1. IT’S THE MAGNIFICATION THAT CHANGED history. 2. When Galileo Galilei first-lighted* his telescope more than four hundred years ago, he didn’t know that simple act would begin a new era for humanity. He certainly didn’t know that by deducing…
Tag: …wow.
I mean “wow.” Just … wow.
What Maimonides (Or Was It Lao-tse?) Really Meant
“THOSE WHO KNOW, CHUCKLE.”
A Self-Defrocked Holyman In A Fantastic Land Ekes Out A Meager But Honest Living As A Mercenary Cook
PROSATIO SILBAN ONCE MINISTERED TO the souls of the Uulian Commonwell’s faithful. But now, his heartfelt devotion is to tend the palates and gullets he encounters on his journeys as a mercenary cook. Inspired by Don Quixote, J.A. Brillat-Savarin’s The…
Read This (E)Book
THIS IS WHAT COMES FROM puttering about in a small morning with nothing else to do (thanks, PKD, for the reference): “Little-t truths for our and every time; a considerable consideration of considerings.” Pithyisms is, thanks to Smashwords, my second…
… Each of us sits alone within the cell of our subjective awareness. Now and then we receive cryptic messages from the outside world. Only dimly comprehending what we are doing, we compose responses, which we slip under the door. In this way, we manage to survive, even though we never really know what the hell is happening.”
— John Horgan
Our relationship to Torah is not based on asserting its factual historicity — whether based on “proofs” or “assertion despite reason.” Instead, each individual’s connection to scripture is based on the premise that the biblical narrative reflects an authentic religious experience that envelops some sort of reality and expresses it in a narrative and poetic fashion.”
— Rabbi David Bigman, “Refracting History Through the Spiritual Experience of the Present”
EACH PERSON’S PERCEPTION OF TRUTH is different. This one has a broader outlook, this one a narrow outlook. But the sincerity of each one’s devotions is all that counts.”
— Reb Nosson: Plato to Rebbe Nachman’s Socrates
My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.
— H.P. Lovecraft, “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction”
Humoronomics (Pithyism #3=1)
A JOKE, ANECDOTE, OR SHAGGY-DOG story should be no longer than necessitated by the redemptive power of its punch line.
BEING A NERD ISN’T ABOUT the things you love — it’s about the way you love them.”
— Wil Wheaton
Jedi Wisdom
OVERHEARD IN THE GROCERY CHECKOUT line, the following exchange between tall father and fidgety small son: SS (holding a 2021 Star Wars calendar): Look! It’s Darth Vader. And Luke Skywalker. TF: Luke is a Jedi, right? SS: Right. TF: Jedi…
A young person who goes out and sees this great conjunction now can potentially see the next close one in 2080. It’d be a nice connection between generations, one that makes you think about all those who have seen these conjunctions in the past–and those who will glimpse it in the future.”
— Astronomer Patrick Hartigan on tonight’s celestial event