{"id":282,"date":"2006-01-13T03:52:24","date_gmt":"2006-01-13T07:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2006\/01\/13\/the-line-snowcrash\/"},"modified":"2006-01-13T03:52:24","modified_gmt":"2006-01-13T07:52:24","slug":"the-line-snowcrash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2006\/01\/13\/the-line-snowcrash\/","title":{"rendered":"The Line (Snowcrash)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1179'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Stephenson is a fine author.&nbsp; Snowcrash was a good book.&nbsp; But<br \/>\nit has one line that is so telling that, when James and I first<br \/>\ndiscussed the book, long after reading it, he said &#8220;Ohh, Snowcrash is<br \/>\ngreat.&nbsp; The<br \/>\nLine!&#8221;&nbsp; And I knew precisely what<br \/>\nhe meant.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>The book came up twice today, and I was forced to recall the passage<br \/>\nthrough the haze of a few years.&nbsp; I sharpened my memory on chapter<br \/>\nthirty-six; to share with you its unadulterated glory:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that<br \/>\nunder the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in<br \/>\nthe world. If I moved to a&nbsp; martial-arts<br \/>\nmonastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family<br \/>\nwas wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge.<br \/>\nIf I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to<br \/>\nwiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to<br \/>\nbeing bad.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Devotion and circumstances.&nbsp; How could mere facility not pale in comparison? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephenson is a fine author.&nbsp; Snowcrash was a good book.&nbsp; But it has one line that is so telling that, when James and I first discussed the book, long after reading it, he said &#8220;Ohh, Snowcrash is great.&nbsp; The Line!&#8221;&nbsp; And I knew precisely what he meant.&nbsp; The book came up twice today, and I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}