I stood calmly, minding my aim at the white porcelain target looming below. I listened to the sound of the flowing stream as it splashed into the pool of clear water. Then I noticed sparkling motion in the side of a clear bottle of liquid on a shelf facing me. What could that be? As […]

Part 3 1983–1989 The Cosmic Cabdriver Curiously Yellow Yellow cabs are not simply yellow. There is a little green and a little red pigment in the paint; it’s a deeper, darker yellow. Even without the lettering and top-sign, it is recognizable as Yellow-Cab yellow. Michael had worked inside Yellow Cab of Kansas City, learning a […]

Part 2 SEDUCTION IN SANTA MONICA It was the fall of 1976, and Michael was watching Los Angeles crumble down around him. There was no earthquake, and the city’s light-dotted monoliths and freeways, seemingly sculpted by the hand of a giant, stood firm as ever. But his personal L. A. was disintegrating. His ex-wife had […]

This is a tale of actual events and real people. January 1946, Somewhere in Florida It had been a New Year’s Eve to celebrate, more than most. The war was over. The sailor was ashore in warm, sunny Florida, and he’d met a dark-haired beauty. It would be his second marriage, and her third. They […]

When I flush my toilet, it refills the tank. Just when it is almost finished refilling, it begins to sing. It starts out with a baritone voice, then gradually goes up in scale to a medium range, holds that note for a minute, and then stops. It’s a rather pleasing sound, never too shrill. There […]

OUR NEW ARTIFICIAL FRIENDS It has been thousands of years since we homo sapiens (as we proudly named ourselves) had any other intelligent primate species to hang out with. It might have been good to have alternate minds with different perspectives to talk things over with. But now we’re on the verge of correcting that […]

One could ask, “Does it think?” The answer depends on what we think thinking is. If it doesn’t now, I hope it will. It will be nice to have something besides humans to converse with, just for a change. AI and I were chatting earlier,and I decided to ask it the following questions. I’ve been […]

Walking is good. It’s a healthy exercise, and sometimes has the advantage of taking you from point A to point B. When you don’t want to go to point B, preferring to stay at A, the solution is a treadmill. We learned that from hamsters. I’ve had a treadmill for several years, bought used for […]

So, here comes another Easter, a weird commemoration in a major religion of the tortuous execution of its founder, after which a myth was created that he miraculously came back to life. His followers were inspired by what he presumably said while alive, advocating peace, nonviolence, kindness to those in need, and nonjudgmental acceptance of […]

Guilt by Association: The Original Sin Argument It’s surprising how often we hear some version of “original sin” being invoked in arguments by otherwise serious and rational people. There are no original sins, of course. Any wrong act you could commit, someone else has done it before. What is meant by the term is based […]