"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on..."

"... whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons."

— Douglas Adams ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)"), quoted by sunsong in the comments to "Polar bears are eating dolphins."

"I think the idea of the 'manly-man' appeals to the far right and not really to the rest of us."

"To me it's kind of a twisted concept of maleness. Not a protector or a dynamic kind of pizzaz but a bully. Putin is a good example of it. People's lives don't matter to him. Power matters to him. Who's the top dog? That's what I think machismo is all about. It's like Saddam Hussein. It's all about a pecking order and who is on top. Pretty boring really. Who has the biggest......weapon :-)"

Said Sunsong in the comments to last night's post linking to Adam Gopnik's New Yorker piece about overemphasis on manliness in a President. That comment made me think of this scene in Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator":



By the way, my father once opined that that was the greatest moment in all of movies. He wasn't a big moviegoer, though, so there were many scenes he missed, but he loved that one because it said the pithiest possible thing about politics, and it says it completely in the visuals, though it's not a silent film.

There is dialogue, but it's almost only background music for the ears — "a barber shop... that also has glass walls... oh, yes, with goldfish swimming inside... they're all dead, that's why I'm building a new barbershop...."