Marriage," "mating," and "love" are socially constructed phenomena that have little or no transferable meaning outside any given culture. The examples we've noted of rampant ritualized group sex, mate-swapping, unrestrained casual affairs, and social...
Not one little fellow need fear that he will be forbidden to pluck his shining grape from the cluster of political Power, that fruit reputed to be so full of wealth and glory. Can’t every gang become a club? and every club an assembly? an assembly,...
It is very desirable to have a word to express the Availability for work of the heat in a given magazine; a term for that possession, the waste of which is called Dissipation. Unfortunately the excellent word Entropy, which Clausius has introduced in...
When I reach out, you take my hand. When I smile, you mirror the expression. When I triumph, you glory as if it were your own. When I fail, you point to the light at the end. When I need, you tenderly provide. When I cry, you kiss away my tears. Wh...
Time and again the sun sets like a bedimming curtain before my eyes, taking with it all illumination, warmth, and color. I am overwhelmed by night and the monsters that lurk in shadows of despair. But alas, stars twinkle from afar, shedding the t...
There are so many charlatans in the world of education. They teach for a couple of years, come up with a few clever slogans, build their websites, and hit the lecture circuit. In this fast-food-society, simple solutions to complex problems are embrac...
I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction one recieves: 'Press your tonsils ...
Pulling the chair out for me, he invited me to sit. I stood there wondering if I could sprint for the nearest exit. Stupid strappy shoes, I'd never make it. He leaned in close and whispered in my ear, "I know what you're thinking, and I'm not going t...
Artemis grit her teeth. "I need a favor. I have some hunting to do, alone. I need you to take my companions to Camp Half-Blood." "Sure Sis!" then he raised his hands in a "stop everything" gesture. "I feel a haiku comIng on." The Hunters all groaned....
If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrend...
… that sour blend of loneliness and lust for recognition, shyness and extravagance, deep insecurity and self-intoxicated egomania, that drives poets and writers out of their rooms to seek each other out, to rub shoulders with one another, bully, jo...
And we've read scary books and watched scary movies and TV shows together. He's met monsters, ghouls, and demons on the page and on the screen. There's nothing like watching Anaconda with your best friend or lying in bed next to your mother reading R...
The silver car had been closing in, but just then, it took a sharp turn to the left. Where are they going? Leor wondered. But he decided to keep it to himself. The cabby nodded and ran a hand through his hair. “Alright. Well, we’re here anyways.�...
That was when it was all made painfully clear to me. When you are a child, there is joy. There is laughter. And most of all, there is trust. Trust in your fellows. When you are an adult...then comes suspicion, hatred, and fear. If children ran the wo...
My dear Reaper," Vlad said, still laughing. 'Did you just check out our-' 'No!' I interrupted at once, almost lunging toward the staircase. 'I'm tired and still dazed from the Remanats and ... fuck it, I'm taking a shower. I mean, not a cold shower, ...
To take a specific example, a researcher in the Journal of Traumatic Stress interviewed 129 women with documented histories of child sexual abuse that occurred between the ages of 10 months and 12 years. Of those, 38 percent had forgotten the abuse. ...
The world (including Drapervilleh is not a nice place, and the innocent and the young have to take their chances. They cannot be watched over, twenty-four hours of the day. At what moment, from what hiding-place, the idea of evil will strike, there i...
Is there just one single love in a lifetime? Are all our lovers ― from the first to the last, including the most fleeting ― part of that unique love, and is each of them merely an expression of it, a variation, a particular version? In the same w...
Physics is the ultimate intellectual adventure, the quest to understand the deepest mysteries of our Universe. Physics doesn’t take something fascinating and make it boring. Rather, it helps us see more clearly, adding to the beauty and wonder of t...
. . . I can see how the issue of exercising corporate control over users content is truly enraging here, on a site significantly made by these contributors. It’s unavoidable that we come to this, in my opinion (corporations always do), and GR/Amazo...
It’s important to realize that on the journey to achieving big, you get bigger. Big requires growth, and by the time you arrive, you’re big too! What seemed an insurmountable mountain from a distance is just a small hill when you arrive—at leas...
