“The sum of human knowing is beyond any one man; any thousand men. With the destruction of our social fabric, science will be broken into a million pieces. Individuals will know much of exceedingly tiny facets of what there is to know. They will be helpless and useless by themselves. The bits of lore, meaningless, […]
For fans of speculative fiction, the early 21st century has been both a triumph and a challenge: a triumph because our beloved genre has gained popularity and respect, and a challenge because sorting through the ever-increasing surfeit of new works can be paralyzing. It helps immensely when an enterprising author takes the time to identify […]
“Everyone was so used to living in a bubble that they didn’t even both to think about how easily bubbles popped.” ––Cumulus, by Eliot Peper, loc. 1192
“‘I fell in love with you that summer. I remember lying on the beach, looking up at the stars, and listening to you describe the way the world should be, the way the world would be. It was magical, prescient even. I’ve never stopped admiring your ability to not take the world as it is, […]
If humans want to survive and flourish in the Anthropocene, we will need to overcome the habits of thought that have wrought destruction on our collective psyche and the natural world. One of our most misguided and longstanding myths is the notion that humanity’s mental faculties should be considered qualitatively different from those of nonhuman […]
“Books and articles commonly state that one of the central issues of evolutionary cognition is to find out what sets us apart. Entire conferences have been organized around the human essence, asking ‘What makes us human?’ But is this truly the most fundamental question of our field? I beg to differ. In and of itself, […]
Geography is one of the glaring weak points in American education. I’m college-educated, but know relatively little about world geography, and even less about how it shapes national economies and political strategies. A portion of my ignorance can be attributed to personal preferences and limitations, but it’s a good bet that my geopolitical blind spots […]
“I wished they were dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and […]
With legalization gaining steam across the nation, it seems we are about to close the chapter on cannabis prohibition in the long, sordid history of America’s “War on Drugs.” The question is no longer “Will we have full legalization?” but “How soon?” There will no doubt continue to be heated debates about cannabis’s place in […]
“A stranger hurrying as fast as he could over the icy sidewalks looked in. He saw a circle of singing people bathed in the clean white light from a tree, and his heart did a somersault, and the image stayed with him; it merged with him even as he came home to his own children, […]