"He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing--no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at."

--George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant."

An essay you might want to read before deciding to give Hillary Clinton grief for taking a few days to make her concession to Barack Obama.

No man is an island.

Nor woman.

Joseph Haines, signing off from The Edge of the Abyss.