Warwick Stubbs > Recent Status Updates

"The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can only stop when everything is in ashes."

"Personal prejudice and financial greed are the two great evils that threaten courts of law, and once they get the upper hand they immediately hamstring society by destroying all justice."

Without iron human life is simply impossible, just as it is without fire or water - but we could easily do without silver and gold, if it weren't for the idiotic concept of scarcity-value. And yet kind Mother Nature has deliberately placed all her greatest blessings, like earth, air, and water, right under our noses, and tucked away out of sight the things that are no use to us.

Not gonna lie, I've been skim-reading and skipping entire pages. Much of the first half is just travelling without dramatic consequences or emotional insights - go here do this, go there do that, get in car and leave, and then arrive at next destination.

"Milt and Ann were city dwellers, and when the city died, they would hardly survive without it. They would pay the penalty which in the history of the world, he knew, had always been inflicted upon organisms which specialised too highly. [...] They had specialised until they could no longer adapt themselves to new conditions."

"In the United States, an estimated 1200 people die annually of heart attacks brought on by shovelling snow."

"What you can't put right, you must try to make as little wrong as possible."

Starting to skim-read. It's too late for character history, I don't care. The story has an interesting development but it feels undercooked, arriving without any impact...

Good ideas, uninteresting story-telling.

Philip K. Dick without the wackiness.

Thoroughly enjoyable. Lots of interesting facts and a really great history of the concept of 'elements' from ancient times to their factual place in science.

Too much telling instead of showing in these stories. Ironically, my reading pace has picked up speed as a consequence!

Might have to put this on hold. I'm leaving town and this is a library copy, so unless I take it with me and post it to them when i finish, it will probably get returned...

Went out of "reading phase" (no reading peace), but today got put on a job assignment where I was mostly alone and sitting around waiting. Used that as an excuse to pick something a bit easier up to read. Ok so far!

"Prisons and penal servitude do not of course rehabilitate the criminal; they merely punish him and ensure that society is kept safe from further attacks. The only effect of prison[s] is to generate hatred... It is a system that sucks the lifeblood from the criminal, enervates his spirit, and then holds up a morally desiccated mummy as a model of rehabilitation and repentance."

- Part 1, Chapter 1

I love dipping in and out of this book. So filled with interesting information about and related to trees, but never text bookish or long-winded. I like picking it up when I'm out of town or away from the beach, surrounded by the subject and breathing the air they provide.

Extremely uninteresting. Characters are boring, the situation is boring, the attempts at rescue are boring. This is what they call a "Masterwork"?