December 17, 2015
A Last-Minute Shopper’s Guide to Children’s Poetry
Before my son was born, I memorized a poem. I know how this must sound to parents and non-parents: another hopelessly sentimental exercise that’s more about the papa than the […]
February 7, 2015
#poetinspaceproject
We’ve sent animals and plants into outer space and observed them. We’ve sent scientists of various disciplines to run experiments—that is, to do their work in that environment and […]
April 16, 2014
Magical Mystery Tour: Science as the New Authority
In Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” passage from The Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor’s plan to “correct” the work of God (in a sense, to establish the Church) was based on […]
December 17, 2013
In Praise of Agnosis
Entertain, for a moment, the possibility that reason evolved to facilitate the use of tools. If you take this point as a given—and I cannot “prove” to you that this […]
October 11, 2013
Skyscrapers of Light
In 1938, Westinghouse buried a time capsule in a section of Queens described as a “valley of ashes” in The Great Gatsby. The time capsule was supposed to contain a […]
August 25, 2013
The Nature of Authority
A book describing the afterlife has been on the bestseller lists for some time, a first-person account by a neurosurgeon. It’s one of those books I’ve read reviews of, but […]
December 28, 2012
The Importance of Telling a Good Story
You would think that with scientific knowledge expanding ever so exponentially, and literalist interpretations of traditional scriptures undermined east and west by it, you would see a great popular surge […]
August 8, 2012
Secret Credos of the Godless
Notice how scientists are always talking about laws. Laws with a capital L, no less. Einstein’s Laws, Poiseuille’s Law, Hooke’s Law, Fourier’s Law, etc., etc. This endless law-giving reveals something […]