WHAT DIFFERENTIATES THE EXPLORER FROM other humans is his answer to the following question: “If you could experience something that no one else ever had, but the cost was your own life, would it be worth it?”
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.
Hiding the Hidden
Last week, we read in Parsha Beshallach about the departure from Egypt (Heb. “Mitzrayim”, or “narrows,” which the mystical tradition identifies with the forces of constraint and bad-habitry). Among the other nifty details is this one, from Exodus 13:21: “And…
Torah Nerds, Unite!
Some people say that the Torah can only be meaningful if the events depicted therein are true. In other words, if 600,000 people didn’t march through the Sinai Peninsula; if the plagues were just a mythologization of natural disasters; if…
Mystic Fables for Religious Misfits ™
Here’s something I’m working on which has not yet been published. The working title is Around the Rimless Sea: Mystic Fables for Religious Misfits; each features a mercenary cook and former holyman named Prosatio Silban. This excerpt is from one…
Working Definition
God 1 adv. the Omnipresent Center SEE Copenhagen interpretation, quantum consciousness 2 v. The Connector of Space and Sustainer of Time; One, Alive, and Intent 3 n domesticated primates’ ultimate attribution of excuse, tragedy, success or inspiration
Stephen3PO
The writers’ strike wears on, but our nerves don’t thanks to those daring and resourceful folks at Operation Facestrong. Long may it wave.
“I Seen It Too!”
WAITING FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD with Sputnik at the Shoreline, c. 1989ish, one of us began the following conversation: “For example, that guy over there with the ‘I Climbed Lassen’ T-shirt.” “Yeah.” “Well, he obviously wants everyone to think that…
Pithyism #0
The future is an open hand; the past is a closed hand. What’s in between?
Mapping God
Like any Torah Nerd, I’ve never met a commentary I didn’t like — the more abstruse and seriously-taking the better — but I’ve always had difficulty with the traditional view of God As Punisher and Rewarder. Perhaps that stems from…
Librarians Are Hiding Something
Stephen said it, I believe it, and that’s good enough for anyone. (P.S. to the Incomparable Bird of Paradox himself: Good to see “your back”.
In the spirit…
… of its content, this might have been posted 12/28/6, the day I wrote and sent it to my coworkers. But it wasn’t: Friends, If you can imagine a universe-sized sponge made of galaxies surrounding bubble-like voids, congratulations: you’re hip…
Der Apikoyrus Rebbe
RABBI AKIVA TATZ IS A turned-on guy whose shiurim (lectures) are ripe with mystic but rational Torah learning. R’Tatz tells a wonderful story about apikorsim (singular “apikorus,” from the Greek “Epicurean;” one who disbelieves the divine origin of Torah and…