E.T. > Recent Status Updates

“God created all the world. It was marvelous. But France . . . it was just too perfect. So he put in the French to balance things out.”

“..:beside the tarmac as we landed a rustic brass band was playing, in brass-buttoned uniforms, glowing with pleasure, beer and exertion, and led by a bandmaster who turned from his performers to wave us smilingly with his baton, one-two-three, one-two-three, down the steps from our aircraft door.”
Munich airport in the 1950s

I stayed at an old post-house whose previous customers, the landlord told me, had included Napoleon, Ludwig and Hitler.
And which of the three, I asked him, would he most like to have as a guest again?
He did not smile. ‘Alle shit,’ he said.

‘Did the cause of a righteous victory justify the means of murder? Even Winston Churchill had doubts.
Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris during the Second World War, who had unleashed his vast fleets of black thudding aircraft, manned by crews from every country of the old British Empire, to devastate scores of German cities and kill hundreds of thousands of German civilians.’

“…one of the first air raids to hit German soil in the Second World War was mounted in 1940 by the Luftwaffe itself, which mistook Freiburg im Breisgau for Colmar on the other side of the Rhine …”

“It takes guts to be a martyr, to have arrows stuck all over you or be pulled apart on wheels: but it perhaps takes a truer holiness to be laughed at by louts for your convictions.”

45 pages about absolutely nothing - wonder if A Gentleman in Moscow was just luck - Like Ajit Agarkar running thru Australia in Adelaide 2003/4 on his day.

Different from the usual crime-fiction that the “चोर” and not the police is the “hero”.
A pity that except for this one and the collection of his best short stories, other books are not that highly rated.

Immigration and Islam(ism) are the “Left-liberal” blindspots.
Twisted arguments (post-truths), whataboutery and a holier-than-thou attitude without any solutions being offered.

The light tone of the book more than the mysteries.

“We will hunt down murderers, and discover the missing family jewels, and find people who’ve disappeared and detect embezzlers.”

“Calm yourself and try to forget the cheap fiction you are in the habit of reading. Evidence for divorce is the sole prop of private inquiry agents (AKA private detectives).”
:))

“The three (Abrahamic) religions agreed in rejecting the practicability of a natural—non religious—morality; most men, they believed, can be persuaded to tolerable behavior only by the fear of God.”
This theme has occured repeatedly !
Btw, I remember a 15-yr old friend telling me the same when we were discussing religion (I was 13).

Lets see if I can finish this !

“The purpose of life is to create experiences for which you will experience nostalgia later.”

“In a society where government, law, and morality are bound up with a religious creed, any attack upon that creed is viewed as menacing the foundations of social order itself.”
Wrt Islam

“While the poor solaced life with heaven, the rich sought heaven on earth.”

"(a professional) becomes a hollow bore and ceases to enjoy life if all he can interest himself in is his limited role in the universe."

"...to keep control in an alien environment one must impose
one’s own order on the wilderness."

"To fill free time with activities that require concentration, that increase
skills, that lead to a development of the self, is not the same as killing time
by watching television or taking recreational drugs."

“But if, thereafter, reason should fail, and science should find no answers, but should multiply knowledge and power without improving conscience or purpose; if all utopias should brutally collapse in the abuse of the weak by the strong: then men would understand why once their ancestors, in the barbarism of those early Christian centuries, turned from science, knowledge, power and pride to (religious) faith.”

“Not till wealth and pride should return in the Renaissance would reason reject faith, and abandon heaven for utopia.”
It didn’t happen in the Muslim Midde East but wait…

“Congregations like to be scolded, but not to be reformed.”
Another (seemingly) offhand comment from the wise author - the chief charm of reading this series.

The history of Arianism sect of Christianity was very interesting ! For the first time, reading a history of early Christianity.
I abandoned "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco earlier as I found Christian sectarianism too trivial, but may pick it up again.

"Their country is the back of a horse."
Proverb about Huns

“If anyone has persuaded you that there is anything more profitable to the human race than to pursue philosophy at one’s leisure without interruptions, he is a deluded man trying to delude you.”
-Emperor Julian, 4th Century AD

Approx 2000 pages - daunting but i hv gr8 interest in the topic of religion - both political and spiritual.
PS:- 1.50% actually 😛

“The so-called demographic dilemma would disappear as it would no longer matter whether Jews are a majority in such a (binational) state.”
One word - Lebanon
Second, NONE of the Muslim majority countries is a secular and liberal democracy - I would even say none are plural with equal rights to all religions and ethnicities. Arrogant of the author to assume a new Israel+Palestine can be the first.

Reading this to get anti-Israel POVs from Jews themselves.
Two issues so far :-
A) Did Israel have to be based in (erstwhile) Palestine ? In all my readings n listenings, unconvinced so far. Most significant historical fact left out - an equal no of Jews were kicked out by Arab countries in 1948.
B) What “provokes” terrorism ?
To me - RELIGIOUS Nazism. The evidence is damning unless u r blind and/or retarded.

“…quality was not a reliable predictor of longevity in television. In fact, it usually doomed a show to “cult” status and a short life at that time.”
Loving this !

Too much of personal life and irrelevant details. The science part is good but skipping a lot overall.