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…
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: 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…
On The Road To Karlin
THIS TALE COMES FROM LOUIS Newman’s 1963 “Hasidic Anthology,” a thick collection of stories, teachings and parables of the Hasidim, which is Hebrew for “pietist” but in this context refers to the 18th century Jewish ecstatics whose infectious enthusiasm rang…
Wrapping Round
EVER CATCH HOLD OF THE edge of a metaphor that no amount of teasing will out? That’s why I call the blog “The Metaphorager” in fact: I sometimes feel like Newton’s beachcomber looking for the one bit of sea-wrack which…
The Point Of All Religion And End Of All Philosophy, As Concisely Can Be Put Sans Particulars
THIS MATTERS.