IT IS DIFFICULT TO BE a friend to people and be a friend to their Institution (whether school, religious body, ideology, non-profit or dinner arrangements) when the Institution distracts from its intended focus: people.
Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those writing-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pencil. He is unafraid of adverbs, and lives with an animal companion and eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
Biblical Note: No Idiots Need Apply
IT HAS COME TO THE attention of Metaphorager.Net that certain hatebrained wink-and-gigglers are selectively quoting vv. 8-9 of Psalm 109 to express their disdain for the President With The Suspicious Middle Name (simply paraphrased, they’re calling for his death). While…
Pithyism #23
ALL GREAT TRUTHS WERE ONCE heresies, but not all heresies become Great Truths. N.B. I might have inadvertently nicked this from someone else, but ISTR specifically coining it after some New Age sweetness-and-lightster tried to convince Sputnik and I to…
We’re All Clones (Except Me)
A RECENT FACEBOOK POLL (OF which I generally conduct one daily) revealed that few people have experienced the mindbreaking awe of encountering their own body double. Let me assure you: No matter how often it happens, it is a very…
First Graf: Ringworld
SINCE 1970, LARRY NIVEN HAS written four books and a number of articles concerning the Ringworld: an Earth’s orbit-diameter ribbon made from disassembled planets and populated by its builders with all manner of adaptive species, each with its own culture…
The Shape Of Time
WHEN I WAS YOUNGER THAN I am now, I used to think Time was arranged in neat little blocks as on the calendar. The “bottom of the month” felt like the bottom of the month, and I delighted in each…
Pithyism #Billions & Billions
RETRIEVING THE MORNING NEWSPAPER AFFORDS a fine slice of the constellations marching overhead, thereby demonstrating that sometimes you can do two things at once.
Prosatio Silban’s Table Tips: Place (A Literary Amuse-Bouche)
SOMEONE ONCE ASKED PROSATIO SILBAN his thoughts on “presentation;” i.e., how a dish should look when it leaves his kitchen. The Cook For Any Price thought for a moment before replying. “I suppose it depends on your notion of what…
Weekend Holydays
Apples and honey yesterday. Tonight, candles. This Jew’s dance card’s full.
He’s Not With Us
THERE ARE MANY REASONS TO be annoyed, flabbergasted, enraged, amused, resigned or cynically justified by the actions of the idiot in Gainesville who wants to burn the Quran. Here is mine: (First, though: I use the term “idiot” strictly as…
Pithyism #3.141
THERE IS NO BETTER BUZZ than knowing.
Why We Didn’t Finish Watching “Avatar”
ME: “THEY SURE USED A lot of tech to spin a yarn about how tech is bad.” She: “Nice visual imagination, though.” Me: “Very nice. And the acting and casting are spot on. But it’s a planet full of Magic…