Today is the anniversary of a very important photo. It was taken February 14, 1990, and it’s a landscape. In fact it’s the landscape, in a way. It’s the the Pale Blue Dot photo, taken by Voyager 1 from nearly 4 billion miles away. It’s called the Pale Blue Dot because that’s all there is… Continue reading

I’ve always liked the word “eldritch.” Since I’m not writing fantasy stories including elves and ancient, magical, “eldritch” powers, I’ve never had an opportunity to use it. But I looked it up, and counter to what I expected, it doesn’t necessarily imply anything ancient or magical. You can just use it as a synonym for… Continue reading

What’s the difference between science and engineering? If you listen to a lot of the talk about education lately, it doesn’t seem like that much. STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics — is all the rage in the “you get an education in order to get a better job” contingent. Yesterday we celebrated Inventors’… Continue reading

A wedding is a rite that goes back to antiquity in some form in many cultures. It often features elaborate rituals, special clothes for the couple being united, and some sort of public proclamation of the union. The couple involved is most often, and traditionally, and man and a woman. But that’s not always the… Continue reading

Have you seen the 2021 movie Don’t Look Up? It’s pretty good, although as a metaphorical satire it’s a bit heavy-handed. But the title makes me think — everybody looks up. Looking up, to the sky, or the clouds, or the vee of the migrating geese, or the contrail of the jetliner you might wish… Continue reading

One thing that practically every pundit, philosopher, author, activist, and business success story agrees on is “the value of a good education.” For Bill Gates (dropped out of Harvard), it’s all about jobs: “Unemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary eduction.” Robert Frost… Continue reading

William James was a philosopher and psychologist at the beginning of that field. He wrote Human Immortality in 1897, and included this: “Admit now that our brains are such thin and half-transparent places in the veil. …as the white radiance comes through the dome, with all sorts of staining and distortion imprinted on it by… Continue reading

This year February 6 is, obviously, a Tuesday. Everybody knows about the days of the week. In the US, Sunday is the first day of the week — all you have to do to know that is glance at a wall calendar. Elsewhere in the world, though, it’s different. In the Middle East (most of… Continue reading

Theres a picture of William S. Burroughs, the writer, from his time in Paris. In the photo, there’s a car in the background, over his right shoulder. The car is a Citroen DS, the entirely revolutionary design introduced by the Citroen car company in 1955. Practically every system in it was hydraulically controlled, and it… Continue reading

Maybe you’ve noticed, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, that lately it’s feeling like the middle of winter. If so, good for you for being sensitive to the world around you, because today, February 4, really is the middle of winter. That is, as long as you use the December solstice to mark the… Continue reading