"Hell Is Other Philosophers: How could a benevolent God create a place of eternal pain and misery? That’s the “problem of hell,” a special case of the “problem of evil.” At Three Quarks Daily, Robert Talisse and Scott Aiken expound two traditional defenses of hell’s compatibility with God’s goodness. Their conclusion is that philosophers are hell’s only residents.
Opinion - Opinionator - NYTimes.com
Percy's early life was marked by tragedy: his grandfather and father both committed suicide with shotguns, and his mother drowned when her car ran off the road into a stream. When his uncle in Greenville, Mississippi, adopted Percy and his little brothers, things took a turn for the better; it was there that he met his lifelong best friend, the neighbor boy Shelby Foote. As teenagers they took a trip to Oxford to meet their hero, William Faulkner — Percy was so overwhelmed that he stayed in the car as Foote and Faulkner talked on the porch. The Joke That Got No Laughs by Hal Sirowitz | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison KeillorFunny. Last week my traveling companion (my brother-in-law) stayed with the car while I wandered the grounds of Rowan Oak too. But I wandered with the memorial spirit and not the very person of Count No 'count, nearly fifty years since his passing.
"Most annoying thing about me? Constant whining."
"The truth is, there's nobody I want to have dinner with." Etc.
"A NATO bombing strike in Afghanistan killed a family of eight, including six children, officials said Sunday. “It’s true. A house was bombed by NATO,” a senior security official in Kabul told the Agence France-Presse. “A man named Mohammad Sahfee, his wife and six of their innocent children were brutally killed.”NATO Strike Kills Family - The Daily Beast
For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can any one take this from him?
...the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not.
NYT: It has been six years since your last novel was published, and I gather you weren’t writing for some of that time. What were you doing? Jack Daniel’s and the “Today” show?
RF: Living, it’s called living. You might call it wasting time, but I just call it living. Going bird hunting, reading books, watching the Red Sox, doing things with my wife that we wouldn’t have time to do if I was writing a book. There’s a whole lot to do once you can get out from under the yoke of working.Richard Ford Is a Man Who Actually Listens - NYTimes.com
Somehow I got his number and called him up. I figured him as a good speaker, I’d seen him on television, I’d read various bits and pieces and was very impressed by his dignity and the clarity of this thinking, so when I got a chance I went down and met him. Bertrand Russell lived in Chelsea in one of those little terrace houses, I think it was Flood Street. He had the archetypal American assistant... (continues) How Bertrand Russell Turned The Beatles Against the Vietnam War | Open Culture
"In 2005 science writer Joshua Foer went to cover the U.S. Memory Championship. A year later he was back -- as contestant. A year of mental training with Europe's top memorizer turned into a book, Moonwalking with Einstein, which is both a chronicle of his immersion in the memory culture and wonderfully accessible and informative introduction to the science of memory."Joshua Foer | Profile on TED.com
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (and see Mr. Rogers, below)
"Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail."
Jailbird, prologue
When asked in 1978 about his writing process, Updike said, “I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them, you will never write again.”
After the birth of his third child, he had rented an office above a restaurant in Ipswich, and spent several hours each morning writing there. Throughout his 50-year career, he remained devoted to that schedule, writing about three pages every morning after breakfast, sometimes more if things were going well. He said: “Back when I started, our best writers spent long periods brooding in silence. Then they’d publish a big book and go quiet again for another five years. I decided to run a different kind of shop.” WA
 | Alain de Botton (@alaindebotton) |
Why ‘Earthrise’ Matters thebookoflife.org/why- | |
 | Five Books (@five_books) |
The 'father of science fiction' HG Wells suffered terribly from class anxiety. Huxley and Woolf thought him 'vulgar' == Five books on... | |
Charles Darwin (@cdarwin)1/11/15, 6:51 AM"And maybe this is what I have learned more than anything from my great-great-grandfather: to keep my eyes and my mind open, to enjoy the wonders of nature and never cease to ask questions." Sarah Darwin, foreword to "A Modest Genius: The story of Darwin's life and how his ideas changed everything" by Hanne Strager
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