Sex clouds my mind

For our slower students who did not get that last posting:

My wife is away. I thought I would get a lot of work done. I did last time. When she is away my mind is undivided and I can pour my whole heart into something. I work for hours on end with no one to stop me.

This time it is different: all I think of is sex. Well, half the time.

I count the days.

We could have done it the morning she left, but I got up a half hour late and barely made the bus. Boy, what a mistake that was. If I had gone in late it would have saved me so much time later on!

If I do not do it for a while, sex begins to cloud my mind. Sex and women take up more and more of my thoughts. Someone is talking to me and what is going through my head? I am trying to think through something difficult and I have to start all over again – several times. Because what keeps pushing its way into my thoughts?

On the A train on the way home I look at the women. Last night I saw one with beautiful dark eyes. Our eyes met. In the state I was in, it took everything I had to keep from looking at her. Even as I write this a day later her face is burned into my brain. She was about 30 with a good smile and looked like Eleanor Roosevelt’s half-black love child.

But I know that after a point these thoughts will disappear altogether, at least for a while. It is like going without food or sleep. You get a second wind, but it does not last for ever.

I once compared it in this blog to turning 14 all over again. That is what it feels like. When I wrote that, I thought I was entering a new stage in my life, just as I did when I was 14. But now I see it was much simpler than that: I felt that way because I had gone too long without sex: at the time I was fighting with my wife. And so certain thoughts and desires began to take over.

I can go six months without sex, but it requires prayer and fasting. Fasting and sex seem to be opposites almost, at least for me.

My wife would be surprised to read all this and would believe none of it. She says I have almost no sex drive. What she refuses to believe is that it is her mouth that gets in the way of her own love life (and mine). I walk home wanting it so bad, but when I get home she starts a fight – because she wants it but is not getting it! This is how she seduces men?

I look out the window. God willing, Rebecca will return.

See also:

• The most beautiful black women in the world – that last posting
  
• Like turning fourteen all over again
• Rebecca
• My wife’s handbook for seducing men
• How a man looks at a woman
• The eyes of black women and white women

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The most beautiful black women

Here are the ten most beautiful black women in the world that I know of who are also famous enough to be in the Wikipedia. This is a work in progress. I am open to suggestions.

1. Vilayna Lasalle is an American swimsuit model and video vixen. Her face is perfect. She is part Brazilian and Creole. More.

2. Jill Marie Jones (1975- ) is an American actress. She starred in the television show “Girlfriends” and was once a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys. What lips! She is not beautiful in an ordinary way, but somehow I cannot take my eyes off her. More.

3. Sanaa Lathan (1971- ) is an American actress. She is probably best known as the heroine in “Alien vs. Predator” (2004). I saw her in “Disappearing Acts” (2000) and could not take my eyes off her. Looking at her is like eating ice cream on a hot summer day. More.

4. Heather Headley (1974- ) is a Broadway actress and singer from Trinidad. She starred in “Aida” and “The Lion King” on Broadway. More.

5. Gabrielle Union (1972- ) is an American film actress. Of all the women here she is easily the one I have mentioned most in this blog. More.

6. Naomi Campbell (1970- ) is a British supermodel from the 1990s. A great face and great legs. More.

7. Aissa Maiga (1975- ) is the highest-paid black actress in France. She is from Senegal. More.

8. Lela Rochon (1964- ) is an American film actress. She was in “Waiting to Exhale” (1995). You saw her dancing with Lionel Richie in “All Night Long” (1983). I could look at her forever. More.

9. Gloria Reuben (1964- ) is a Canadian actress who is best known for appearing on the television show “ER”, where she got Aids from her unfaithful husband. Her father is white, her mother Jamaican. She won Miss Black Ontario 1986. More.

10. Sade(1959- ) is a Nigerian-born singer from the 1980s. She has that otherworldly look, like a princess from a storybook. She is half white, but I am too much of an American to see her as white instead of black. The One Drop Rule, you know. More.

Honourable mentions (not in any order): Tamara Tunie, Gina Torres, Karyn White, Sharon Leal, Neferteri Shepherd, Alicia Keys, Brandy Norwood, Angela Bassett, YaYa Da Costa, Charmaine Sinclair, Ananda Lewis, Bria Myles, Kenya Moore, Jordin Sparks, Beverly Peele, Kerry Washington, Marsha Thomason, Estelle, Toni Braxton, Solange Knowles, Denise Nicholas, Lisa Bonet, Elise Neal, Adriana Bombom, Ildi Silva, Lizz Robbins, Angell Conwell, Toccara Jones, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Annie Ruddock, Nia Long and Latavia Roberson.

How I rank the general beauty of black women from different places:

1. Cameroon
2. Congo (either one)
3. France
4. West Africa (Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Senegal)
5. Britain
6. West Indies (Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana)
7. America
8. Brazil
9. Colombia

I do not know enough about black women in other places, like Somalia or South Africa, to say.

See also:

• The ten most beautiful women in the world – of any race
• Other lists of beautiful black women:
  • The most beautiful black Brazilian women – this is a new list; not yet sure which ones belong on this list too.
  • The most beautiful black women models – just models, both fashion models and hip hop models
  • The most beautiful black actresses
  • The most beautiful Nigerian actresses
  • The most beautiful black women
    • according to white people
    • according to black people
• thick black women
• video vixens
• Black women are beautiful
  • Vilayna Lasalle
    
  • Jill Marie Jones
  • Sanaa Lathan
  • Heather Headley
  • Gabrielle Union
  • Naomi Campbell
  • Tamara Tunie
  • Angell Conwell
  • YaYa Da Costa
  • Lela Rochon
  • Kenya Moore
  • Liris Crosse – more beautiful than all of these women but she does not have an article in the Wikipedia.
  • Dakore Egbuson – although famous in Nigeria, she too lacks a Wikipedia article.
  • Annie Ruddock
  • Gloria Reuben
• race and beauty
  • The most beautiful black women according to white people
• One Drop Rule

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style guide: troublesome words

Words that have caused me the most trouble, here in their proper forms (mostly according to the Oxford dictionary):

• adviser
• Afghans
• Aids
• Al Jazeera
• Al Qaeda
• almost – not ‘most.
• always
• Antichrist
• any more – always two words.
• anyone – one word when it means the same as anybody.
• anyway
• archaeology
  
• as, like – Use like to compare nouns, as to begin a clause.
• ASEAN
• Ashkenazic
  
• atom bomb
• Authorized Version
• Benetton
  
• Berne
• between you and me – me always follows prepositions.
• BlackBerrys
• blacks – the dark-skinned people from Africa and Australia.
• Bombay
• bookshop – not bookstore.
• bottom – not butt, bum, ass, arse or rear end.
• burka
• Burma
• Calcutta
• Caltech
  
• Caribbean
• cinema – not movie theater.
• Colombia
• communist
• Condoleezza Rice
• defence – not defense.
• dependant – one who is dependent.
• dependent – depending on something else.
• dialog box – when talking about computers, otherwise dialogue.
• disc – like a compact disc.
• disk – like a hard disk.
• DJ
• Dostoevsky
  
• dot-com
• East Timor
  
• email
• embarrass
• encyclopedia
  
• estate car – not station wagon.
• film – not movie.
• first-hand
• first lady
• forever – one word
• full-time
• gender, sex – sex is physical, gender social or grammatical.
• ghettos
• gram – an ounce is 28.35 grams.
• guerrilla
• hairdos
  
• halfway
  
• harass
• hare-brained – not hairbrained.
• hectare – equals 2.47 acres.
• heroes
• Hezbollah
• hip hop
• Hispanics
• home-grown
• home page
• Internet
• Ivory Coast
• jewellery
  
• kilogram – a pound is 0.4536 kilograms.
• kilometre – a mile is 1.609344 kilometres.
• kilowatt – a horsepower is 0.7457 kilowatts.
• Koran
• Kyrgyzstan
• Lao-tzu
• licence – noun
• license – verb
• lie, lay – In the present you lie down or lay yourself down. In the past you lay down or laid yourself down.
• lifetime
• litre – a gallon is 3.785 litres.
• Mac OS X
• Maccabees
  
• Madras
• madrasa
• maize – not corn.
  
• make-up – what women put on their face.
• may, might – see style guide on the subjunctive.
• Maya – noun, meaning the language or people
• Mayan – adjective
• medieval
• Mediterranean
• metre – a foot is 0.3048 metres.
• Michelangelo
• millennium
  
• millilitre – one fluid ounce is 29.57 millilitres.
• misspell
• mobile phone – not cellphone or handphone.
• Moguls – once ruled India.
• Muhammad
• Musharraf
  
• Muslim
• NASA
  
• Native Americans
• NATO
• Neoplatonism
• New Year’s Eve
• New York Times – “the” is not part of its name.
• north-east
• north-west
  
• occurred
• oestrogen
  
• off – not off of.
• offered
  
• outgun
• part-time
  
• Pashtuns – they speak Pashto.
• perform
• Philippines
• preferred
  
• principle – a guiding idea
• privilege
• proceed
• program – on a computer; otherwise it is programme.
• prostitute – not hooker
• R & B
• recognize
• referred
• Romania
• saditty
• Samarkand
  
• sceptic
• Second World War
• shall – no hard and fast rules. Use it where it sounds natural.
• Shia – refers to a sect of Islam.
• Shiite – a believer of Shia Islam.
• short cut
• soft drink – not soda, pop, coke or even fizzy drink.
• south-east
• south-west
  
• sprang – is the past tense, but it is have sprung.
• supersede
• Tajikistan
• Taliban
  
• Tao-te-Ching
• Tatars
  
• taxi – not taxicab or cab.
• telephone – not phone.
• television – not TV or telly.
• the Gambia
• T.I. – the rapper
• towards
• tsar
  
• Turkestan
  
• Turkmens
• Tutankhamen
• UNESCO
• Unix
• up to date
  
• URL
• VH1
• video game
  
• Vietnam
• Virgil
• Wahhabi
  
• Wal-Mart
• Web, the
• web page
  
• website
• whom – The uses of this word are changing. Use it only where it sounds natural.
• Wi-Fi
• yogurt

– Abagond, 2007.

See also:

• style guide
  • subjunctive
  • names and capitalization
  • hyphens
  • Oxford spelling
  • Atlanticisms
  • Black Americanisms
  • Eurocentric words
• Common English words
• Articles about particular words:
  • The word “black”
  • Burma or Myanmar?
  • How to write Hezbollah

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Kissinger

Henry Kissinger (1923- ) was the American secretary of state (foreign minister) from 1973 to 1977 under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

He was good at getting enemies to talk and strike deals. He got Nixon to China, he got the Soviet Union to agree to put limits on the arms race. He got America and North Vietnam to end their war, for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize, and is responsible for the peace that held after 1973 between Israel and Egypt.

But Kissinger is also responsible for the bombing of Cambodia in 1971, the overthrow of democracy in Chile in 1973 and America turning a blind eye to the bloodshed in Bangladesh in 1971 and East Timor in 1974 by US allies.

Kissinger made his peace with evil a little too easily. Too often it seemed that the ends justify the means.

Christopher Hitchens, who calls Kissinger a liar, thinks he should be held accountable for the evils he has brought on the world.

When Kissinger was a boy his family fled Germany in 1938. They were Jews and Hitler would have sent them to their deaths had they stayed. This gave Kissinger an understandably dark view of the world.

For Kissinger, as for most Republicans, the purpose of American power is not to bring peace and justice to the world, but to protect America and its friends.

Kissinger was a professor at Harvard University where he taught political science. He was an expert on the use of the atom bomb as an instrument in foreign affairs.

As a student Kissinger had studied Prince Metternich, who put the balance-of-power system in place in Europe after the fall of Napoleon.

Nixon read his books and wanted him as an adviser. In 1969 Nixon made him the head of the National Security Council and, in 1973, secretary of state. But even before 1973 he was all but the secretary of state. It was he and Nixon that mapped the course America would take.

Kissinger thinks that if Iran gets the bomb, it will be in the next year or two or not at all. And if it does get the bomb, then Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia will want one too. The Middle East would become uncontrollable and descend into a deadly arms race.

He does not think President Bush will be able to bring democracy to the Middle East. It is no where close to being ready for that.

He thinks that Bush is right about the threat that Osama bin Laden and his like present to America, but not that he has necessarily gone about it the right way.

Quotes:

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Next week there can’t be any crisis. My schedule is already full.

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

See also:

• Bush
  • Condoleezza Rice
• America
• Republicans
• atom bomb
  • Iran and the bomb
• Hitler

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The ten most beautiful women in the world

The ten most beautiful women in the world that I know of who are also famous enough to be in the Wikipedia. Some are old now, but I think of them as they were in the flower of their beauty, when it was hard for me to tear my eyes off them.

1. Sophia Loren (1934- ) is an Italian actress. I saw her in the film, “Boy on a Dolphin” (1957). I have never seen a more beautiful woman in my life. More than perfect she was beyond anything I thought possible. More.

2. Elizabeth Taylor (1932- ) is an American actress. What eyes! More.

3. Vilayna Lasalle is an American swimsuit model and video vixen. Her face is perfect. More

4. Jill Marie Jones (1975- ) is an American actress. She starred in the television show “Girlfriends” and was once a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys. What lips! She is not beautiful in an ordinary way, but somehow I cannot take my eyes off her. More

5. Kim Kardashian (1980- ) is a party girl and friend of Paris Hilton. Did not like telling her grandmother that her sex video was on the Internet. More.

6. Maria Shriver (1955- ) is the first lady of California. She used to be an American television news presenter in the 1980s. I would eat my Corn Flakes and just look at her, barely hearing the news. What a jaw! Because she is more famous now as the first lady of California, it is hard to find pictures of her when she was young and incredibly beautiful. Most pictures you see on the Internet from her younger days are done in the dreadful 1980s style. A pity. She is over 50, but even now she looks better on television than in still pictures. More.

7. Sanaa Lathan (1971- ) is an American actress. She is probably best known as the heroine in “Alien vs. Predator”. I saw her in “Disappearing Acts” (2000) and could not take my eyes off her. Looking at her is like eating ice cream on a summer day. More

8. Heather Headley (1974- ) is a Broadway actress and singer from Trinidad. She starred in “Aida” and “The Lion King” on Broadway. More.

9. Gabrielle Union (1972- ) is an American film actress. Of all the women here she is easily the one I have mentioned most in this blog. More

10. Naomi Campbell (1970- ) is a British supermodel from the 1990s. A great face and great legs. More.

Honourable mentions (not in any order; the ones in boldface link to posts on this blog): Rachel Ward, Brooke Shields, Sade, Ally Sheedy, Sarita Choudhury, Gina Torres, Gloria Reuben, Solange Knowles, Paulina Porizkova, Ann Curry, Susanna Hoffs, Angela Bassett, Patricia Ford, Pia Reyes, Tia Carrere, Yasmeen Ghauri, Eva Longoria, Amy Weber, Genevieve Nnaji, Dakore Egbuson, Suman Ranganathan, Bria Myles, Natalie Imbruglia, Monica Vitti, Monica Bellucci, Angell Conwell, Karyn White, Sharon Leal, Angelina Jolie, Bipasha Basu, YaYa Da Costa, Tamara Tunie, Brandy Norwood, Lela Rochon, Audrey Hepburn, Omotola, Charmaine Sinclair, Claudia Lynx, Ananda Lewis, Denise Richards and Rosario Dawson.

So for me eyes count the most, then lips and then high cheekbones. I love hair that is thick and black.

– Abagond, 2007, 2008.

See also:

• politically correct beauty
• By colour:
  • black: The most beautiful black women
  • white: The most beautiful white women
  • East Asian: The most beautiful East Asian women
• By country:
  • Nigeria: The most beautiful Nigerian actresses
  • Brazil: The most beautiful Brazilian women
• woman
  • Sophia Loren
  • Elizabeth Taylor
  • Vilayna
  • Jill Marie Jones
  • Maria Shriver
    • Maria Shriver’s jaw
  • Sanaa Lathan
  • Heather Headley
  • Gabrielle Union
  • Patricia Ford
  • Kim Kardashian
  • Naomi Campbell
• race and beauty
• How a man looks at a woman
  • Getting off the W train at 42nd Street
• Wikipedia

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Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice (1954- ), also known as Doctor Rice or just Condi, has been the American secretary of state (foreign minister) since 2005. She truly believes in freedom and democracy and wants to bring them to the Middle East.

Because she is young and black and a woman, some assume she does not know what she is doing and is making things worse. As it turns out, she has made far more progress in the Middle East than Colin Powell, who came before her and whose abilities few doubted. The president trusts her completely.

Like Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state, she was once a professor. She taught political science at Stanford University and later became provost, which put her in charge of how Stanford spent its money and what it taught. She balanced Stanford’s books – something that few thought was possible.

When Kissinger was a boy his family had to flee Germany because they were Jews. Had they stayed, Hitler would have sent them to his death camps. Kissinger’s view of the world is understandably a dark one.

Rice grew up black in America, which is not easy. Yet when she was a girl she saw the fall of Jim Crow laws that kept blacks down in the American South where she grew up. Later she saw the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Freedom and democracy won the day where many doubted that it would or ever could. So her view of the world is a hopeful one.

She believes that democracy can do for the Middle East what it has done for America, Europe and parts of Asia; that it is just a matter of time before democracy takes root there.

She saw it happen to the Soviet Union, which she knew so well. In fact, she was one of America’s leading experts on the Soviet Union. She even learned to speak Russian. But before she rose high enough to put her knowledge to good use, the Soviet Union fell.

The world has changed, but not how she thinks about it. She has simply put Iran and Islamism in place of the Soviet Union and communism. The enemies are new and different but the fight is an old one of good (America, freedom, democracy) against evil (then communism, now Islamism).

Bush remembered her from when his father was president. She was one of his father’s advisers on Eastern Europe. So when he ran for president himself he brought her in as one of his chief advisers on foreign affairs. He made her head of the National Security Council in 2001 and then secretary of state in 2005.

Few blacks are Republicans. She became a Republican in part because she saw how the Democrats refused to let her father vote.

Her name comes from Italian: con dolcezza – “with sweetness”.

She is a pastor’s daughter, her mother a schoolteacher. They taught her that she has to be twice as good to overcome white people’s feelings about her colour, something she knows from experience to be true.

See also:

• Bush
• America
• democracy
• Kissinger
• Republicans
• Race in America
  • Jim Crow
• The Arab world

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Ford Crown Victoria

The Ford Crown Victoria (1992- ) has been the full-sized Ford car since the early 1990s. It is, in effect, a 1979 Ford LTD with a better engine and made to look more like a Ford Taurus. It is the latest car in a line of development that goes all the way back to the Model T.

It is the most common car in New York City. In fact, most of the cars painted white or yellow are Crown Victorias: police cars and taxis.

Taxi drivers like it because it has a lot of room and holds up well. Most of the taxis in New York are Crown Victorias. That is why they look so alike.

The police like the Crown Victoria because it has a lot of power and you can run it into other cars! Most cars have front-wheel drive and a frame that is easy to ruin. The Crown Victoria is built the opposite way so running it into another car will cause it little lasting damage.

Old people like the Crown Victoria because it is just the sort of car they have been driving (and Ford has been making) since they were young: what used to be known simply as “the Ford”.

Old people also like it because it is so large it seems like a safer car. Which it is, though some of the earlier cars did have a fuel tank that could blow up when another car crushed its back!

For the amount of space you get it is a cheap car: it costs about the same as much smaller cars – about $23,000 (1860 crowns). That is because it gets only 7 to 11 kilometres a litre (17 to 25 miles per gallon). While that is twice what the LTD got in 1975, it is still not great. Yet compared to what some SUVs get, like the Toyota Sienna, it is not all that bad either.

The Crown Victoria is like the LTD in another bad way: it is a hard car to to turn and stop. Much better than the LTD, yet still not that great.

Unlike the LTD, there has never been a Crown Victoria estate car (station wagon), much less a convertible.

The Crown Victoria uses a 4.6-litre Modular V8 engine, which can get between 167 to 188 kW (220 to 250 horsepower). That gives it much more power than the LTD in its last years.

The Crown Victoria is built on the old Panther platform of 1979, like the old LTD as well as the Lincoln Continental, Mercury Marquis and Mercury Marauder.

Starting in 2008 the Crown Victoria will no longer be sold in America to individuals but only to police departments and businesses.

There is a good chance that 2008 will be its last year, but what will take its place is unknown.

Ford tried to replace it with the Ford Five Hundred. It was supposed to be a better car than the Crown Victoria – more like the Taurus – but it did not sell well. Ford has stopped making them.

See also:

• Ford Crown Victoria – the Wikipedia article
• Ford LTD
• The Ford
• car
• New York

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Ford LTD

The Ford LTD (1965-1982) was the Ford Motor Company’s full-sized car in America throughout the 1970s and beyond. In its first television ad it was simply called “the Ford” since it was just the sort of car Ford has been making for years, the only kind there was before 1960.

The LTD came from the Galaxie of the 1960s. In 1983 it became the LTD Crown Victoria and then, in 1992, just the Crown Victoria.

Unlike most cars from before and after its time, it had a square, box-like front.

Note that the Ford LTD in America is not the same car as:

• the LTD in Australia
• the LTD II (a sort of Torino)
• the LTD after 1982 (a smaller car)

“LTD” does not seem to be short for anything, except maybe “Lincoln Type Design”. It is a marketing name, not an engineering one.

The first LTD appeared in 1965 as a high-end Galaxie. It was called a Galaxie 500 LTD. In 1967 that was shortened to just LTD.

The Galaxie was a high-powered car that won races at Daytona. It did not win design awards like the Mustang, but to some it was the better car.

The LTD was a Galaxie for your mother. She would not win any races, but it drove smoothly and quietly and had a lot of room for people and bags. It was a car she could count on: it was very well built, much better than cars today. But even for its own time it was a hard car to turn, stop or parallel park.

The LTD was a heavy car with a high-powered engine. In the 1960s that was considered a good thing, but in the 1970s the price of oil went through the roof and it became a very bad thing. When oil was cheap it did not matter that burning a litre of petrol only took you 4 to 6 kilometres down the road (known as 10 to 15 miles a gallon in America). Now it did.

In the late 1970s Ford made the LTD lighter and gave it different sorts of engines to bring down its running costs. But it had already fallen way out of fashion by then – it was no longer Ford’s bread and butter. Worse still, in Ford’s attempt to make it a car that was cheaper to maintain – and that also polluted the air less – it became a large car with a weak engine.

In the early 1970s the LTD’s engine went up to 167 kW (224 horsepower). By 1979 only the police could get one with an engine that did better than 101 kW.

The estate car (station wagon) was called the Country Squire.

Sigourney Weaver drove this 1972 Country Squire in "Ice Storm" (a film made in 1997, but set in 1973).

The last LTD convertible came out in 1972.

You see LTDs in films from this period (or set in this period). A blue one is the hero’s car in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977); Lois Lane is killed in a red one in “Superman: The Movie” (1978). Sigourney Weaver drives a 1972 Country Squire in “Ice Storm” (made in 1997, but set in 1973).

See also:

• LTDworld
• Ford LTD – the Wikipedia article
• Rick Moody’s “The Ice Storm”
• car
• The Ford
• Ford Crown Victoria

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style guide: hyphens

The best rule about hyphens is that if you are unsure whether a word has a hyphen, look it up in a dictionary.

Yet, there are some general rules:

1. In fractions: two-thirds, one-half.
2. To put words together to make your meaning clearer: little-used car, little used-car.
3. In the names of aircraft: DC-10, MiG-23.
4. To make an adjective out of two or more words: right-wing party, five-year-old boy. But do not overdo it: a once-every-two-week meeting.
5. To make a noun out of a verb with a preposition: build-up, lay-off, pay-off, round-up.
6. Directions: north-east, south-west.
7. Avoid with ranges. Use”to” instead of a hyphen for ranges: say “from 1965 to 1982” instead of “1965-82”. But if you must, say “in 1965-1982”.

Here are some common words that might cause trouble. Most of the list comes from The Economist but I changed them over to Oxford spellings since that is what I use:

ad hoc, agribusiness, air force, air power, airbase, aircraft carrier, airfield, airspace, airtime, antibiotic, Antichrist, anticlimax, antidote, anti-Semitic, antiseptic, antitrust, any more, arm’s length, Attorney General

bailout, bedfellow, bell-ringer, best-selling, bilingual, birth, blackboard, blue blood, blueprint, bookmaker, brother-in-law, build-up, businessman, buyout, bypass

call-up, cash flow, catchphrase, ceasefire, chief of staff, childcare, chock-a-block, clockmaker, coalminers, coastguard, codebreaker, comeback, commander-in-chief, common sense, cyberspace

deal-maker, director general, district attorney, dot-com, drawing board

email, endgame

faint-hearted, fallout, farmworker, field marshal, fieldwork, fig leaf, fine-tooth comb, first-hand, foothold, forever, fox-hunting, front line, front runner, fund-raiser

get-together, girlfriend, goodwill, gunrunner

half-hearted, hand-held, hand-picked, handout, hard line, headache, healthcare, heir apparent, hijack, hip hop, hobnob, home page, home-grown, home-owner, hothead

ice cream, infra-red, intergovernmental, Internet

kerb-crawling, know-how, kowtow

lacklustre, landmine, landowner, landowner, laptop, lay-off, lieutenant colonel, lifetime, like-minded, long-standing, loophole, lopsided, lukewarm

machine gun, machine tool, major general, metalworker, midweek, Midwest, minefield, multilingual, multiple

nationwide, Neoplatonism, nevertheless, news-stand, nitpicker, no one, no-man’s-land, nonetheless, nuclear power station

offline, offshore, oilfield, online, online, onshore, outgun, overpaid, overrated, override, overrule, overrun

pay-off, payout, peacekeepers, peacemaker, peacetime, petrochemical, policy-maker, post-war, pothole, pre-war, pressure group, prisoners of war, profit-making, pull-out

question mark

rain check, rainforest, rate, recreate, roadblock, round-up, Rustbelt

schoolteacher, seabed, Secretary General, set-up, shake-out, ship-broker, shipbuilder, shipowner, shortlist, shutdown, some day, soya bean, spillover, stand-alone, stand-off, start-ups, steelworker, stock market, streetwalker, strongman, stumbling block, sub-machine gun, subcommittee, subcontinent, subcontract, subhuman, Sunbelt

takeover, task force, tear gas, think tank, Third World War, threshold, time bomb, timetable, transatlantic, transpacific, troublemaker, turning point, turnout

under way, underdog, underpaid, underrated, undersecretary

vice versa, vice-president, videodisc

Wal-Mart, wartime, website, Wi-Fi, windfall, workforce, working party, worldwide, worthwhile

year-end

See also:

• style guide
• spelling
• troublesome words
• Oxford spelling
• names and capitalization

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Lao-tzu (老子)

Lao-tzu (-500s), also called 老子 or Lǎozǐ, was a wise man who lived in China in the time of Confucius. He founded Taoism which, along with Confucianism, became one of the two great schools of philosophy of ancient China. It later became a religion. Zen Buddhism is Buddhism interpreted according to Taoism.

Lao-tzu wrote the Tao-te-Ching (in Chinese: Dàodé Jīng or 道德經), the classic book of the Tao (the Way) and its Te (power). It is short, just 5,467 words. It is the sort of book you can read in a half hour but take a lifetime to understand.

Apart from the Bible, no book has been translated more times.

Lao-tzu worked in a government office in Luoyang. As an old man he had had enough of man and his world. He got on the back of a black ox and headed west. At a mountain pass a military guard stopped him. He asked Lao-tzu to write a book. So he wrote the Tao-te-Ching and then disappeared into the west.

Some say he made it to India and taught a prince. Others say he died in China.

Experts in our time say that he wrote nothing – that the Tao-te-Ching was written during the centuries after his death by his followers.

The book is about the Tao. The Tao that you can put into words is not the Tao – the Tao is beyond words. It gave birth to the heaven and the earth and all of creation. These things developed out of it naturally, not as something consciously made.

The Tao is not a person like the Christian god. It is a force without a face. Its effect and manner you can see in the actions of heaven and earth, but not in the actions of men.

Men are always fighting against the Tao. They are always doing this or that, always seeking something: wealth, honour, power, knowledge, even holiness. They never sit still. But all this running about goes against the Tao and so it is bound to end in tears. We think we can have it our way. Wrong.

The true wise man acts and lives according to the Tao. Strangely enough, he acts by not acting – called wú wéi (無為) in Chinese. He does not even try to be good or wise. He trusts in the Tao and acts according to it and everything falls into place.

The wise man has three jewels: mercy, humility and moderation. Going against any one of these goes against the Tao.

If you think of the Pooh stories, Pooh Bear acts in a Taoist manner, while Rabbit is completely the opposite.

After his death, Taoism was developed by his follower Chuang-tzu (Zhuangzi) in the -300s.

In time Taoism became a religion, complete with gods, priests, rites, temples, all of it. Even Lao-tzu was a god. It had the support of the emperors down through the ages. But then in 1911 the last emperor fell. In time the communists took over China under Mao and destroyed most of Taoism from 1949 to 1980. China is now about 1% Taoist, while never-communist Taiwan is about 33%.

– Abagond, 2007, 2021.

See also:

• China
  • Mao
  • Chuang-tzu
• Bible
  • The Christian god
• Greek philosophy

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Seven books that have influenced me most

Here are the seven books that have influenced me the most. Note that “influenced” is not the same as “like” or “love”. I loved “The Lord of the Rings” and “Raisin in the Sun”, but I cannot say they  influenced me much.

In the order in which I first read them cover to cover:

1. Sophocles, “Antigone” (written in the year -441)

My sister had this book. One afternoon I read it, end-to-end, straight through without stopping. That day I fell in love with the Greeks. At university people thought I went to some school that made me read the Greeks. They wished they had gone there. Well, it was not like that. At school I was made to read Dickens and Hardy and will not touch them even now.

Antigone showed me that there is more to life than making money and keeping out of trouble, that men are more than talking animals.

2. Thucydides, “History” (-395)

I read this in the wonderful Hobbes translation, which is currently out of print.

Thucydides taught me that human nature is the same in all countries and all ages. That men are driven chiefly by self-interest, that they use morals and fine words to dress up their sins. That you have to read between the lines. That empire has its dark and monstrous side.

3. Aristotle, Complete Works (-322)

Aristotle showed me that simply believing what you hear people say all the time is not enough. You need to reason things out for yourself. The world should and can make sense.

He showed me that from small beginnings you can put together grand systems.

From reading Aristotle I learned how to read long books. This made it possible for me to read the Bible (#4) and the Summa (#7) in full.

4. Bible (+367)

Before I read the Bible I was a materialist: I thought everything was just matter in motion, that science, in the end, could explain everything.

Till I read the Bible it was easy for me to assume that it was full of pious fables, that there was no need to take any of it seriously. But once I read it, I found it difficult to explain away. For three years I tried but failed.

5. Plotinus, “Enneads” (+250)

Plotinus blew a hole in my comfortable materialism. I thought only materialism could explain life, the universe and everything. Plotinus showed me that Plato’s idealism could do it too.

6. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy” (1908)

In the New York I lived in Christianity was not intellectually respectable. It was assumed that anyone with enough intelligence, education and freedom from his upbringing could not possibly believe in it. Chesterton showed me otherwise. So did Augustine, C.S. Lewis and:

7. Aquinas, “Summa Theologica” (1274)

Aquinas puts Aristotle and the Bible together into one complete system of thought. I did not always agree with Aquinas, but I did see that Christian thought was not merely respectable, it was much better than anything I knew. Certainly much better than the mix of Marxism and science that I lived by.

– Abagond, 2007.

See also:

• books and authors:
  • Aquinas
  • Bible – Reading the Bible
  • Aristotle
  • Plotinus: Enneads
  • Reading Thucydides
• Seven books I would take to a desert island
• Seven books I would love to read
• The best American writers live north of 110th Street
• Hobbes
• St Augustine

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Pakistan

Pakistan (1947- ) is the country just to the west of India. Under the near-absolute rule of army general Musharraf it is playing a deadly double game of trying to be friends with both America, whose money and goodwill it needs, and the Islamists, who would destroy America in a holy war.

The Islamists include not only Osama bin Laden, believed to live somewhere in the lawless mountains of the north, but also the Taliban and many home-grown Islamists.

If Musharraf does not somehow keep both sides happy he will fall. If the Islamists take over Pakistan they will have the bomb. It is unlikely that America would sit by and let that happen.

So what happens in Pakistan holds a key to the future.

When British rule ended in 1947, the British divided India into Muslim and Hindu halves. The Muslim part became known as Pakistan. Even so, religious violence still followed and millions died. Millions more fled to either India or Pakistan according to their religion. Musharraf was one of them. Most Pakistanis who speak Urdu come from India.

India was once ruled by the Muslims under the Mogul princes. They are the ones who built the Taj Mahal. Like Pakistan, they had a green flag with a moon on it. Even under British rule Muslims made up most of the army.

Pakistan once included East Pakistan, which is now known as Bangladesh. It is the eastern, Muslim part of Bengal which stands at the mouth of the Ganges. It broke away in 1971 in a war in which millions died.

Pakistan and India are enemies and both have the bomb. Their chief dispute is over Kashmir. It is a beautiful land in the far north where both Hindus and Muslims live. Consequently, both countries say it is theirs. It has led to war and could do so again.

Pakistan and America are sometime friends. When Pakistan started to develop the bomb, America cut it off. Pakistan seemed headed for ruin, but then came 9/11. America suddenly needed its friendship again.

In the 1990s before Musharraf took over, Pakistan was a democracy. It was led by corrupt landowners. Land is still power in Pakistan.

The name “Pakistan” was invented in 1934 out of the provinces that would make it up:

• Punjab
• Afghan Province (= North West Frontier Province)
• Kashmir
• Sindh
• Baluchistan

The name also means “Land of the pure”.

Languages: Out of every 100 Pakistanis, 48 speak Punjabi, 12 Sindhi, 10 Siraiki, 10 English, 8 Pashto, 8 Urdu and 3 Baluchi. Punjabi is spoken in the north-east, Sindhi in the south-east, Baluchi in the south-west and Pashto in the north-west. English is spoken by those at the top.

The people in the west – the Pashtuns, who speak Pashto, and Baluchis – are not Indians but Persians. About two-thirds of all Pashtuns live in Pakistan; the rest live in Afghanistan.

Religion: Most Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims; one in five is Shia Muslim.

See also:

• India
• banana republic
• the bomb
• Afghanistan
• Muslim
• 9/11
• The fall of the Red Mosque
• people:
  • Musharraf
  • Benazir Bhutto
  • Nawaz Sharif

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