> On Aug 8, 2011, at 2:00 PM, lbo83235 wrote:
>>
>> “Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.” – Plato (427-347 BCE)
>> “Plato was a bore.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
>> “Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.” – Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
>> “I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.” – Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
>> “Hemingway was a jerk.” – Harold Robbins (1916-1997)
>> “Harold Robbins was a prophet of a sensibility that used to be scorned.” – Camille Paglia (1947- )
>
> Harold Robbins? WTF? This list seems to show that Tolstoy was at the apex of the Bell Curve of literature/philosophy. :-)
Yeah, I kinda lose track after Hemingway (possibly willfully), but part of what I love about the sequence is how it seems to invite some kind of bar-stool arm-wrestling match (apropos and all that) over criteria and the consequent shape of the curve. Personally I'd love to come up with a rule-set that leads to a camel's-back double hump, but I'm not sure the raw material is there - no matter how many doubles we order.
Interceding additions welcome.