideas that went through my head. Whilst I amused myself with all these pranks, I became famous and very rich. I am just a public clown, a fairground barker.’

Science Joke

A superconductor goes into and some helium gas drifts into a bar. The bartender says: ‘we don’t serve noble gases here’. The helium doesn't react. And the superconductor leaves the bar, putting up no resistance.”

MTV’s Unscripted Show May Get a Dose of Gritty Brooklyn Reality- New York Times

“My wife’s into it,” he said. “She has nothing else to do in her life than sit home and watch TV. Her husband’s working.”

How to be a classic snob - Joel Stein

And his hammer was this gigantic, Wile E. Coyote-sized mallet that he slammed maybe five times onto this enormous wood chopping block on wheels.

The Daily Reckoning 5-21-08

But the U.S. Congress, in its majestic wisdom, saw something in ethanol that capitalists and environmentalists had missed – campaign contributions and votes!

The Voyage of the Beagle – Charles Darwin

The different tribes when at war are cannibals. From the concurrent, but quite independent evidence of the boy taken by Mr. Low, and of Jemmy Button, it is certainly true, that when pressed in winter by hunger, they kill and devour their old women before they kill their dogs: the boy, being asked by Mr. Low why they did this, answered, "Doggies catch otters, old women no." This boy described the manner in which they are killed by being held over smoke and thus choked; he imitated their screams as a joke, and described the parts of their bodies which are considered best to eat. Horrid as such a death by the hands of their friends and relatives must be, the fears of the old women, when hunger begins to press, are more painful to think of; we are told that they then often run away into the mountains, but that they are pursued by the men and brought back to the slaughter-house at their own firesides!

The Satyricon - Petronius

The thing was getting positively sickening, when Trimalchio, now in a state of disgusting intoxication, commanded a new diversion, a company of horn-blowers, to be introduced; and then stretching himself out along the edge of a couch on a pile of pillows, "Make believe I am dead," he ordered. "Play something fine." Then the horn-blowers struck up a loud funeral dirge. In particular one of these undertaker's men, the most conscientious of the lot, blew so tremendous a fanfare he roused the whole neighborhood. Hereupon the watchman in charge of the surrounding district, thinking Trimalchio's house was on fire, suddenly burst open the door, and rushing in with water and axes, started the much admired confusion usual under such circumstances. For our part, we seized the excellent opportunity thus offered, snapped our fingers in Agamemnon's face, and rushed away helter-skelter just as if we were escaping from a real conflagration.

Allison Stewart on Scarlett Johansson’s new album

It's like what would happen if Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval decided to release a solo album assembled by a group of carnival barkers and hobos.

PJ O'Rourke in China

He was given two bullets, one for himself because he knew the radio codes, and one for Mrs. Peng. “People like us could not be caught,” Mr. Zhao said.

Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul - Simon Swain

"Black hair announces cowardice and great craftiness, excessively yellow and pale white hair, such as the Scythians and Celts have, reveals ignorance and clumsiness and wildness, and that which is gently yellow points towards an aptitude for learning, gentleness, and skill in art. Unmixed fiery hair like the flower of a pomegranate is not good, since for the most part their characters are beastlike and shameless and greedy. Legs which are very hairy with thick black hair indicate slowness at learning and wildness. Those whose loins and thighs have lots of hair separately from the other parts of the body are very lascivious."

The Satyricon - Petronius

In the middle of these remarks a slave dropped a cup. Trimalchio looked at him and said, "Go at once and kill yourself; you are a careless fellow."