Recent Blogs Posts

I wrote this when I had come to a fork in the road. I decided to give up a secure job that was killing me for an uncertain future.

Three years later, things are working out very well...

The definition of a desert is quite specific. To qualify as a desert an area must recieve less than 250 mm of precipitation annually. Something like one third of the surface of the earth is desert.

There are others sorts of deserts, though. There

...

What is my view on Hate Speech Laws? I ask myself this question given that I actively participate in a free-speech forum touching on all kinds of issues from a life well lived and yet I do live in a country with such laws. I feel a need to at least work through some of this antitheticalness in my being.

I readily admit to wavering lately on the issue of the appropriateness of Hate Speech Laws inasmuch as I do recognise the slippery slope of censorship: Today I cannot say something ...

The next time you chance to visit a rest home, take a good look at the photographs you find there. In almost every room you’ll see them. Moments, usually happy ones, frozen in time. Black-and-white images of people, often in the prime of life, faces unlined except for smiles, staring into your eyes.
Some photographs, though, show other emotions. A mother and father, seven children around them, lined up beside a twenties-vintage sedan. Mother is seated in an old chair with a baby in her arms. ...

Conspiracy theories are not all of a type. Nor are they all untrue, but most of them are. Most of them fail under the withering stare of cold simple logic.
The ones that can pass this test deserve closer examination.

One of those types of 'World Domination' plot types fails because it contradicts the very foundation of what we know of human nature. (There are other WDP's that don't have this flaw, or only to a small degree.)

It is the Theory that there is a hidden ...

Have you ever felt that the Liars were always winning? That being Honorable was to your disadvantage?


If I withhold my vengeance,
And greater ills befall;
Can it be said
That I'm to blame?
Was virtue served at all?

If I deal retribution,
And say I serve the King,
Is my defence
What might have been
From evils unfelt sting?

Venom hath its' vile work wrought,
The wicked rule the night.
And I ...

A couple years ago I began a short story about dragons-then a popular series of books about dragons hit the market. Sigh...I didn't like the idea of looking like a "me-too" author, so I set the whole thing aside. Here is the opening scene. There is a great deal more to the story, though it is yet unfinished.
What do you think? Is it salvageable? I suffer from a common authors shortcoming; I'm to impressed with my own work to see the problems.
At any rate, I hope the read isn't ...

A few years ago I was/am a member of a Pakistan-centric site. I was there mostly for the intellectual workout, like going to the gym. What got annoying was not the anti-American bias, so much as the unreasoning aspect of it, and the hypocrisy of those pointing fingers.

I'm getting really tired of teaching U.S. history to those who cannot see past their own preconcieved ideas and cherished prejudices. That America came to be at all is a miracle. Political compromise was required to ...

There's a unique feeling when you're alone on the road. You look in your rearview mirror; Nothing. You strain your eyes forward; no movement breaks the shimmering mirage thar warps the horizon.
Something inside you changes. Deep in your gut the faintest tickle of unease stirs. The hairs on the back of your neck are primed to rise up at any stimulus at all. you're alone, more alone, somehow, behind the wheel, than if you were afoot.
You switch off the radio. Something about the music ...

How many people prepare for the hard times?
I do. I always have. I think I understand why:

I was raised that way. I absorbed the idea that part of being a man was being ready. If a blizzard moved in for a few days, if the power went down for several days, if you lost your income for months, you were supposed to be able to eat and feed and protect youself and your own, as well as being ready to reach out to those who were in over their heads.
I remember clearly (I was a teenager) ...

Today I asked for some snow and received some. It has been snowing steadily since mid-afternoon after a mere teasing of scattered flurries since this morning. It's beautiful outside this evening. The snow resembles the silky softness of a dusting of powdered sugar on an as yet untouched cake. I feel safe and warm in my cocoon and am enjoying the pleasure of my own solitude and being. It's during quiet and deeply reflective moments such as these that I feel most alive. Ironic: snow covers, muffles, ...