If you skip one class, everyone knows about it. The teacher will track you down, or one of the guidance counselors will track you down and ask if you're smoking pot. According to the geniuses running this place, the only reason you would skip class i...
A metaphor is not merely a linguistic expression (a form of words) used for artistic or rhetorical purposes; instead, it is a process of human understanding by which we achieve meaningful experience that we can make sense of. A metaphor, in this "exp...
Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal...
I don't think my mum ever understood my love of Doctor Who. Surely her strongest memory would have been me, standing at the top of the stairs, crying about how the "jelly men" were going to get me? Sorry, Mum, for those sleepless nights, but it was w...
The reason for the difference between the architectural and engineering 'climate', so to speak, is very complex. It is partly a matter of terminology, partly a matter of historical accident, and the consequent training of architects and engineers, an...
Olivia was moody. wasn't a word with which she was very familiar, but if it meant that her moods swung back and forth for no reason at all, and that she felt crabby and wanted to be alone more often than she felt content and friendly, and that she wa...
Crack had a social logic to it, a specific kind of reasoning that drew from a vast well of common experience for its symbolic resonance. Crack stood for pain and power, chaos and order, the truth behind the lie. Crack was a sociolegal logic grounded ...
and line of cases. Justice Byron R. "Whizzer" White, a JFK appointee, dissented, calling Doe an act of "raw judicial power," as it took these decisions from the states and enshrined their determination in the Supreme Court's reasoning.
Sometimes the reason offered for seeking aesthetic excellence in the music of the church is that thereby one pleases God. I think that is true. But not because we know what music God enjoys-- though I suspect it must be music which is unified, rich, ...
What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But wha...
Human beings are like the screwed-up children of alcoholic parents in that way, picking up the pieces afterward and trying to make up reasons why. You could argue that’s what makes us interesting, and maybe it is to some alien race studying us from...
What’s going on?” “Nothing.” She coughed, and released Talaith’s hand. “Except you have some powerful enemies.” “Tell me what I don’t know, witch.” “Powerful enemies who are gods.” For a moment, Annwyl was shocked beyond all r...
Sometimes books feel like the only thing that keep her sane. Actually, she knows that they're the only reason she's still even vaguely okay right now. That's what she clings to: reading great books and seeing great films and, for as long as she's imm...
We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the p...
Ah, they said. Qué bueno. And after and for a long time to come he'd have reason to evoke the recollection of those smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolv...
[Or perhaps my friends should have realized that they shouldn't have left behind the FRICKING REASON FOR THEIR PROTEST! And that thought just cracked me up.] It was like my friends had walked over the backs of baby seals in order to get to the beach ...
Democrtitus, in the fifth century B.C. had declared that all the world was composed of only two elements: atomes and the void. This reduction of the myriad of forms to only two was the ultimate in dualistic reasoning. Christianity adopted dualism whe...
And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: 'nine the next, and so on.' What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice. That's the reason they're called lessons,' ...
The biggest machines, in those days, were already pushing the limits of what could be constructed on Arbre with reasonable amounts of money." "I hadn't known that," I said. "I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." "The...
Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or procured it to be written in his life time. But there is no publication extant authenticated with his name. ...
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. . All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christ...
