There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save...
Humans wrestled endlessly with their own overpowering egos. Some tried suppressing selfness, seeking detachment. Others subsumed personal ambition in favor of a greater whole—family, religion, or a le...
Where is it written that one should only care about big things? I fought for big things, long ago… for issues, principles, a country. Where are all of them now?... I found out something, you know. I d...
What are the most common traits of nearly all forms of mental illness? The answer? Nearly all sufferers lack— flexibility— to be able to change your opinion or course of action, if shown clear evidenc...
Then again: from the critic's point of view, one of the truly wonderful things about the Star Wars universe is that the territory is so sprawling and borrows from so many sources that it's possible to...
The world may end later than the year 2060, but I see no reason for its ending sooner. This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to rash conjectures of fanciful...
The variety of inventive ideas—and ideologies—that people can come up with never ceases to amaze me, especially when they’re stoked by the ultimate drug, self-righteousness.
So if it appears that my argument supports the necessity of lawyers, please accept that I say it with reluctant awareness that things would be worse without them.
Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. Why, as men do aland—the great ones eat up the little ones. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE King Richard the Second
In other words, I look through my eyes and see only a version of the world, a version that can be, and often is, colored or twisted by what I want to see. Another person may witness the same events,...
A new legend swept Oregon, from Roseburg all the way north to the Columbia, from the mountains to the sea. It traveled by letter and by word of mouth, growing with each telling. It was a sadder story...
A living planet is a much more complex metaphor for deity than just a bigger father with a bigger fist.
The measure of (mental) health is flexibility (not comparison to some ‘norm’), the freedom to learn from experience … to be influenced by reasonable arguments … and the appeal to the emotions … and es...
Magic and art arise from an egomaniac's insistence that the artist is right, and the universe wrong.
In principle, an open society sees information flow as a good thing, to be hampered only in the presence of strong evidence that harm cannot be prevented by any other means.
Dear Net-Mail User [ EweR-635-78-2267-3 aSp]: Your mailbox has just been rifled by EmilyPost, an autonomous courtesy-worm chain program released in October 2036 by an anonymous group of net subscriber...
D’un homme qui a perdu tout ce qu’il aimait et qui, depuis, n’est plus tout à fait de ce monde.
She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world.
Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always lo...
If only I had a decent sense of humor Ah, well. Where subtlety fails us we must simply make do with cream pies.