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 ...