jonathan soma does: comics, code, projects, old stuff and blogs

Hi, i’m Soma, and bind both books and variables. I pretty much only update this blog when I release a project, but here you are! If you have matters of ultimate importance to chat me up about, I can be found at jonathan.soma@gmail.com and @dangerscarf on twitter.

Posted on 06.20.09 to books. Filed under , , .

Hemingway, cobblestones

Ernest Hemingway, in Death in the Afternoon:

A paving stone at short range is more effective than a club or sabre. The disappearance of cobble and paving stones has been more of a deterrent to the overthrowing of governments than machine guns, tear bombs and automatic pistols. For it is in the clashes when the government does not want to kill its citizens but to club, ride down and beat them into submission with the flat of a sabre that a government is overthrown. Any government that uses machine guns once too often on its citizens will fall automatically. Regimes are kept in with the club and the blackjack, not the machine gun or bayonet, and while there were paving stones there was never an unarmed mob to club.

Hemingway’s solution to help out the populace is to breed police-hating bulls.

Brought to mind by this quote from a NYT article about Iranian police vs. protestors

Some of the protesters turned and ran, but others stood their ground, grabbing anything they could find — sticks and rocks and bricks — to throw at the militia.

I’m sure they would have appreciated some ready-made cobblestone projectiles.


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