Whenever the manic pacing starts to flag, a posse of clowns in punk-Edwardian drag tumble on stage to mug, break-dance or shriek high-pitched gibberish.

With fiercer passion than ever, they fell to engaging in controversies of a minuteness, stubbornness, sweep, and fury unheard of in all the history of politics. At socialist congresses in 1903 and 1907, men who were hunted together and exiled together and shared a common basic program, yet wrangled endlessly with fanatical fury and subtlety – in the one case for three and in the other for five whole weeks of days and nights on end, reckless of financial cost, drain on health, buzzing of spies, and the fact that they were actually driven during the course of the exhausting debates from one land to another. Even on the boat going over the English Channel, they never stopped the argument for a moment.

I think if you were to come up with a phrase that best captures it, at least a delicate phrase, “flatulent communication” would be perhaps the right phrase.

Sudhana saw as many water spirit girls as all worldly events, in inconceivably many forms, emerging from Saradhvaja’s sides, pervading all universes moment to moment, showing the miracle of water spirits, adorning the sky with inconceivable fragrant clouds, adorning the whole sky with inconceivable clouds of flowers, arraying the whole realm of space with inconceivable adornments of clouds of garlands, covering all universes with inconceivable adornment of bejeweled parasols, adorning the sky with inconceivable clouds of jeweled banners, inconceivable clouds of jeweled pennants, rain from inconceivable endless clouds of great jewels, rain from inconceivable clouds of jewel necklaces and various flowers, inconceivable clouds of jewel seats with enlightening beings sitting on them teaching the ways of enlightenment, inconceivable clouds of troves of celestial jewels, rain of clouds of sounds of goddesses singing praises of the Teaching, inconceivable raining clouds of jewel lotuses adorned with nets of pearls crowned with diamonds, inconceivable clouds of jewel crowns and rain of clouds of endless lights adorned by all jewels, inconceivable clouds of celestial beings graced with flowers, garlands, parasols, and banners, inconceivable clouds of goddesses, adornments of rain produced by clouds of songs of praise of buddhas’ qualities sung by the goddesses on high standing with joined palms or scattering golden flowers, also covering all buddhas’ assemblies with clouds of heaps of fragrances the colors of all jewels and clouds of smoke of the finest incense, adorning all worlds, delighting all beings, honoring all buddhas.

Bear sizes score exponentially, so big bears are crucial for big scores.

Robert Hollander is a Dante scholar having written and taught on the poet almost exclusively for some 300 years.

If a spirit appeared as a lion or a dog or a toad, there was no problem: it was obviously a demon.

“The symbols serve as patterns or templates from which physical objects and real events may be evolved by the process he calls ‘effective evolving.’ I go about the world like Santa with a sack and nobody knows it is filled up with changes.”

I poured myself more coffee for I needed to keep my wits about me. After all, he had once been a rationalist even if now he were a charlatan.

But he leered and grimaced as he spoke so I knew he knew I knew he knew I had not, in fact, murdered the unfortunate girl but that, for some reason, I was now forced to pretend that I had. However, I was too tired to continue with such Byzantine perplexities.

This brought to my mind the crucial “spicy” role played by the interloping metal strip during Voyage I, so on a lark we decided to introduce something that would play an analogous role in our system.