One of the outstanding sources of resistance to imperial power in the Muslim world came from Sufi groups. While Sufi brotherhoods are generally known for a more quietist and mystic approach to Islam, they traditionally rank among the best organized a...
Modern civilization depends on science … James Smithson was well aware that knowledge should not be viewed as existing in isolated parts, but as a whole, each portion of which throws light on all the other, and that the tendency of all is to improv...
Except now everything is digital even murder. There is a record for everything under the sun from the moon and back whether we like it or not. The image that I have of the future is that it is very bleak. It is darkness visible. The black dog of depr...
Werewolf change was never pleasant. That was one of the reasons pack members still referred to it as a curse, despite the fact that, in the modern age of enlightenment and free will, clavigers chose metamorphosis. The change comprised a good deal of ...
We could endlessly reminisce, live in the past to an unhealthy degree, then politely kill each other some winter night before bedtime, stirring poison into our cups of whiskey-spiked chamomile tea, wearing party hats. Then, nervous about our double h...
In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being...
Our lives are made up of choices. Big ones, small ones, strung together by the thin air of good intentions; a line of dominoes, ready to fall. Which shirt to wear on a cold winter's morning, what crappy junk food to eat for lunch. It starts out so in...
This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy; the snow is beating against my tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep. I had a supper pa...
This could seem counterintuitive for many dictators running communist or socialist single-party states, but a thriving private tech industry can contribute invaluable tools to help you implement a controllable internet. The reason is fairly simple: t...
Sai bene che quando l’amore si spegne è più freddo della morte. Il problema è che le due parti in causa non si spengono contemporaneamente e quando sei la parte ancora accesa, preferiresti essere morto.
I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief. "And you so intelligent!" "Excuse me?" said tom "Knowing those th...
I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that, too, but I wouldn't understand . I would site there with the tight elastic thread of the...
Advances in communication technology foster a false fantasy of togetherness by transmitting the impression of contact- phone calls, faxes, e-mail- without its substance. And when a relationship is ailing from frank time deprivation, both parties ofte...
Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with ...
Once the principals in their party are seated, with those lower on the totem pole left to grumble and move on to find another table, our once-cozy booth transforms into a damp fusion of vacuous wretchedness, with the three women all complaining alter...
He doesn’t want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last party, last night, last day, last goodbye), a...
Bad and cruel as our people were treated by the whites, not one of them was hurt or molested by our band. (...) The whites were complaining at the same time that we were intruding upon their rights. They made it appear that they were the injured part...
A brick is what the aliens gave me to communicate with them. It’s easy to operate. Just go to a party, or any crowded location, place the brick on your head, and stand perfectly still until they open up lines of communication. If you talk to Egbok ...
In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded...
Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and or...
The more bleach in the bedsheets, the greater Chastity's impulse to roll around in them. A party would be thrown, she decided, the kind that would tell a small story in the contents of the dustpan the next morning. Detached sequins and mint leaves mu...
