Book spine poem: The Library at Night
The Library at Night Cosmos and history, metaphor and memory, Emblems of mind on paper. The origins of knowledge and imagination; The signal and the noise. Simp...
Author: Mary
Elephants and personhood
This article in Aeon by Don Ross argues that elephants may be capable of personhood, and that humans should help them develop that capability, if possible, by p...
Book spine poem: The Home Planet
This book spine poem was inspired by American poet Robinson Jeffers, whose work I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The Home Planet Wind in the rock, R...
From the sphere of confusion to the crypts of Lieberkühn
I love to collect possible titles for pieces I’ll probably never write. (It’s my version of “Hey, that would make a good name for a band.̶...
Book review: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, by Kieran Setiya This book is framed as one philosopher’s search for answers to midlife’s unease. I think it says as...
Book spine poem: What Is History?
What Is History? A backward glance, Gods, graves, and scholars. Noah’s flood, Hadrian’s memoirs, Napoleon’s buttons, Darwin’s century, E...
Banana slugs and wind-up teeth
Memory has reasons that reason knows not (although sometimes reason can figure them out after the fact). Years ago I tried to recall the name of a place in my h...
Book review: Teach Yourself to Meditate
Teach Yourself to Meditate in 10 Simple Lessons: Discover Relaxation and Clarity of Mind in Just Minutes a Day, by Eric Harrison This is far and away the most a...
A season in the dark
One of the most fascinating manifestations of human creativity is the way we embellish our experience of events in the natural world. Who could have predicted t...
Book review: Thinking in Systems
Thinking in Systems: A Primer, by Donella H. Meadows, seemed to me to be something of a missing manual for human thinking. Even though we live in a world of com...