"When we go to war, we are all putting on hoods and pulling the hangman's lever. And as long as we send our armies on the rampage - whatever the justification - we will go on stringing up and shooting and chopping off the head of our 'criminals' and 'murderers' with the same enthusiasm as the Roomans who cheered on the men of blood in the Colosseum ( Read more... )

I always tend to think about New Year's resolutions after the fact.  The year in retrospect, aside from a lot of good moments and good people,  feels like its predominantly been overshadowed by the stress of trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life and what direction I'll end up going in; the cycle of guilt at lack of productivity leading ( Read more... )

From Neil Gaiman's fabulous journal:"What is it with the tambourine thing anyway? I manage to spend an entire life, joyfully tambourineless, and now I have played it on stage in front of people twice in a month. Do I look like someone who would be happier holding a tambourine?" I think I may need an icon with that last sentence...

My fellow LJists ( Read more... )

Filmmaker Terence Davies, upon being asked whether or not making Of Time and the City(2007) gave him 'the satisfaction of using art to stop time', gave the only sensible answer: "No. Because you can't stop time. It stops you."

The American flatmate (on biking activism):  I am my own Critical Mass.

 It's nearly three in the morning; why am I still up? To bring you a quote from Ivor Cutler, of course:  "A second before is not now.  A second after is not now.  Now is now, and now is sweet."  (Ivor Cutler, Befriend a Bacterium (stickies), p. 4) Honourary mention goes to Robert A. Heinlein, from Have Space Suit-Will Travel: "Son, any statement ( Read more... )

"Mortality is the price of identity" (Lovelock, Gaia, p. 125)

And an experiment

I've been reading Mary Roach's Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife, and she has a very cool experiment which we can all scare ourselves silly with again and again. (The full scientific explanation and a much better description than mine can be found on pp. 212-3 ( Read more... )

...jiggity jig, as they say. Though 'fat as a pig' would also apply. I spent the last five days eating a considerable amount of food and walking very little. The diet starts tomorrow. Leeds was Leedsish. I spent a great deal of time with relatives, which was lovely, but it is good to be home - there's only so much small talk I can make... It was a ( Read more... )

...but which is surprisngly apt when applied to the following quotation.)

Neil Gaiman is BRILLIANT - witness his following throwaway from today's blog entry (spotted courtesy of
( Read more... )