Illness

Susan Sontag among others described illness as a metaphor for what culture does to the individual, as much as what germs and cells do to us. Why do we speak of ...

Predecessors

Wilderness hikers with an appropriate sense of nature follow the practicel of leaving no trace of their presence in the wild. There is a skill in learning not t...

Simplicity VI

The thin line between simplicity and eccentricity is easily crossed. Doubtless we have all discovered secrets of simplicity that others might deem eccentric. Fo...

Amygdala

One of the characteristics of science is to reduce phenomena to a set of simple explanations. The medieval Occam’s razor was the inspiration for this proc...

Sound and music

Sound has the capacity to conjure sensibilities in us, or rather, we interpret sounds in certain ways. Perhaps the highest refinements of this giving of meaning...

Bundles

We spend a life time cultivating likes and dislikes, points of view and threads of arguments, grooming how we appear to ourselves and to others. We are able to ...

Ultimate question

It used to be said that the ultimate philosophical question is “What would you do if you had 24 hours left to live?” This is the execution view of l...

Hermit-pope

Is it not the fate of hermits to fail in worldy standards of authority and persuasion? Their authority and their persuasiveness are only in their example, and c...

Art and the solitary

Rouault’s portrait of a clown is a self-portrait and yet a portrait of all of us. As Rouault himself said of the painting, “The clown?… but th...