An early draft (deleted later) of my novel, Jellyfish Have Eyes, started with the discovery of a letter in which Ricardo, a champion of basic science, bemoaned rotting in jail for the dubious felony of using government funds to perform basic research considered...
The other day, I read excerpts from an amazing novel called Erewhon by Samuel Butler, published first anonymously in 1872. I was intrigued by the title, which turns out to be the name of a fictional country meaning “nowhere” spelled backwards with the letters “h” and...
“What are you thinking of?” my friend asked me, when I was sitting silently. “Nothing,” I answered. Then I qualified my response. “Really, nothing.” “Really?” he challenged me. Did I really ever have no thoughts, an empty mind? I don’t think so, although meditating...
The butterfly effect – very small events having a major effect on seemingly unrelated major events at a later date – is hard to appreciate fully due to the apparent lack of connection between the happenings. The term was coined by Edward Lorenz drawing from a...
Remote? What’s That? Last week I was in Paamiut, and Qaqortoq, two villages in Greenland, the biggest island in the world with a total population as meager as 56,000. The inhabitants are confined to dots of settlements around the coast, leaving inland blanketed with...
"Magical World of The Oldest Original Store in Iceland.” Entrance to the Oldest Original Store in Iceland. Eypor Jovinsson, great grandson of the shop's founders, poses in his Magic Bookstore in Flateyri, Iceland The apartment, unchanged over the years, of Eypor’s...
