2 thoughts on “Ah yes, the entomology of war”

  1. Cool. This opens up the prospect of Chinese butterflies that can detect public servants merely by their cologne and flap their wings in such a way that they can, with precision, drop the hurricane directly on target. The only downside I can see is that do-gooders will inevitably complain if the hurricane causes collateral damage in taking out the target. The law of shifting human baselines means that even the most precise butterfly and precise hurricane will inevitably fall short of the Geneva Convention even when the precision of today’s butterfly and hurricanes is light years ahead of even where they were five years ago.

  2. Hi, M. Fouche:

    As WB Yeats might ask, How but in zig-zag wantonness?

    *

    From his poem, Tom O’Roughley

    ‘Though logic-choppers rule the town,
    And every man and maid and boy
    Has marked a distant object down,
    An aimless joy is a pure joy,’
    Or so did Tom O’Roughley say
    That saw the surges running by.
    ‘And wisdom is a butterfly
    And not a gloomy bird of prey.

    ‘If little planned is little sinned
    But little need the grave distress.
    What’s dying but a second wind?
    How but in zig-zag wantonness
    Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?’
    Or something of that sort he said,
    ‘And if my dearest friend were dead
    I’d dance a measure on his grave.’

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