IT’S THE QUIET THRILL OF your first look through a telescope and seeing Saturn’s rings for yourself. It’s the hush before the planetarium show begins. It’s the ancientness of the constellations. It’s knowing that others before you, perhaps all the…
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
First Graf(s): The Book of the Damned
CHARLES HOY FORT HAS A special place in my weirdological heart, as he was the first writer to compile an exhaustive list (four books full, in fact) of oddities and anomalies. He is thus the (unwilling) intellectual godfather of every…
Night, Fog, and One Hell of a Bang
IF I HAD KNOWN THAT our galleon would collide with a freighter, I would have worn a life jacket. The time was February 1988. Through a curious series of circumstances, I had signed aboard the replica galleon Golden Hinde II…
And Now, A Moment of Science
SWIMMING AGAINST THE ANTI-INTELLECTUAL TIDE that these days governs too much of mediated public discourse is a modest little one-minute radio programlet called StarDate. It’s “the longest-running national radio science feature in the country,” according to the description on the…
Wee Little Me
NEAR THE TOP OF THE Beloved Things list are landscapes that make me feel small. Deserts, mountains, beaches, redwood forests, prairies — anything requiring a wide perspective with which to take it all in, and which likewise reminds me of…
Praying for Strength, and Other Sure Things
IS G?D GRANTING FAVORS, OR am I just fooling my brain into higher functioning? That’s the question I ask myself every time I pray for either greater strength (read: endurance) or greater understanding. That’s about all I ever pray for[1],…
Behind the Avocado Curve
AS AVOCADO TOAST CEASES TO be a Thing (I understand the new Thing is “tomato toast”), I am unembarrassed to say I only tried this delectability for the first time last week, for dinner. Verdict: Impressed enough to make the…
365 Names of God: The Force
THE FORCE is a non-anthropomorphic term, but to a purist like me, so is “God.” It could be argued that since the Force is created by all living beings, rather than the reverse (at least, the reverse from a mythic…
Words to Bring Back: “Civics”
– Definition: n. pl. (construed as sing.) The division of political science dealing with citizenship and civic affairs. – Used in a sentence: “My old high school stopped teaching civics years ago.” – Why: It’s needed. Boy, is it needed.
Adventures of a Lidded Yid
“ARE YOU A PRIEST?” ASKED the workman as I passed through a local condoplex. “No, just a Jew,” I answered, smiling. “That’s good,” he said, also smiling, and went back to his repairs. He was not the first person who…
(Shave and) a Haircut, 12 Bucks!
WE HAD LIVED IN SONOMA for a third of my lifetime before I visited Allen’s Hair House, about a half-block south of the Plaza. I had become fed up with being charged $20 for a chop job by my previous…
First Graf: Path of the Just
MUSSAR (מוסר) IS A HEBREW TERM usually translated as “ethical behavior/discipline,” or to put it more succinctly, the fine art and science of being a mensch. Its roots are almost as old as Judaism itself — according to Genesius, it’s…