From my peaceful corner, i conceal the world

From Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, a book with an “unlikeable” hero:

Who, then, if not an author, must speak the sacred truth? You fear the deeply penetrating gaze, you are afraid to penetrate anything deeply with your own gaze, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes. You will even have a hearty laugh over Chichikov…will turn to yourself with redoubled pride, a self-satisfied smile will appear on your face, and you will say: ‘One can’t help agreeing, the most strange and ridiculous people turn up in some provinces, and no small scoundrel at that!’ And who among you, not publicly, but in quiet, alone, in moments of solitary converse with himself, will point deeply into his own soul this painful question: ‘And isn’t there a bit of Chichikov in me, too?’

Waste of space

When i’m low i talk like a fool

From The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway:

The waiter seemed a little offended about the flowers of the Pyrenees, so I overtipped him. That made him happy. It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis.

Wikileaks and american journalism

From “The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange” by (my former professor!) David Samuels in The Atlantic:

Every honest reporter and editor in America knows that the fact that most news organizations are broke, combined with the increasing threat of aggressive legal action by deep-pocketed entities, private and public, has made it much harder for good reporters to do their jobs, and ripped a hole in the delicate fabric that holds our democracy together.

Before you decide if Wikileaks’ radical actions are right or wrong, know that they’ve done with 5-10 people what the entire American journalism industry professes to do daily as a supposed lynchpin of our system of checks and balances. And before you condemn Pfc. Bradley Manning to life imprisonment for treason, think about what made it possible—and easy—for him to download and distribute classified data in the first place.

Obviously, we are completely unprepared to fight a cyber war.