A quote from William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance speech:

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up?"

It's not a question that has gone away in the 56 years since Faulkner won the Nobel Prize; if anything, we have become more focused on that question, and it has become more unbearable. But Faulkner says the writer "must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid, and, teaching himself that, forget it forever." I think this is fine advice.

And in that spirit, the blog tour rolls on, nuclear proliferation be damned! On Friday, excellent author Lisa Yee posted a mysterious blog entry involving dentistry. Today, the mystery is solved by my appearance on her livejournal. We discuss the brushing of teeth, my obsession with trophies. and child prodigies (whom Lisa has written about with considerable skill).