Ron's Info-Closet Annex
The online extension of Ron's Info-Closet.
Book links are usually to my Powell's affiliate program; game links are usually to Funagain Games, and benefit the Games to the Rescue Project.
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Ron Hale-Evans
rwhe@ludism.org
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Be tolerant in what you accept and conservative in what you emit.
--old Internet Engineering Task Force motto, meant to apply to Unix programming, but useful in learning how to behave on the bus and generally in life situations involving other people
Entered 10:27 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
For a friend depressed by the election
I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which Escape is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it.
--J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories", 1947
It is in games that many men discover their paradise.
--Robert Lynd (1879-1949)
Entered 13:19 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
See also Permutation City.
Entered 12:20 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
Gandhi and Bertie agree to disagree
My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith.
--Gandhi
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
--Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1944-1969, pp. 71-2
Entered 13:33 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
--"Happy Thought", A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
--Eden Phillpotts
Entered 07:15 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.
Attributed to Albert Einstein. (Did he really say this? It's good, anyway.)
Entered 06:56 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
Never look for your work in one place and your progress in another.
--Epictetus, 55 - c. 135 CE, Discourses 1.4.17 [Oldfather Trans.]
Entered 15:12 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
Adde parvum parvo manus acervus erit. [Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
--Ovid, 43 BCE - 17 CE
Entered 02:08 [/culture/commonplace_book] permalink
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