Along Those Same Lines

As we're discussing analogies, I ran into a couple today.

While reading Jay Nordlinger, I ran across a gem that he quotes:

"A comment by Terry Wogan, in the Daily Telegraph. If the Warren Buffetts of the world want to pay more to their governments, fine, he said. But “in the context of our economy, and the huge American one, the effect will be as a duck farting in thunder.”"

Never heard that before.

While reading a book review on WSJ by Christopher Carothers, I read his quote from David Wise's new book, Tiger Trap.

"Mr. Wise is at his most interesting in passages like that, which help to show how espionage itself is changing at the same time as the main protagonists in the spy wars. In this respect, the Chinese appear to bring a fresh approach. As Mr. Wise writes, "If a beach were an espionage target, the Russians would send in a sub, frogmen would steal ashore in the dark of night and with great secrecy collect several buckets of sand and take them back to Moscow. The U.S. would target the beach with satellites and produce reams of data. The Chinese would send in a thousand tourists, each assigned to collect a single grain of sand. When they returned, they would be asked to shake out their towels. And they would end up knowing more about the sand than anyone else."

Finally, Peter Spiegelman writes a review in the WSJ of Tom Nolan's book Thick as Thieves (which I really, really want to read prior to the next NaNo) and writes the following:

"Whatever the locale, Mr. Spiegelman describes things with flair. Of a rich man's showy courtyard, he notes: "There's a fountain in the center, marble, pale pink, like the inside of a baby's ear." He reports Carr, three beers into an evening, as experiencing "a pleasant foaminess somewhere around his forebrain" and says Carr's melancholy relationships with women have "the feel of a beach in midwinter."