To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on t...
Nuclear deterrence will remain a vital aspect of security. or Nuclear deterrence will have a smaller role in future security. Sources are split in their assessment of the importance of nuclear weapons and the validity of traditional nuclear deterrenc...
One retired pastor, who felt that he was being called to write a book about homosexuality, interviewed me. He said he wanted his book to be pastorally compassionate toward gay people while exhorting the church to remain firm in holding to a tradition...
The greatest miracle Christianity has achieved in America is that the black man in white Christian hands has not grown violent. It is a miracle that 22 million black people have not risen up against their oppressors – in which they would have been ...
In a proper Islamic University, fard 'ain knowledge which represents the permanent intellectual and spiritual needs of the human soul--should form the core curriculum, and should be made obligatory to all students. Fard kifayah knowledge--reflecting ...
In fact, Wen'an was the prefect location for the scrap-plastics trace: it was close, but not too close, to Beijing and Tianjin, two massive metropolises with lots of consumers and lots of factories in need of cheap raw materials. Even better, its tra...
What followed was a great treat for me. This was Irish traditional music as I had hoped to see and hear it, spontaneous and from the heart, and not produced for the sake of the tourist industry. As I sat there with my pint in my hand, enjoying the ji...
People everywhere, enjoying life, smiling, and just slowing down to let the world take care of itself for a few hours. The feeling was contagious. Especially when I stepped into McPherson's Pub to grab a bite of the special and listen to some traditi...
Science has marched forward. But civilization’s values remain rooted in philosophies, religious traditions, and ethical frameworks devised many centuries ago. Even our economic system, capitalism, is half a millennium old. The first stock exchange ...
...Subordination of the state to Christian values is precisely what the early Puritans, even those in the tradition of the Mayflower Pilgrims, aimed to do. The First Amendment notwithstanding, large numbers of the American public (especially churchgo...
YA stories feature a young adult protagonist or protagonists and usually focus on that character’s journey toward maturity (the tradition of the Bildungsroman.). Learning about love / relationships is an important part of that stage in our lives, s...
[longer introduction to "Night On Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria"] Narrator: The last number in our Fantasia program is a combination of two pieces of music so utterly different in construction and mood that they set each other off perfectly. The firs...
every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust...
Thorn, Gardener, get it? More skeptical people tended to believe that the Thorn family simply named itself after their high position in the Gardeners. I had my own theory. I thought his name was Thorn because he's a giant prick.
The best is when we all go at once, like an army of interrelated popcorn zombies who laugh the same laughs and gasp the same gasps and aren’t so germ-phobic with each other that we won’t share a ginormous Coke with one straw. Family is useful lik...
Kennedy's issue didn't seem to be that she had been in jail, but that she had put on weight in jail. The food had been crappy, she'd told me, and it has been high on the carbohydrate count. "But I'm an emotional eater," she'd said, as if that were a ...
Duty comes in many forms; at times duty to country may conflict with duty to family. Yet, with a lucid mind the guises can be torn away and in the end, duty becomes but one, and that duty is to value justice above everything--to do what is right not ...
You're still... Declan?"-- --Voice hoarse, he said, "Aye, it's me. I will never be your perfect Viking, Regin! I've made unforgivable mistakes. I've no family or friends, and my men hold no love for me. I'm scarred inside and out. And I'm bloody aski...
This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as ...
Papa taps on the skylight and I look up. He waves at me and smiles. I smile back. For now, I don't need to know what lies ahead. For now it's enough just to be here, safe aboard the Morning Star with my family and friends. For now, it's enough to be ...
I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I'm a housewife and a prostitute, both of us living ...
