A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would...
Manipulating or controlling others through the use of one's illness or suffering,for example,was-and remains-extremely effective for people who find they cannot be direct in their interactions,Who argues with someone who is in pain? And if pain is th...
. . . chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The baby, again, the animal, they don't see the difference between what they do now and what will happen because of it....
The marine underworld stretched below the ship and embodied many secrets. The disappearance of Olga had become one of the mysteries that would remain with Stefania and her family. The disappearance of her baby sister and sudden departure from her hom...
But smile faded as he thought of what other provisions the contained. What would the godly say when they learned that the electorate was no longer to be limited to but broadened to include propertied members of every Christian sect this side of papis...
When the Bible is understood in its literary and historical context; errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies pose no threat to spirituality, whether that spirituality is theistic, non-theistic, or even explicitly Jesus-centered. The graver threat...
Over the years of being stuck in this shit hole called life, I had debated religion and church, souls and freewill, heaven and hell. I had come to a few conclusions. Mankind was too self-serving to understand what He had wanted from them. It wasn’t...
Say a king wishes to support a standing army of fifty thousand men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem—unless they were on the march, one would need to employ almost as many men and animals just to ...
...it would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that there exists an absolute reality of things which is the same for all living beings. Reality is not a unique and homogeneous thing; it is immensely diversified, having as many different sche...
Brooks stuck his hands in his pockets and examined his shoes. It would be nice to be known fully and still loved, but what if it was one or the other? What if by the time someone got to know you, the person didn’t love you anymore? And when could y...
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and a...
They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also re-member. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they kno...
t smells in. Let the smell of hot tarmac in the summer remind you of a meal you ate the first time you landed in a hot place, when the ground smelled like it was melting. Let the smell of salt remind you of a paper basket of fried clams you ate once,...
The Dark Angel had seen much over the course of the past millennia, the passing of hundreds of thousands of mortal lives. He felt neither remorse nor mercy for the enemies he had felled in the course of wars and battles. He did what he had to do and ...
The purpose of college, to put this all another way, is to turn adolescents into adults. You needn't go to school for that, but if you're going to be there anyway, then that's the most important thing to get accomplished. That is the true education: ...
As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once -- that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smalle...
Our analyses of the FDA data showed relatively little difference between the effects of antidepressants and the effects of placebos. Indeed, the effects were so small that they did not qualify as clinically significant. The drug companies knew how sm...
Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawingup at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very ne...
When I could hold my eyes open long enough, I did stare up at the rain pelting down on me. I’ve never looked at it like that, straight up into the sky, and while I flinched more than I could actually see, when I could see it was absolutely beautifu...
Pretty quickly, I stopped seeing the company as an engine of community. Instead, I saw it as a mythmaker offering only an illusion of belonging and meeting its customers' desire for connections in form, maybe, but surely not in substance. Once I came...
