The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching ...
H. L Mencken's Dictionary of the American Language supplies a long list of slang terms for being drunk, but the Irish are no slouches, either. They're spannered, rat-arsed, cabbaged, and hammered; ruined, legless, scorched, and blottoed; or simply tr...
Periclean Greeks employed the term , without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect ...
Still on speaking terms with the Toilet Paper People, they consented to a box full of Legos that overnight manifested itself into a recording studio. I quickly remembered the power of my hands, my imagination, my will, and my conscience. These were t...
Er, why do you need to work in a dark room, though?" he said. "The imps don't need it, do they?" "Ah, zis is for my experiment," said Otto proudly. "You know zat another term for an iconographer would be 'photographer'? From the old word in Latation,...
Like all magical mysteries, the secrets of the Great Work have a triple meaning: they are religious, philosophical and natural. Philosophical gold in religion is the Absolute and Supreme Reason; in philosophy, it is truth; in visible nature, it is th...
A rush of sensation pulsed through her, lingering long after his touch. The towel quickly fell free. He caught it before it slipped to the ground and slung it over his shoulder. “Consider this your first time,” he said, his tone low and sultry. G...
Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people’...
I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentime...
The paradox is that some of the most artistically valuable contemporary photographs are content with being photographs, are not under the same compulsion to pass themselves off - or pimp themselves out - as art. The simple truth is that the best expo...
I was always thinking in terms of too much or not enough, rarely allowing myself that crucial space in between. Except when he was around. Except when we were really together. Then I could forget—I couldn’t turn it off, but I could forget to turn...
In any case, seeing care for certain groups as an excessive cost reflects an arguably perverse way of thinking about health care in terms of human need. [...] In other words, care for the sick is an economic burden only in health care systems where p...
Claiming to love self, but willingly default to cheating at the first sign of trouble is nothing short of playing yourself. Your ego may feel avenged - temporarily - but your heart and soul, the true self, will suffer the long term affects of karma's...
So slip on your goggles and your reading trunks, for the sun is high. Let me leave you with one more thought. In what season of the year do we find ourselves - I'm speaking for a moment in terms of the physical world - wading through things? Surf. Ke...
The Swedes have coined the term 'management by perkele' to portray the Finnish managerial approach. Instead of collectively pondering all the possible alternatives and letting every member of the staff from the cleaner to the MD voice their views, as...
[O]ur own bodies are changing every second. Yet we take the body to be our Self; and, speaking in terms of it, we say, “I am hungry” or “I am lame”; “I am black” or “I am white.” These are all just the conditions of the body. We touch...
Indeed, and crucially so, the serial form took the control of the novel away from the reader and left him in an imagined space that could not be thought of in terms of the physical space still to be read. At the end of each instalment the reader woul...
Street culture is a culture of containment. Most young people do not realize that it all too often leads to a “dead end”. “Street culture,” as I am using the term, is a counterforce to movement culture. Street culture in contemporary urban re...
The fact is that the modern implementation of the prison planet has far surpassed even ’s and the only difference between our society and those fictionalized by Huxley, Orwell and others, is that the advertising techniques used to package the propa...
It’s the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No. We have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly; becaus...
Bullying is an attack upon the runts of the litter - the weak of the species, and it is predicated on a lack of bond with the parents. If a child has a secure bond with the parents, that forms a force-field around the child in terms of bullying. If t...