The alternative is to locate large deposits of specifically what we need, and extract it in bulk from the earth.” “That’s mining,” said the Drip. “There is a twenty-third century legend that youth was conscripted to work in mines. Anyhow, a...
Americans were no more shallow than any other people, just more pampered, so they had come to treasure their shallowness, making pop singers and television actors their most revered leaders. Pampered but lovable. He loved America, even though he held...
Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longe...
The waterwheel was twice a man’s height, wider than a man’s two stretched arms. The timbers, braced and bolted with rusty iron were heavy, hand-hewn, swollen with a century of wet. Moss bearded the paddles, which dripped as they rose. The sounds ...
Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the sam...
A half-century later, Mark Twain would say that the gold rush drastically changed the American character, ending the tradition of patient apprenticeships, the gradual mastery of self, talent, and money. Gold created the get-rich-quick mentality that ...
The reason the very concept of God has become at once so impoverished, so thoroughly mythical, and ultimately so incredible for so many modern persons is not because of all the interesting things we have learned over the past few centuries, but becau...
... researchers argue that it's of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them. Sounds ridiculous, but whole segments of humankind have often revered the unknowable, venerating that which cannot be te...
Several centuries ago it was believed that the fly agaric, combined with the bufotenin–containing mucus of toads, was an ingredient of witches' brews, which made flying on their broomsticks possible. Even Santa Claus and Father Christmas are connec...
Our own egos are so fragile we cannot bear to give our lives to the raising of children only to have them become ordinary people. There, I said it. The worst thing a 21st-century child of interesting parents could be: ordinary. Like us.
This may seem labouring the obvious, but in Japan one meets intelligent people who claim that ‘logic’ is something invented in the West to allow Westerners to win discussions. Indeed, the belief is widespread that the Japanese can as happily do w...
Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, a...
The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, “Are we free?” I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot h...
A thousand years ago the Chinese had an entirely codified kitchen while the French were still gnawing on bones. Chopsticks have been around since the fourth century B.C. Forks didn't show up in England until 1611, and even then they weren't meant for...
The city wasa, wasa, wasa wossname. Thing. . Thass what it was. Woman. Roaring, ancient, centuries old. Strung you along, let you fall in thingy, love, with her, then kicked you inna, inna, thingy. Thingy, in your mouth. Tongue. Tonsils. . That's wha...
Some parents live more like reclusive monks than like first-century Christians who were famous for their love for and service within their cities, cities that in many cases were more overtly wicked than cities found in modern-day America.
Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers fr...
The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively continuing...
Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder ...
God makes Himself felt in the heart of each person. He also respects the culture of all people...God is open to all people. He calls everyone. He moves everyone to seek Him and to discover Him through creation.
All experienced murderers seek cover. By putting the Agency’s fingerprints on [Mafia] operations, the mob could anticipate that the CIA would [be forced to] cooperate in the cover-up of crucial information related to JFK's assassination
