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Cynicism

1. An inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest; skepticism.
"Public cynicism about politics"
Synonyms: skepticism, doubt, distrust, mistrust, suspicion, disbelief.
pessimism, negativity, world-weariness, disenchantment

2. A school of ancient Greek philosophers, the Cynics.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us...glish/cynicism

I will confess ...

I noticed that this is Banned Books Week, so I looked at the ALA (American Library Association) website to see what they have about it. http://www.ala.org/bbooks/ It includes lists of banned books, and it brought tears to my eyes. For the decade 2001 – 2010 the Harry Potter series leads the list as the most banned in the U.S. I only read the first four, so I don’t know how good the rest are, but the ones I read were very good. It isn’t literature for the centuries, but it’s better than the Hardy ...

I am taking a course called literature and medicine, the professors have a literary background but they teach a course similar to this one for medical students too and now they are bringing this to us MA literature students. I really enjoy the class and I find the whole thing very, very interesting. But some of the books I have been reading have a let's say difficult impact on me. One is by an author from the ice and is about the time her husband was diagnosed and died from a brain tumour. She describes ...

It probably is a mistake for me to write this, but I had to start it.
There is much too much in this matter for me to thoroughly cover it in a blog post. A three hundred page book would be a better start.

The Economist had an article this week (link below) that reinforces what most people have long known; i.e., that females are still the dominant sex among humans. I realize that many people mouth the converse of that, but woman have always controlled everything ...

It is said that English has more words than any other language. I have not counted all the words in every language, so I don’t know for sure, but I have read things to that effect enough time that I have come to believe it. Even with all those words, it is possible that some have been missed, words that should be in the language but are not.

I started this after I saw the freshly coined word “islamophobia” in the head line of an editorial (I really should stop reading newspapers). ...