About

The stuff on Thor’s Short Cuts blog has been accu­mu­lat­ing in writ­ten form since 1988, and on a web­site, most recently http://thormay.net, for the best part of fif­teen years.  An elixir of instant fame? Maybe not.

The two paths to a quiet life are to say noth­ing to any­body about any­thing, or to say every­thing that comes into your head. The sec­ond way is eas­ily the most effec­tive. Sooner or later the absolutely dis­crete per­son will be black­mailed or per­se­cuted for some­thing they didn’t say. How­ever, the pur­veyor of utter can­dour is regarded with mute hor­ror by all dig­ni­fied per­sons, and given a wide berth. Thus, like much else in his life, the Apho­risms have done a great deal to guar­an­tee Thor per­fect social obscu­rity ….

A writer’s neme­sis is that in the end he has no hid­ing place. The more he scrib­bles, the more mud he scrapes off his back. What’s under­neath had bet­ter be pretty. Thus these Short Cuts also have their revenge on the scribe.  Grad­u­ally they have become a kind of self-def­i­n­i­tion while pos­ing self-impor­tantly as a foun­tain of uni­ver­sal truths. Look­ing back over some of the repeat­ing themes, the whole of it may say things about the writer that he doesn’t always want to hear. Any­way, that’s Thor’s prob­lem. Take what you want and run.

It will take an months (years?) to trans­fer the stuff already on my Pas­sion­ate Skep­tic web­site at http://thormay.net to this and related blogs. If you really want to see the whole of Thor’s Short Cuts in all their present ram­shackle glory, this address will get you there: http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/aphorism.html. In the even less likely event that you want to know who Thor May really is, the fol­low­ing link will tell you more than you want to know: http://thormay.net/docsite/aboutthor.html .

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