“You never do the safe thing if there’s a risky alternative. You’re what people would call feckless, in the days when such words were still in use.”

(Saul Bellow, Ravelstein, p. 43)

Those were presumably the days when copy editors and proofreaders (proof readers?) would not allow a book to be published with “put me onto the Keynes essay” on page 7 and “put me on to Keynes’s paper” on page 8.

Someone has taken genuine Russian ‘lolcats’ and ‘translated’ their captions to mock the late and unlamented Soviet Union and a few other aspects of Russian culture (þ Pootergeek). Some Russians are apparently offended.

What’s it like living in one of the hillier parts of the Shenandoah Valley? Like living in a Grandma Moses painting, but with slightly duller colors and much better perspective. I really like driving past cows on the way to work, and having mountains on the horizon all day.

A boy, an ungrown child, in seven years puts forth
    a line of teeth and loses them again;
but when another seven God has made complete,
    the first signs of maturity appear.
In the third hebdomad he’s growing yet, his chin
    is fuzzy, and his skin is changing hue,
while in the fourth one, each achieves his peak of strength,
    the thing that settles whether men are men.
The fifth is time a man should think of being wed
    and look for sons to carry on his line;
and by the sixth he’s altogether sensible,
    no more disposed to acts of fecklessness.
With seven hebdomads and eight — fourteen more years —
    wisdom and eloquence are at their peak,
while in the ninth, though he’s still capable, his tongue
    and expertise have lost some of their force.
Should he complete the tenth and reach the measured line,
    not before time he’d have his due of death.

(Solon, Fr. 27, tr. M. L. West)