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December 15, 2005
Thursday
 
 
Samizdata quote for the day
Johnathan Pearce (London)  Self defence & security
"Perhaps the meek shall inherit the Earth, but they'll do it in very small plots . . . about 6' by 3'."

Robert Heinlein, quoted at this excellent legal website with stacks of quotations about self defence.

Comments

"...in very small plots . . . about 6' by 3'." Actually, much smaller than that. I went to a church in Munich last year and couldn't figure out how so many dead bodies could be buried in the church yard throughout the centuries. I was told that the 'new' bodies were buried on top of the 'old' ones.


Posted by ic at December 15, 2005 07:42 PM

Pity the page is rendered almost unreadable because of the grey/yellow colour scheme....what were they thinking?


Posted by oh pollo! at December 16, 2005 09:25 AM

I thought the colours were awful too, pollo. Why can't someone devise a markup language that separates the meaning of text from the presentation of the text, so that you could have the document laid out in a manner that suited the device you were looking at it on? Although 'creative' people would complain about how their fabulous page designs were being mucked about with.


Posted by zmollusc at December 16, 2005 10:02 AM

Not totally on topic, but it is to do with self-defence - has anyone here been following the Cory Maye saga? What is the general opinion on the case?

The Agitator seems to have been the catalyst for all the talk. As far as I can see someone is going to be put to death for shooting a policeman who had smashed the door down in the middle of the night with precious little, if any, warning or reason. I'll be the first to admit I know little about the case, but it certainly seems to be debatable whether the death penalty is appropriate for someone with no previous criminal record who claimed to be acting in self-defence.

(Apologies if this is covered somewhere else, but no reference to it came up when I searched Samizdata).


Posted by cuthhyra at December 16, 2005 11:59 AM

Wikiquote also has an excellent and enjoyable selection of Heinlein quotations.


Posted by Bill at December 16, 2005 02:01 PM

It may - for all I can tell - be an excellent site, but what idiot decided to make it yellow text on a pale grey background?


Posted by Andrew Duffin at December 16, 2005 02:10 PM

I always preferred "We meek shall inherit the earth-
Er if that's all right with the rest of you".


Posted by RAB at December 16, 2005 03:11 PM

To make the page readable: Use Ctrl+A to highlight the text. Or, alternatively, your browser may have a feature to over-ride the site's extremely stupid color scheme.

This situation reminds me of an earlier post on this site about HTML email and how it can be a bad thing because people can do stupid things like choose dumb colors for the foreground and background.


Posted by Wyrd at December 16, 2005 07:38 PM
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