E.T. > Recent Status Updates

Top-notch entertainment ! Some parts may feel familiar but consider that this was written in the 1940s.

“Everything has been said already, but not yet by everyone.”
-Karl Valentin

“every new piece of technology requires the acquisition of a new system of reflexes, which in turn requires effort on our part, and all of this on a shorter and shorter cycle.”
“There are areas of knowledge in which it is impossible to remain abreast of new developments for very long.”
As a software developer, think it’s pointless to run after every version/upgrade.

Now looking for a history of the peace efforts !
One thing is for sure - it doesnt matter what is your political stance, and how much blame you apportion to Israel / Arab states / or Palestinians themselves -
Palestinians have suffered like hell !!

Additions:-
a) What happened to the Jews living in Arab countries pre-1948 ? Expelled summarily and never acknowledged. Possibly in more nos. than the non-Jew Palestinians.
b) Jordan annexed West Bank and ruled over it unauthorised from 1948-1967. Egypt over Gaza from 1948-1967. Colonialism ?
FINALLY - What does it take to get on with life ?
Indians did, Pakistanis do not
Israelis did, Palestinians did not.

I hate dystopian worlds that are the norm in sci-fi and it is quite interesting that Asimov went against the flow before the flow had started.
Thoughtfully written (and thought- provoking) stories so far.

If he can end it well, this will be a masterpiece !

“ Soon the relatives of motorists
killed on the motorway would appear on television claiming that their deaths were due not to the fact that they had been doing 100 kilometres an hour on the hard shoulder in the middle of a contraflow system, but to the criminal negligence of the authorities in not providing for the needs of people who were exercising their constitutional right to drive like maniacs.”
IIT Mumbai

“The secret of police success lay, Brunetti knew, not in brilliant deductions or the psychological manipulation of suspects but in the simple fact that human beings tended to assume that their own level of intelligence was the norm, the standard, and to work on that assumption.
Hence the stupid were quickly caught, for their idea of what was cunning was so lamentably impoverished.”

40% of this mammoth complete 🙂

Literary and serious. The contrast with Camilleri is striking.

“The MCC should change its name to MCP.”
-
Diana Edulji after being denied entry to the male-only Lord’s Pavilion in 1986.

‘I know who the Indian captain is but I’m not telling.’
-Manager GS Ramchand in 1974/75 to the media
Unbelievable!!

"I cant help you all ! Hell, if we can help just one of you, we'll do it."
"Save the one, save the world."
A very strong recommendation to watch the Italian movie "Life is Beautiful" if you havent already !

I formed the impression that Spain has more than its fair share of grand medieval buildings and fabulous towns - and I think that impression was right !

“The Danish PM was swiftly awarded the nickname ‘Gucci Helle’ for her love of designer clothes.
Helle maintained a dignified silence for some time before taking down one particularly odious heckler at a ministerial meeting with the line: ‘We can’t all look like shit.’ I love the Danish PM.”
Me too 🙂

After ages, a book that I want to spend every spare moment reading !

Seems that being in a small town makes one happier and less stressed.

“Ringkøbing is the happiest town in Denmark. And given that Denmark is consistently named by the UN as the world’s happiest country, this technically makes Ringkøbing the happiest town on earth.”
No it does not. Logical fallacy.

“The D@nish national hero preached tolerance – and yet it is the country that spawned the Muh@mmed cartoons”
It is retarded Islamo-Left thinking to place onus of tolerance on an artist and not the violent reactionaries.
And never mind freedom-of-speech that was hard-won after centuries of repression in Europe.

“He smiled at the discord of philosophers. Philosophy,” he complained, “aims only at hair-splitting, subtle distinctions, quibbles of words.
Such a discipline could make clever debaters, but hardly wise men. He laughed at the high degree of Master and Doctor with which such studies were crowned, and marveled how a ceremony could make a pundit out of a fool. ”
-Petrarch

Nice touch to pay a tribute to James Michener - the master of this sub-genre

I must have read half-a-dozen crime series set in Nordic countries. First one in which they seem to be like normal human-beings without the grey gloom.

"Men make their own history (read luck too), but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."
-Karl Marx as quoted by Manish Sabbharwal

“…in affairs of the heart there is always one who kisses and one who is kissed.”

She read a different newspaper each morning,
spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French
to English.
Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this.
Her response, he came to realize only years later,
made perfect sense: 'I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be
told.’

Dear Mr Sen,
Please get your head out of Rawls’s a$$

Major thing that i noticed just now - Televisions in the home seem optional in Dordogne (France) ! It was this way with the series set in Sicily (Italy) too.

"... he thought, as he always did on fine summer mornings, of a German saying some tourist had told him :-
that the very summit of happiness was to live like God in France."
Started this series and already think I am going to love this. With my love of travel in Europe and also European villages.

“Man entered the 21se century with Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology…”
-E.O. Wilson