“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
You Can Listen Here We read novels to learn how to do something – sight a 16-pound cannon in preparation for a broadside exploding out of the gun deck of a 19th century British Man-of War*; prepare a runway in a field for the desperate takeoff of a small plane**; learn how to recognize agents of the secret police in late 20th century Libya*^; understand the processes by which a new drug emerges from […]
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You Can Listen Here I have forgotten where, but in something he had written George Orwell named the virtue he admired most. He lived frugally and was often very poor. He spent much of his adult life with the working class. He liked their grit, their cheerfulness in adversity and more than anything else, their decency. They were loyal to their friends, took care of their families, worked hard, took delight in small pleasures, […]
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You Can Listen Here There is no immortality in this life, not in a universe of 200 to 500 billion galaxies*, each with billions of its own stars, every one of them in its own state of flux, coalescing out of gases or blowing up in solar system sized explosions, and not on a planet where mountain chains wear down to nubs and continents slide tectonically around the surface of the earth like eggs […]
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You Can Listen Here Through my twenties and into my forties New York City was the beckoning hand, the place that perpetually sighed from afar that my life could soar if only I made the first leap – quit my job, cut my ties, sold my belongings, packed only one suitcase — to meet its enchantment at the maximum intensity of its power, I had to travel light so as to leave and enter […]
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