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Damn that Galileo!
I find myself thinking about Galileo, for no apparent reason, and his famous Tower of Pisa experiment, which he may or may not have actually performed. You know the one: dropping two balls of unequal...
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Where to put everybody?
Just exactly how many of us are there? Well, the world population is somewhere around 7.2 billion and rising. At the same time, less than half of the earth remains in wilderness, much of that...
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The bloggings will continue until morale improves
Is it possible that blogging hurts your chances of getting published elsewhere? That depends. The ordinary opinion piece, like this one you’re reading now, can only help, always assuming you write...
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Tough love economics
I was in the grocery store, jam-packed on this gorgeous day, when I saw a lane with nobody in it. Unbelievable, I thought, and went for it. As I was unloading my cart, I joked with the check out...
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The way we (would like to think) we were
People of a certain age, and of a certain background, when talking about poverty, have a tendency to minimize its impact. “Hell, we didn’t have anything, but we didn’t even know we were poor,” they...
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Look upon my works, ye mighty
Among the privileges of a career in archaeology is the great perspective it reveals on life and history, great and small. Years of digging up abandoned settlements and graves of nameless,...
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Lost in translation?
I’ve been thinking. About life, of course, but also about writing, and especially poetry, and how the whole point of it is to transmit something ineffable – paradoxically – using language. Of course,...
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When work became work
Work, for many, if not most, is a drudge. As the saying goes, that’s why they pay you to do it. We take it as a kind of law of nature. We’ve elevated leisure time to a kind of sacred status; that’s...
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Time, gentlemen..
Most of the time, I think I look okay, not much different, as time goes by. I look in the mirror when I shave in the morning, and I see some gray hairs (okay, white hairs), but the rest of me, I tell...
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Dead Achilles
Like Achilles, we are good at the war cry. Our righteous anger smolders and bursts into flame with each new affront from the enemy. Our Trojans, the Islamic State, have gone even further than the...
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Apocalypse how?
The guy down the street is talking about militias. He sees the signs of the coming anarchy everywhere. Especially, I’m thinking, on Fox News. But even without Fox’s fear mongering, it would be easy...
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À la recherche du temps déplacé: memory as myth
In the intro to my recent post about the death of Bill Vukovich and its effect on me as a child, I lamented my mistaken memories, and how I had conflated distinct events. That made me consider how that...
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C
I don’t get it. C, that is. The speed of light. I get that it’s supposed to be constant, and I get that the idea enables us to have GPS and all kinds of other wonderments, and I don’t even wonder why,...
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ithink therefore iam
I see lower case i being used for the personal pronoun more and more frequently these days. I suggest that, rather than railing against this usage, we could take it at face value. Mathematically, it...
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The art of surrender
Surrender has gotten a bad name, mostly because people misuse it grammatically. Try this: Find a comfortable place to sit, with the lights turned down low. Close your eyes. Think of everything that...
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The making of a curmudgeon
I have often thought that I’m regarded by my friends with a mixture of disbelief, alarm, and chagrin. I seem inexorably drawn to insert my opinion into any and all discussions I stumble upon. I mean...
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Some rank observations
Why is the lowest rank in the army, which affords its holder no privacy whatsoever, called private? The corporal, at least, seems reasonably preoccupied with bodies. But what is a sergeant? Someone...
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Notice to Consumers
It has come to our attention that some of you have been seen engaging in activities that have little or nothing to do with consuming. This, of course, must stop, as it jeopardizes the entire...
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Time and the swelling tide
I was just out walking in the town I live in. An unseasonably nice day, warm and breezy, like the best days of early fall. Then it hit me: my generation may very well be the last to experience...
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The mountains and the sea, Part 1
Rummaging through my closet, I came upon my old professor hat. Thought I’d put it on, and write a bit about sea level. If you’re a hiker, you’re familiar with those USGS topo sheets showing, among...
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