The Great Library of Mortlake Sinister Tomes of the Royal Occultist Mythos. 4. The Unfettered Word Many are the books which claim to hold the secrets of the Almighty. Most are no more privy to His…

Everyone in this industry claims to be busy, but the Japanese character 忙 tells a far more sinister story. Look closer and you will see a heart, 忄, standing beside 亡, the character for gone. This is…

About two years ago, I went to a local Shiva temple in Ujjain, one of the famous 84, for a family ritual. The head priest there is a friend of my brother. So we had no problem in making all the…

Preview of a post on Substack: a second book chapter (on jazz poetics), and a survey of the critical field-- jazz/poetry, critical legacies, collective remembrance. <img alt="" class="sizing-normal"…

In memory of THOMAS HOMAN who died Jan. 17, 1832, AEt, 75. His Wife TABITHA HOMAN, died March. 11, 1837. AEt, 73. Also two Daughters TABITHA died Aug. 24, 1812, AEt. 35 HANNAH died Feb. 2, 1818, AEt.…

This is a collection of twitter discussions with David Pearce. He is a hedonic utilitarian, essentially, and he takes that position to an extreme conclusion: that life should be re-engineered to…

I am currently preparing for my lecanomancy (dish-divining) workshop with students. Followers of my blogging (if there are any) would know that I conducted this twice before and I have published my…

Some birds throw some vocal pauses into their repertoire. And in prayer, the Spirit can do a lot with the pauses between the notes in your song.

Visited the Toltec ruins at Tula today and spent some time reflecting on just how long people have been building and celebrating and puzzling the mysteries of the universe.

nezahualcoyotl (nahuatl): The caverns of earth are filled with pestilential dust which once was the bones, the flesh, the bodies of great ones who sate upon thrones, deciding causes, ruling…

A look at my academic lineage.

Much of what reading does to a person happens not at the instant a sentence yields its meaning but across the hours a mind spends afterward on what the book raised—grappling with it, drawing…

A really interesting post about God I've found on the internet.

Smrt je jedním z klíčových témat v životě člověka. Čím je starší nebo nemocný (nebo jeho blízcí), tím více se úvahy a představy o ní vkrádají do jeho mysli a snů. Většinou v něm vyvolávají strach.…

Three months ago, Jean Houston’s body left this world, but her spirit will remain with us forever. She was an awesome human being who inspired so many people (including me) throughout her life. I am…

From Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul by Jane Roberts Chapter 2, SESSION 515, FEBRUARY 11, 1970, 9:20 P.M. WEDNESDAY Now: The senses that you use, in a very real manner, create the…

Last week I got a call from George “The Giant” McArthur, who was reaching out with sad news. Our friend Vivian Wheeler had passed away at the age of 77 on July 27. Vivian was a bearded lady who had…

An investigation into the pitch standards used in UK bells. [...]Read More... from Bell Pitch Standards

You probably think you know the character 紹 because it pops up in words like introduction or referral letter and then vanishes into thin air. Most learners just memorize its shape as a boring pattern…

KRISA: o were a sweet(good)show XENOS: but we(were)swiftly shaking(brandishing, wielding)the(lots)beetles(that destroy bee-hives) into the(shameless)dog-skin(cap) KRISA: lips touching so lightly…

New on the site this time, installment 2 of Gan Yang's interview with Zha Jianying in her classic volume The 1980s.&nbsp; Gan's interview is lively and revealing, but extremely long (35,000 words in…

"Gerritsen 2023 raises a good worry about revolutionary moral fictionalism, as advocated in "Joyce 2001. The (revolutionary moral) fictionalist says that our naive moral practice rests on the…

This photograph of the Hankins family was likely taken in about 1898-1899, based on how old my grandfather, Francis William Hankins, looks in the photo. The identifications are typed on a piece of…

When the Coal Strike of 1902 turned violent, Pennsylvania sent armed troops into its mining towns. This photograph from Leslie's Illustrated captures the 8th National Guard patrolling the streets of…

Hmm... well since it was never born it can never die. 'It' was/is/will never 'be' - life doesn't noun although humans appear to! Words appear to be 'pockets of power'. We make them into things.…

Learning a new language takes time but it doesn't have to take such an indefinite time as it did for me. Read about my journey to avoid my mistakes.

Does AI make plastic skin? Is my skin smooth enough? Normal skin with no pores? Is AI a mirror? A distorting one? A mirror needs skin to reflect. There's no skin on AI bodies. (Art is a way of…

The Odyssey received a Hollywood adaptation, but is it EPIC? Jai discusses the original poem, the musical, Nolan's film & the dilemma of adaptations.

There is a scene in Ricky Gervais' series AfterLife - which follows Tony after his wife passes away from cancer. A coworker asks Tony: "If you are an atheist, and you don't believe in an afterlife.…

Alyosha&#8217;s Hope Why should someone else’s success — or even their happiness — feel like a personal assault? When we see the successful person finally fail, why does some tiny part of us think:…

Chapter 4: Culture As Armor | Glass Bones: Art, Mortality, and the Human MindIn Chapter 4 of Glass Bones: Art, Mortality, and the Human Mind, I turn to one of Ernest Becker’s central ideas: culture…

I'm still knee-deep in work on the revision of Thousand Suns and a couple of other writing projects, hence my continued neglect of the blog. Apologies! I will have more posts when the opportunity…

An interesting, somewhat poetic quote: Found (along with lots more) at Quote Investigator website: Quote Origin: Mathematics Is the Simple Bit. It’s the Stuff We Can Understand. It’s Cats That Are…

&#8220;The feeling that the world is a bounded whole&#8211;that is the mystical.&#8221; &#8212; Wittgenstein The Spanish word quedar can be translated as to remain, to stay, to meet, to fit, to suit…

&nbsp; &nbsp; 40 Bible Passages About AI: Scripture for an Age of Intelligent Machines releases tomorrow, and I wrote two of the chapters. Chapter 25 is on 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, where Paul tells…

I read the sanitized version of fairy tales when I was a kid—by which I mean the version of the story where things end mostly happily. The collections of fairy tales that eliminated the more violent…

I read the sanitized version of fairy tales when I was a kid—by which I mean the version of the story where things end mostly happily. The collections of fairy tales that eliminated the more violent…

Imagine the silence in Mission Control on July 20, 1969. The entire world held its breath, watching a grainy black-and-white feed of a dusty lunar surface rushing toward a fragile spacecraft. All…

After the French Revolution, the advancing armies of France’s new militant republic distressed many in Europe and some fared far worse than the continent’s merchants during these years. Nonetheless,…

From Stefan Zweig&#8217;s short book on the famous sixteenth-century Frenchman, a passage where Montaigne rales against schooling as the mere transmission of knowledge: “They never cease whining into…

This article is derived from work I carried out for a private client in 2020, examining the life of Albert Edward Harnott. [&#8230;] The post 1st Hampshires on the Somme, 23 October 1916 appeared…

I found a copy of Clavell’s Tai Pan and decided to read it, to learn more about the history of Hong Kong. (“Tai Pan” is a term for a master trader.) Then I started to read it, and was disappointed by…

The River Medway and the outer wall of Rochester Castle from the top of the castle&#8217;s keep. Photo May 2015. Continue reading

Jesus spoke many parables which people praise, from the prodigal son and the lost sheep to baking bread and planting fields. And then there is the parable of the shrewd manager (Luke 16:1-9). Godly…

Rev 6:12-14I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red,&#xA0;and the stars in the sky…

So, there is the &ldquo;biological&rdquo; and &ldquo;evolutionary&rdquo; convergence. What does it mean to &ldquo;know&rdquo; something, and what is worth knowing? I have seen very nice guys who know…

A thought experiment: suppose I wanted to transform the European Convention on Human Rights into a vehicle for state regulation of speech, how would I go about it? At first sight it should not be…

The source of this information is the war diary of the General Staff at X Corps headquarters (National Archives piece number WO95/853). [&#8230;] The post Order of battle of X Corps 25 October 1917…

The sixth of Atisa’s nine contemplations is: Your Body Is Fragile and Vulnerable Most of us believe that we are our bodies. As long as our bodies are functional human units, we feel certain that we…

I just noticed that Scrub Mommy sponges are a product of the Scrub Daddy sponge company. This feels like some sort of analogy for the creation of Eve from Adam's rib: Genesis 2 ²⁰But for Adam no…