"Passion" in passing

[Greybird]

This evening, while looking for more information about the new Heller and Burns biographies, I ran across the Amazon.com listing for The Passion of Ayn Rand. Two elements of the Webpage provoked melancholy ...

~ The biggest display ad on the page, by far, was one for Michael Moore's upcoming "Capitalism: A Love Story." If ever there were a conclusive argument for the worthlessness of Google/Doubleclick's ad-placement algorithms, this would be one of them.

~ Under the listing for "statistically improbable phrases" in the book: tiddlywink music, social metaphysics, mysterious valley, benevolent universe ...

Yeah, that last is definitely what, apropos of the decline of Empire, we ain't got much of any more. Not in this universe of daily living that human beings are vigorously botching up. "Statistically improbable," indeed.

... Ahh, hell. I shouldn't shop the Net at 3:30 am, anyway. Nothing but melancholy thrives at that hour.

[MBM]

~ Under the listing for "statistically improbable phrases" in the book: tiddlywink music, social metaphysics, mysterious valley, benevolent universe ...

Yeah, that last is definitely what, apropos of the decline of Empire, we ain't got much of any more. Not in this universe of daily living that human beings are vigorously botching up. "Statistically improbable," indeed.

... Ahh, hell. I shouldn't shop the Net at 3:30 am, anyway. Nothing but melancholy thrives at that hour.

Would it make you feel any better if it were pointed out that the phrase "malevolent universe" is most likely equally statistically improbable?

[Reidy]

As I write, the New Content page here at OL has an ad for a clinical anesthesia book. Maybe it has to do with Rand's much-debated fondness for uppers.