"one way out of an unhappy marriage in cultures where divorce was unavailable to wives"

I didn't realize that in a former life the great sci-fi novelist Charless Stross was a pharmacist, ahem, aher, a chemist since he's British.  And he took the time to write a really nifty piece on literary poisoning:

"Poisoning somebody is a violent assault, but a stealthy one: unlike shooting, stabbing, or punching it may not be obvious who's responsible, or even that an attack has taken place until much later. Historically it's often been a tool used by the weak against the overbearingly strong: one way out of an unhappy marriage in cultures where divorce was unavailable to wives. But, despite being stealthy, poisoning is also risky. Many legal systems punish poisoners more harshly than other murderers, either because it's the preferred tool of the oppressed against their privileged oppressor, or because it levels the playing field of violence between the weak and the well-armed and the latter don't like the taste of their own medicine.

So, before using poison in fiction, you need to be very clear about the motivation and expectancy of survival of the poisoner."

Absolutely do read the whole thing. 

Ichiro!

Ichiro Suzuki makes it to the hall of fame on his first ballot.

Like the recently departed Rickey Henderson, you could watch any game of any importance and they elevated the skill, the passion, and the joy.

"social techniques to match the situation"

"A firework he called it -- well, that was accurate enough.  It was a virtuoso display of paradoxes: opposing arguments brilliantly set forth so that one could hardly question the logic on either side.  He presented, among other things, a picture of the free democratic state as the high point of the social evolution of man; then, with shattering precision, he proceeded to demonstrate that the free democratic state was far too unstable to endure and therefore guaranteed its citizens misery and destruction.  He presented totalitarian systems as stable, enduring, reliable -- and then mercilessly exposed one by one the factors which rendered their eventual downfall inevitable.  By the time the reader was dizzy, Mayor was tossing out provocative suggestions for remedying these defects, and the total impression left on students like myself -- who went through college faced with what seemed like equally appalling alternative futures: nuclear war or a population explosion that would pass the six billion mark by the end of the century -- was that for the first time the West had produced a man capable of forging social techniques to match the situation."

-- John Brunner, The Squares of the City

Fur Puddle

 

In my deeply held scientific opinion, Chingu is a very good boy except when he's being a very bad boy.

Play 'The Candy Colored Clown!'

David Lynch has died, and the world is less strange and colorful now.

Blue Velvet is a stone cold classic.  Inland Empire may be my favorite film of his, but I can't watch it again because it left me shaken and spooked for about a week after I saw it.  And his Dune is certainly better than how it was critically reviewed on release.

Not a shabby musician either.

Rest Well, Jimmy

 

My sister and I braved the cold to pay our respects to President Carter.  May we all have second acts in life that involved serving others.

A Complete Unknown -- What I Thunk

The film makes some bold choices -- Alan Lomax and Peter Seeger as villains, or at least antagonists.  Joan Baez doesn't come off that well either.  But focusing on the early career of Dylan, these choices make sense by the end.

I also like how smart the film is musically.  There's a minor but great scene that explains to non-guitar players what playing in an open tuning means.

Like all biopics, the film lives or dies on whether you believe in Chalamet's depiction -- I did!

Basically, I thought it was great but I can see where others might differ.