Tag: society
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Thoughts on Eden while mowing my lawn
In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil on the serpent’s advice, “know their nakedness,” and are thrown from the garden to a life of toil and want – the original sin that in Christianity, Christ died to forgive. This sin of the apple is…
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On anger
The Promised Land, and its malcontents. In the story of Moses, the aging Moses needs water for his people. Jehovah tells Moses to speak to a rock, but Moses strikes the rock twice. Jehovah lets the water flow, so the Jews can drink, but the cost is that Moses can’t enter the Promised Land. This…
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Robots vs. androids in fiction (go robots!)
Among the characters in my new novel is a collective of former package-delivery drones that, after a war, evolved themselves into a taxi service for their damaged city. From the earliest drafts, I saw them as small flying saucers, with only a central trunk/harness to carry goods or a seated cross-legged person. It took a little…
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Revolutionary atheists vs Stockholm syndrome (John Gray)
Esteemed cosmologist, and my old friend, Andrew Jaffe just posted a quick retort on his blog to a long essay by philosopher John Gray. Gray has an objection to the strident challenging tone of modern atheist thought-leaders like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. I am not the scientist Andrew Jaffe is, and I was hopeful that…
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Performance anxiety (Facebook edition)
If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise. — William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell” I noted recently that writing has become a performing art, one where we writers all have to be promotional and public. I’ve been mulling that over in regards to social media. Specifically, Facebook. I made my first business…
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Better writing through selfishness
Some years ago I attended a conference at Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington DC on art and democracy. Along with the artists and patrons and at least one historian, many who came were national and local activists for marginalized communities invisible to national culture. They made impassioned pleas for the assembled artists to take the…
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The (Beginning of the) End of Patriarchy (Happy New Age)
After the Newtown massacre last month — yes, remember Newtown? Twenty-six dead, twenty of them children? You’d be forgiven for forgetting. Our news media certainly have, now that the dead are buried and lawmakers moved on to arguing about money again — Sorry. After the massacre I tried to use the — is it horror,…