Things I've learned recently: It's tempting to write expressions of moral outrage, like "Does anybody remember justice?", but then you remember that yes, most people do, but they'd rather reach for revenge or outrage instead. Justice takes too long. It's…
Category: bête noire
Back in October 2016, I had a hospital stay, with surgery for an infection in my right thumb. In some ways, it's not that big of a deal, in other ways it was a very big deal - they used…
I've been thinking about the Golden Rule lately, and it's confusing and difficult for me. It's also confusing and difficult to express. I am fairly certain that this post will come across as whining and petulant. Who knows, maybe it…
How much pain could be forgotten if we remembered that many of our needs are subjective? They're not all subjective, of course... if you take something from the base of Maslow's pyramid from a person, that person will logically and…
This is a post of liner notes, sort of, about "Two Wishes," a story I posted a couple of months ago. I normally enjoy such author's notes myself, but I also understand that they sometimes erode what magic a story…
I have lived two lives. In my first life, when I was old, I wandered through a shop of antiques looking for a lampstand. My cat had finally knocked over my wife's light; it was a gift for her from…
I was thinking of my epitaph this morning, after reading the colophon of a book I love. It struck me how different my epitaph would be, if it said "He died," with the addition of one word: "And." Both are…
It's easy to look at life's little hurdles and respond with something trite, like "It could be worse," or "You could have brain cancer." The thing is: those things are true; it could be worse, you could have brain cancer...…