Two truths and a lie

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1. The shoes I'm wearing are brown.
2. I'm a Python programmer.
3. I'm a physicist.

Yes, I agree. I always think of the memory in C & P when he sees Mikolka beat the old carthorse to death. I teared up in a way I never could for the murder of the pawnbroker.

#2 because I don't know what Python is

All the prisoners without exception, even the most pusillanimous, even those who were beforehand tormented night and day, supported it courageously when it came. I scarcely ever heard groans during the night following the execution; our people, as a rule, knew how to endure pain.

I questioned my companion often in reference to this pain, that I might know to what kind of suffering it might be compared. It was no idle curiosity which urged me. I repeat that I was moved and[Pg 228] frightened; but it was in vain, I could get no satisfactory reply.

"It burns like fire!" was the general answer; they all said the same thing.

First I tried to question M—tski. "It burns like fire! like hell! It seems as if one's back were in a furnace."

I made one day a strange observation, which may or may not have been well founded, although the opinion of the convicts themselves confirms my views; namely, that the rods are the most terrible punishment in use among us.

At first it seems absurd, impossible, yet five hundred strokes of the rods, four hundred even, are enough to kill a man. Beyond five hundred death is almost certain; the most robust man will be unable to support a thousand rods, whereas five hundred sticks are endured without much inconvenience, and without the least risk in the world of losing one's life. A man of ordinary build supports a thousand sticks without danger; even two thousand sticks will not kill a man of ordinary strength and constitution. All the convicts declared that rods were worse than sticks or ramrods.

"Rods hurt more and torture more!" they said.

They must torture more than sticks, that is certain, that is evident; for they irritate much more forcibly the nervous system, which they excite beyond measure. I do not know whether any person still exists, but such did a short time ago, to whom the whipping of a victim procured a delight which recalls the Marquis de Sade and the Marchioness Brinvilliers. I think this delight must consist in the sinking of the heart, and that these nobles must have experienced pain and delight at the same time.

There are people who, like tigers, are greedy for blood. Those who have possessed unlimited power over the flesh, blood, and soul of their fellow-creatures, of their brethren according to the law of Christ, those who have possessed this power and who[Pg 229] have been able to degrade with a supreme degradation, another being made in the image of God; these men are incapable of resisting their desires and their thirst for sensations. Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last becomes a disease. I declare that the best man in the world can become hardened and brutified to such a point, that nothing will distinguish him from a wild beast. Blood and power intoxicate; they aid the development of callousness and debauchery; the mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty in the form of pleasure; the man and the citizen disappear for ever in the tyrant; and then a return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible.

That the possibility of such license has a contagious effect on the whole of society there is no doubt. A society which looks upon such things with an indifferent eye, is already infected to the marrow. In a word, the right granted to a man to inflict corporal punishment on his fellow-men, is one of the plague-spots of our society. It is the means of annihilating all civic spirit. Such a right contains in germ the elements of inevitable, imminent decomposition.

You can have Renaissance Men who are women.

Marie Curie was a Renaissance Woman.


1. I went to a camp named White Maple.

2. I went a camp named Surprise Lake.

3. I went to a camp named McAllister.

I don't think Madame Curie minded being called Madame Curie.....

The lie is #1. I went to a camp called White OAKS.

Of course Prometheus is being satirical

Kraichauer isn't THAT bad....

1. I've been to a Troskyite meeting.

2. I've been to a Spiritual Baptist, African-oriented church service.

3. I've been to a meeting of the International Workers of the World.

Yep...#3 is the lie.

The Troskyites were absurdly Communist----but at least they were usually pleasant about it.