this is premium writing, no?

I care very much for the NZ scene but human gentleness means more to me than glaciers, and I’ve found gentleness here.

New English Review (via aldaily):

George Gilder: The single man in general, compared to others in the population, is poor and neurotic… He is disposed to criminality, drugs, and violence. He is irresponsible about his debts, alcoholic, accident prone, and venerally diseased. Unless he can marry, he is often destined to a Hobbsean life–solitary, nasty, brutish and short.

George Gilder: Single men are not in general very good at life.

George Gilder: Men need durable ties to women to discipline them for civilized life, or they become a menace to society and themselves… and tend to live short and destructive lives.

Germaine Greer: …the unmated male is more likely to wind up in prison or in an asylum or dead than his mated counterpart. He is less likely to be promoted at work, and he is considered a poor credit risk.

Vance Packard: …the worst status of all is that of a bachelor beyond the age of 36. The investigators wonder why he isn’t married. Is it because he isn’t virile? Is he old-maidish? Can’t he get along with people?

New English Review (via aldaily):

George Steiner: Marriage is about roughage, bills, garbage disposal, and noise.

Robert Burton: In sober sadness, marriage is a bondage, a thraldom, a hindrance to all good enterprises… Consider withal how free, how happy, how secure, how heavenly, in respect, a single man is.

Alexandre Dumas: Woman inspires us to great things and prevents us from achieving them.

Sir Francis Bacon: Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.

the minister for community development, youth and sports seems to think the people today want “moving images, sound, music” when it comes to reporting political content.

plainly, i’ll settle for undiminished reporting anytime.

The New Republic (via aldaily):

A Chinese elementary-school textbook of the 1920s explained that “Mankind is divided into five races. The yellow and white races are relatively strong and intelligent. Since the other races are feeble and stupid, they are being exterminated by the white race. Only the yellow race competes with the white race. This is so-called evolution.”

The New Republic (via aldaily):

The 380 (Chinese) hostesses guiding the athletes through the Olympic awards ceremonies will all be about the same age, height, and weight, and they have been trained to walk and gesture in standard ways.

my toe socks are little prisons.

BBC:

Mr Mugabe admitted having no lifelong friends and, as a lonely, bookish child, he recalled “talking to myself, reciting little poems and reading things aloud to myself.”

a woman messaged me the other day:

my frens fren has been forced by his evil wife to give away his 8 years old golden retriever. if u knoe anyone who will take a dog, pls let me knw. She’s going to send it to SPCA soon!

who thinks he’s giving up the wrong bitch?

NYT:

first, most, fastest, tallest, money, fat, cancer, sex, safe, easy, secret, trick, breaking, toxic, green, environment, foreclosure, baby, breakup, marriage, divorce, Madonna, Jessica Simpson.

but don’t use -

world renowned, once in a lifetime, solutions, leading edge, cutting edge, state of the art, mission critical, and turnkey.

black and white, point and shoot, nepal, probably 2003.

Take that historic inferiority complex! Take that Spanish victimism! Take that Buffon and Cassano! Take that 22 June curse! Take that 88-year jinx against the unbeatable Italians! Take that pessimists! Take that disbelievers! Take that Tassotti! Take that Pagliuca! And long live King Juan Carlos of Spain!

link

Franz Kafka:

Women are snares which lie in wait for men on all sides, in order to drag them into the merely finite.

Franz Kafka:

Don’t you get pleasure out of exaggerating painful things as much as possible?

he couldn’t understand why.

he humbled himself and He was with him. and together they took 2 fish and five loaves and they fed five thousand.

like jesus.

but nobody believed him. they thought it was a trick.

was it because he was a magician, he thought? or was his gospel too effortless or was it because of his popstar wife?

He has heard Him so many times but today, He stayed silent.

this is a fascinating article.

the book “the wisdom of crowds” has stated the idea that a group of people is often more accurate than an expert. for example, “the TV studio audience of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire guesses correctly 91 percent of the time, compared to “experts” who guess only 65 percent correctly”.

now, research has found “that two guesses made by the same person at different times are also better than one”.

hmm, let’s put it to the test. i used to think women were wonderful. now i think they are scary. so according to the new theory, the average of these 2 views is more accurate which means that a woman is one-half wonderful and the other half scary.

or maybe it means 50% women are wonderful, the other half are scary.

so let’s say my new view is that 50% of women are scary. my other view of women is that 50% of them are potentially lesbians (as claimed by lesbian lit.).

i don’t exactly know what the average of these views mean but i think it indicates that there are a lot of scary lesbians around.

Meg Gardiner:

People want certainty. They want meaning. Some want purity. Unfortunately, the world is messy. Faced with the jumble of everyday life, some people jump off the reality ship, and join groups that promise answers. Simple, total, black-and-white answers. Some of these people are naive. Others are lost or needy. Some are seeking permission to unleash the violent impulses they feel. And remember: Nobody sets out to join a cult. They join that really exciting church.

i have decided to take a short break from blogging. if you like, we can exchange letters via emails.

write to me: isaiah at ihadapooreducation dot com

Haruki Murakami in the New Yorker:

I don’t see my readers’ faces, so in a sense my relationship with them is a conceptual one, but I’ve consistently considered it the most important thing in my life.

NYT:

Once (Tiger) Woods tried out four drivers that Nike was experimenting with and told the lab guys that he preferred the heavier one. The researchers thought the clubs were the same weight, but they measured and Woods was right. The club he’d selected was heavier by the equivalent of two cotton balls.