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The Donkey and the Meaning of Life
“Come with me. I’ll teach you the flowers and the stars.” Beneath our anxious quickenings, beneath our fanged fears, beneath the rusted armors of conviction, tenderness is what we long for — tenderness to salve our bruising contact with reality, to warm us awake from the frozen stupor of near-living. Tenderness is what permeates Platero…
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Love Anyway
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway…
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Ursula K. Le Guin on the Meaning of Life
We are the survivors of immense and minute events — violent cosmic collisions and subtle genetic mutations, the deaths of innumerable suns and the births of innumerable cells, the splitting of continents and the splitting of atoms. Out of it all, we emerged as creatures muzzled by a consciousness that demands we give meaning to…
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Are Facts More Dead?
Misrepresenting facts and lying have long been a part of politics. However, it was claimed facts died on April 18, 2012. On this day Representative Allen West of my adopted state of Florida claimed that about 80 congressional democrats were members of the Communist Party. This was not true, but West decided to stand by his…
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Corn Syrup by Any Other Name
While high fructose corn syrup (usually a blend of fructose and glucose) was a ubiquitous food ingredient, it now has a bad reputation. For example, the bottle of syrup I used on my pancakes proudly proclaims, “no high fructose corn syrup!” As consumers turned against high fructose corn syrup, the Corn Refiners Association tried to get the…