Milan Kundera

Robert Benchley

“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.”

Samuel Butler

“The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.”

Charles Doran

“A man’s soul can be judged by the way he treats his dog.”

George Bird Evans

“I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren’t certain we knew better.”

Edward Hoagland

“In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.”

John Holmes

“A dog is not almost-human, and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.”

Lonzo Idolswine

“My dog is usually pleased with what I do, because she is not infected with the concept of what I ‘should’ be doing.”

Franz Kafka

“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog.”

Rudyard Kipling

“When the Man waked up he said,
‘What is Wild Dog doing here?’
And the Woman said,
‘His name is not Wild Dog any more,
but the First Friend,
because he will be our friend
for always and always and always.’”

Milan Kundera

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.”

John Steinbeck

“I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

A continuing series of noteworthy tidbits gleaned from all over.

Why publishing is still a paper business
On another message board recently I read a semi-rant from a striving-to-be-published writer wondering why oh why she still has to use snail mail for submissions and wrack up postage costs when she could email or send a book on CD, etc. So I stopped and thought for two seconds, ran through all the reasons I don’t accept things electronically, and suddenly it dawned on me: oh right, the ebook revolution. Umm, yea…hope none of you invested in that bit of silliness. Nobody wants to read a picture book or a novel on a computer screen…. (bgliterary)

Survival tips for fictional characters
If you are invited to a country-house party, never allow yourself to be alone or in the company of only one person. This will either cut back on your social life or increase it beyond all decent bounds, but at least you’ll avoid becoming either the victim or the murderer…. (Rosemary for Remembrance)

Document: Baseball back, back, back … in 1791
Pittsfield uncovers earliest written reference to game. PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Officials and historians in this western Massachusetts city released a 213-year-old document Tuesday that they believe is the earliest written reference to baseball. The evidence comes in a 1791 bylaw that aims to protect the windows in Pittsfield’s new meeting house by prohibiting anyone from playing baseball within 80 yards of the building…. (ESPN.com - MLB)

Privacy in the Woods?
I work with a local Search and Rescue team, and for some time I’ve been thinking about the possibility of installing sensors at a few critical trail junctions in the local back country. The sensors would detect passing hikers and report timestamps to an Internet gateway in near real-time. When a hiker goes missing, this information could be very valuable in determining where search efforts should be directed. However, I’ve spent enough time on Slashdot to know that whenever you start monitoring or tracking people and their activities, someone’s going to get upset. So I’d like to hear from the tinfoil hat brigade - what are your objections to such a system, and how might your concerns be addressed? (AlterSlash)

Bidding farewell to evil robots
The Terminator will not be back this summer, but the machines are rising anyway. In the coming months, the multiplexes are going to be overrun by mechanisms that, in one way or another, mimic the operations of the human organism: sleek, lithe androids whiz through I, Robot; eerily perfect simulacra of suburban homemakers populate The Stepford Wives; the retro science fiction adventure Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow features an army of giant, clanking robots striding purposefully through the streets of Manhattan, and the most famous and venerable man-made man of all, the monstrous creation of Dr. Frankenstein, walks the earth again in Van Helsing. With the field so crowded, the Terminator is wise to stay at home in Sacramento. (International Herald Tribune)

WeatherPop 2.0.1 - View current weather conditions…
View current weather conditions in the menubar. (MacUpdate - Mac OS X)

Kunderian Lightness
Apparently everyone is all excited about the 20th anniversary of the English-language edition of Milan Kundera’s classic. (the Literary Saloon)

Ask The Game Geek
To the person who arrived at my site googling for ‘apple II games remake download old parachute’: The name of the game you’re looking for is Sabotage, and you can get it here. It should play in any halfway decent Apple II emulator…. (Tea and Peterb)

Cyclist down?
I’m unlocking my bike this evening and another cyclist is locking up his bike, an older gentleman whose English isn’t so great. He notes I have a lot of safety equipment with me. (I’m really not sure what that is — a bell, a headlight, gloves - helps my hands from getting sore, a helmet — which might help me but I know is unlikely to save me if I get hit by a motor vehicle… (The Adventures of Crazy Biker Chick)

Library of Alexandria Found?
A Polish-Egyptian archaeological team has uncovered ruins which appear to be the lecture halls of the Library of Alexandria…. (WorldChanging)

New From Kurt Vonnegut
From In These Times: Cold Turkey, by Kurt Vonnegut. It’s a rambling essay that touches on a variety of topics. For example, U.S. politics: ‘That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay….’ (J-Walk Blog)

Form Letter Life
…Lately, I’ve been surprised to discover that on weekends, I’ll wake up as usual at 6 AM, make breakfast, do a few chores… and then fall prone at 8 or 9 AM and sleep until the afternoon. For a few weeks I’ve thought, ‘My gosh, I’m getting sick! Something’s wrong with me! Ack!’ It took me this long to realize the truth: I’m just over-committed…. (Stardancer News)