Coffee and humanity both sprang from the same area in eastern Africa. What if some of those early ape-men nibbled on the bright red berries? What if the resulting mental stimulation opened them up to a new way of looking at old problems, much as it d...
You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. 'Artist's conceptions' and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to ...
deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with sc...
But isn't this a dance? Isn't all of this a dance? Isn't that what we do with words? Isn't that what we do when we talk, when we spar, when we make plans or leave them to chance? Some of it's choreographed. Some of the steps have been done for ages. ...
He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands, swum in rivers and mended nets and learned to wash his own clothes at need. He can fish and cook and bind up a wound, he knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid. Tommen has b...
She wished she wasn’t jealous, but in quiet, weak moments, she desperately wanted to be like them. She wanted gentlemen to shoulder each other out of the way for her attention, to hang on her every word, however vapid those words would have to be. ...
[Cade] hiked his broad shoulders. “My kind prefer tarts with a little more meat on their bones so they can take a demon’s lusts.” “Tarts?” [Holly's] jaw slackened. “My God, you’re the most misogynistic man I’ve ever met. I bet you als...
The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll li...
So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .” Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen t...
O smile, going where? O upturned look: new, warm, receding surge of the heart--; alas, we are that surge. Does then the cosmic space we dissolve in taste of us? Do the angels reclaim only what is theirs, their own outstreamed existence, or sometimes,...
A historian tries to understand what happened, why it happened, what was the context, who did what, and what assumptions led them to act as they did. A historian customarily displays a certain diffidence about trying to influence events, knowing that...
I learned as a kid that homo sapiens would rather fight other homo sapiens than microbes. For one thing, it’s easier. And there’s something satisfying about knowing somebody else is the bad guy and seeing them laid out on the street in front of y...
Today the average lifetime is over seventy years, long enough for a great number of accomplishments. But this development has occurred within the present century. Before that, people tended to die much younger than they do today, and among those earl...
In my world, people are plotting. You have no idea of all the people in business commit every day. Like it was nothing. Or there’s a set of special rules for them. Remember when Bush made that whole speech about ‘corporate ethics’ last year? Wh...
Money is the root of all evil.' Then we hear, 'A fool and his money are soon parted.' What are they talking about? If money is so evil, shouldn't it be, 'A wise man and his money are soon parted'? And another thing, how does a fool get money in the f...
A thousand times today I've started to open my mouth, started to squeak out, "Can you tell me...? But then I'd look into the front seat, at my mother's silent shaking, my father's grim profile, the mournful bags under his eyes, and all the questions ...
Okay. He had a point but it wasn’t like I could tell him anything. I could see me now: Guess what? You ever watch Clash of the Titans or read any Greek fables? Well those gods are real and yeah, I’m sort of a descendant of them. Kind of like the ...
Forgiveness is not turning the other cheek. Forgiveness is not running away. Forgiveness does not mean that you condone what the person has done, nor does it mean that you invite them to do it again. It doesn't mean that you forget the offense, nor d...
It is so rare to find someone of true understanding; for the most part they judge purely by their own standards and ignore everyone else. So all they see of me is a façade. There are times when I am forced to sit with them and on such occasions I si...
although we very clearly see the sun, we ought not therefore to determine that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents; and we may very distinctly imagine the head of a lion joined to the body of a goat, without being therefore shut ...
I revered our theology, and aspired as much as any one to reach heaven: but being given assuredly to understand that the way is not less open to the most ignorant than to the most learned, and that the revealed truths which lead to heaven are above o...
