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A Universe without FTL
FTL stands for faster than light travel. This is one of the standard tropes of science fiction. It may involve warp drive that turns space travel into an analog for ancient sea voyages, or the trip may...
View ArticleWhither the Schools and Colleges?
We’ve seen a great deal of discussion lately about whether our schools and colleges should re-open in the fall. We will see more. Donald Trump says it should happen. Dr. Fauci hasn’t said it shouldn’t,...
View Article‘What Realm of Supreme Values Will Be Capable of Uniting Europe? Technical...
Some weeks ago, before the lock-down became tortuous, my beautiful niece asked me to write her a short story about a man who is left at the altar by the love of his life. She was turning twenty and...
View ArticleRevealing ‘The Great Amputation’ of Postmodernism’s Triumph
The most important piece of writing of the past decade to me is an article written last year in Modern Age by Ewa Thompson, “The Great Amputation: Language in a Postmodern Era.” It is important because...
View ArticleThat Only America Could Have Produced: Chambers, Schlesinger, Nixon, and Hiss
Among the multitudes that America used to contain were Whittaker Chambers and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. A few months ago I happened to reread both Chambers’ autobiography Witness and Schlesinger’s...
View ArticleWhat Covid Changes will be “Permanent?”
A little over a month ago, I was in a ZOOM meeting hosted by the Bristol Bar Association, in which all of the judges in the Second Judicial District spoke about the measures they were taking concerning...
View ArticleMidnight Diner: Where Everybody Knows Your Ramen
At times these times require escape. Here again America’s once great institutions fail us. Perhaps it is just a question of personal taste, but I find very little that is produced by the American...
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A West Side Story
Willy, our retired super and part-time Bachata musician, told us that the street used to be a major avenue for drug dealing until Giuliani cleaned it up. He said that one of the local drug dealers once...
View ArticleCome Back Poetry, We Need You
For several decades subway riders in New York have been confronted with random slabs of verse entitled “Poetry in Motion”, whose main effect, whatever its purpose, is to confirm the onward sterility of...
View ArticleThe Hero With a Thousand Options: The Anti-Mythology of the Star Wars Sequels
The original Star Wars trilogy stands as one of the greatest cinematic trilogies ever made. It spawned a franchise that consists of additional movies, novels, comic books, video games, and even radio...
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Janet Malcolm’s Second Chance: Or How To Be a New Yorker New Yorker
The article, in the September 24 edition of The New York Review of Books, clangs like a false note. I read it once and wondered what its point was? I read it again and wondered what its hook was? The...
View ArticleIn Defense of Moviegoing
The moviegoing experience is in danger. The Walt Disney Company recently announced that it would make streaming its primary focus, if need be. What that means is that its big-budget films, such as its...
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NEW ESSAY: People in Boxes
It has been a little more than 18 years since my husband proposed to me in perhaps the least romantic way possible. But that’s not the story. We are gamers and science fiction fans, which, as anyone...
View ArticleThe Presumed Rise after the Fall of Civilization
If we fall, we’ll get back up again. If we tear it down, we’ll rebuild, bigger and better. That’s what we tell ourselves. That’s what we believe. That isn’t necessarily what happens, as the ruined...
View ArticleFaith or Moralism?
I’m going through the book of Romans with a friend of mine, and the first two chapters offer an interesting contrast. The second half of the first chapter talks about people who wallow in their sins...
View ArticleOn Afghanistan and Failure
Dan Bolger has been on my mind lately. You probably don’t know him. A quiet professional, he’s not a staple on cable news and only writes the occasional op-ed. In the faculty directory of NC State...
View ArticleWhat Covid Changes will be “Permanent?”
A little over a month ago, I was in a ZOOM meeting hosted by the Bristol Bar Association, in which all of the judges in the Second Judicial District spoke about the measures they were taking concerning...
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