thought for today

Will Durrant: Human history

“Human history is a fragment of biology. Man is one of countless millions of species and, like all the rest, is subject to the struggle for existence and the competition of the fittest to survive. All psychology, philosophy, statesmanship, and utopias must make their peace with these biological laws. Man can be traced to about a million years before Christ. Agriculture can be traced no farther back than to 25,000 B.C. Man has lived forty times longer as a hunter than as a tiller of the soil in a settled life. In those 975,000 years his basic nature was formed and remains to challenge civilization every day.”

—Will Durant, “Heroes of History”. 

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Robert N Charette: Puffery

“To the layperson, puffery seems like a license to lie, which, frankly, isn’t totally wrong. A well-known book on torts by William Prosser and W. Page Keeton stated it this way: ‘The puffing rule amounts to a seller’s privilege to lie his head off so long as he says nothing specific, on the theory that no reasonable man would believe him or that no reasonable man would be influenced by such talk.’ In other words, the courts generally see puffery as “an expression of opinion and not a statement of fact.”

—Robert N. Charette. 

Stan Lee: Geeks

“​[Being a ‘geek’] has become a badge of honor. It’s geeks who really make or break a TV show or movie or video game. They’re the ones who are passionate about these things and who collect [the paraphernalia] and talk about them. A geek is really somebody interested in communication and entertainment and [finding] the best way to avail himself or herself to it..”

–– Stan Lee, The Washington Post.