ONE THING I MISS ABOUT the pre-21st-century days is the sense of humanity plunging headlong toward some destination. These days, that collective goal seems hellbound and handbasket-wrapped. But in the days and years leading up to 1/1/2000, the Great Rollover,…
Tag: places
Are we there yet?
The View From Superman’s Cape
FLYING OVER EARTH IN THE International Space Station? This is what it looks like.
Monumental Question
“Do you honor the hole, or refill it with something?” (This may also apply to more than just the WTC memorial. Me, I vote for honoring the hole.)
Where Do The Ideas Come From?
LET’S MAKE THIS AN EXPLORATION of the landscapes of creativity — how does the creative experience feel to you? Mentally, I’m all about visualization: perhaps it’s synesthesia, but even smells and sounds have a visual component for me. So I’ve…
Big Room, Little Box
SO NASA HAS JUST RELEASED a nifty web application that lets you whiz about the solar system in real time and swoop in next to planets and satellites and space probes to see what they’re doing (or at least what…
First Graf: The Lore Of Sail
THE MARITIME SECTION OF MY home library is, like a captain’s yacht, small but well-appointed. I’ve been a ship geek since 1987-88, when I served as a deckhand/docent on a replica of the Golden Hinde, and my taste tends toward…
Bicycle Safety 101
THERE IS ONE INFLEXIBLE RULE which, if followed diligently, will result in years if not decades of safe bicycling: Pretend you’re invisible. Now, many get the wrong impression on first hearing this advice — they hear “invisible” and think “invincible,”…
Echo (Pithyism #18)
YOU REALLY FEEL LIKE A Jewish Teacher when a former student says “This needed to be here” and gives you a rock he picked up at Masada. (Thanks, Nick. May you also be blessed to know the difference you make.)…
Pithyism #+/-1
Thank God or your equivalent that the uttermost limits of joy and misery remain mostly unexplored — and largely uncommunicated.
The Bright Side
IT’S ALWAYS A NICE DAY at 35,000 feet.
Gritty Comfortoir
AND AFTER ALL IS SAID and done, and the horrible truth revealed The bodies taken away, the last question answered Comes William S Burroughs (the gravelly graandpa who’s done things the grownups won’t let you ask him about). “Interdimensional Alka…
Who Is This Prosatio Silban, And What Does He Want?
IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S DIABLO VALLEY c. 1978, Dungeons & Dragons was barely known outside the fantasy-and-science-fiction community. I first learned of it around that time via David Hargrave‘s Arduin: a created world not unlike J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, C.S. Lewis’…