Ghost Town by The Specials is an eminently hummable tune and to find a fragment of it in the Coventry Transport Museum was an unexpected delight.
…Early Riser
Jasper Fforde really pushes out the SciFi / Fantasy / Dystopia genre with this one. An alternative UK where nothing is quite as it seems and extreme winters that mean that humans hibernate.
This new environment means that everyone has to gain weight to survive the winter, and being to thin is seen as very socially undesirable. I should fit right in! I’m not so sure about the comparatively lo-tech alternative though. Early Riser almost has a Terry Pratchett Discworld feel to it and keeps you guessing to the end with lots of questions raised that are wrapped up neatly. This is somewhat disappointing as it leaves no room for a sequel to this stand-alone masterpiece of story-telling, but it is rather refreshing in this age of a trilogy is not enough novel series.
There is one quote that I wanted to pull out, that calls itself out as being paraphrased from someone else but I can’t find a source with my meagre Google-Fu:
“If you can’t have change without injustice, then there should be no change”
The Egg
A wonderful short story from Andy Weir, The Egg, all summed up in this quote:
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
In less than 5 minutes you can be enlightened. A very real Golden Rule.
Standards
I can’t believe that this has been sat in my inbox for six years. That speaks a lot to the simplicity and strength of the sentiment.
This came from the Chief of the Australian Army, Lt Gen David Morrison, as a publicly released address to the Australian Armed Forces. This address was prompted by the findings of investigations into allegations of unacceptable behaviour by Army members.
Via: Skepchick and Brisbane Times
Posted in: Commentary, General Links, LinkBlog.
Tagged: Quote · Standards