" 'A sad spectacle!' exclaimed Thomas Carlyle, contemplating the possibility that millions of planets circle other suns. 'If they be inhabited, what a scope for pain and folly; and if they be not inhabited, what a waste of space!' " --from Martin Gardner's Order and Surprise (1983)
"The Face
See me with all the terrors on my roads,
The crusted shipwrecks rotting in my seas,
And the untroubled oval of my face
That alters idly with he moonlike modes
And is unfathomably framed to please
And deck the angular bone with passing grace.
I should have worn a terror-mask, should be
A sight to frighten hope and faith away.
Half charnel field, half battle and rutting ground.
Instead I am a smiling summer sea
That sleeps while underneath from bound to bound
The sun- and star-shaped killers gorge and play."
--Edwin Muir
Interesting thread on competitive vs. cooperative games.
No comments:
Post a Comment