Give and Take [Final Fantasy VII, Vincent/Cloud, R]

... aching he kneels there - strung up like a piece of bloody meat. Not that he minds. Not when he knows this game, and he does know it well, it occurs often enough thanks to Vincent's unrelenting rapacity. Of course it's never quite the same, his 'captor' doesn't like to repeat himself after all, but Cloud knows the essential facts and that's all he requires. He also knows he's facing the wall ...

Lawyers and the criminal law - Stephen Warne on professional negligence, regulation and discipline

... not be allowed to be buried under anodyne euphemisms. 'Bill padding' sounds kind of cute, a necessary evil. It is a kind of newspeak . Time to do away with it. Let's call it 'rapacity fraud'.  It is tolerated by the profession in this sense.  There are generalised allegations of widespread bill padding.  Talk privately to costs consultants and they will tell you all about it.   But I have ...

Food for thought.

...avoidable misfortune and malice, which adds misery upon misery. They are our two biggest defeats, each one with copious genealogies I've taken inventory of here: fanaticism, insensibility, lack of love, violence, rapacity, hate, lust for power, fear. History produces a bitter and desolated hangover. Why don't we learn? ~ José Antonio Marina, La inteligencia fracasada.   I know a good deal of...

... statistically by the hangings and beheadings for conspiracy and treachery. In the 11 years between the death of Henry VIII and the survival of his adroit daughter Elizabeth into the succession in 1558, rapacity had at least as much to do with the turbulence and the terror as religion. So many ennobled miscreants grasped for land, loot and legitimacy that readers will need a scorecard to match ...