Dagger in hand

A man of prodigious fortune, coming to add his opinion to some light discussion that was going on casually at his table, began precisely thus: "It can only be a liar or an ignoramus who will say otherwise than," and so on. Pursue that philosophical point, dagger in hand.

--Michel de Montaigne, Of the art of discussion.



Stab back: cmnewman99-at-yahoo.com


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Tuesday, August 12, 2003
 
Den Beste is gloating over France's tourism losses. Fun though this is to do, I feel compelled to report that Paola and Lucas stopped in Paris briefly on their way to Italy and say they experienced extremely helpful and generous treatment by the locals. Better than they did in Italy. It's obviously very silly to extrapolate individual experiences like this into global judgments, but we're human and that's what we do on a gut level, strictly rational or not. So France has now climbed several rungs higher in my estimation than it had been of late. I wonder how many of the relatively few Americans who are taking advantage of the downturn to go there are having similar experiences, and whether their word of mouth will repair the damage. They'll definitely win us back much faster that way than by having Woody advertise his desire to French kiss his wife.


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