Writing
His Baryonic Life
He lay on the couch–a very tiny couch, so microscopic it took a cyclotron the size of an Ikea to resolve it–and told me his story. Here’s my story, Prof, he said. He was very still, though not quite motionless, but barely more than the quantum zero point motion. I was born in violence, Prof, … Continue reading
The Malevolence of Objects
Is your shampoo angling to make partner at the firm ahead of you? Is your wall-to-wall carpet convincing your friends to betray you to the secret police in exchange for special access to foreign-made luxury goods? Are your Brook Brothers shirts plotting to set your house on fire for the insurance money?
I am John Galt
The looters and moochers are gathering again, my friends. We are now under the heel of an anarchist totalitarian voodoo doctor bent on destroying America. For 50 years, they have plotted revenge. Their weapon: a small modification to the tax code! See, right now you’re nodding your head. This is so clear to you, because … Continue reading
Headstart Elan
Pre-conception screening hadn’t turned up anything, so the Kieslowski-Millers spent their entire discretionary health stipend on a Headstart Elan package for Harriet-to-be. Most parents of healthy children did. Continue reading
A Stroll Down Memory Lane
This photo was taken at our summer house in the Hamptons. That’s me on the bottom! My uncle, above, was a notorious prankster. I remember spending days in his subterranean laboratory on our estate, helping him pipette various strains of his recombinant Ebola virus, or fixing his home-made calutron to separate out the isotopes of uranium.
Etcheverry, Cordel, Fomalhaut
“Your first task,” he said trying to mime the body shape of the creature. “Is to convince it to evert its gastrocysts. It will only do that if you can offer it something enticing. I found quite by accident that it is overly fond of anything tannic. Leather, for instance.” Continue reading
Choose Your Own Adventure
1. You awake in a white room. My God, you’re colorblind! No, wait, you’re not. Gradually you remember why you are here. The supervillain-psychiatrist Doctor Praetorian has imprisoned you in the monochrome room until you work through issues stemming from your experience, as a child watching through a keyhole, of witnessing your mother ritualistically whitewash … Continue reading
Double-cross with Crème de Menthe
“Afar off the towers of Florence. And she wandered as though in a dream o’er wavering seas of barley touched with crimson stains of poppies. All unobserved he came to her. There came from his lips no wordy protestations such as formal lovers use. No such eloquence was his, nor did he suffer from the … Continue reading
Le Garçon de l’Eau
. Héro instantané. Ajoutez juste l’eau. . Vive le différence! While France is justly celebrated for its long tradition of brilliant and challenging cinema, Hollywood specializes in taking that brilliance and grinding it into slick pablum. In 1998, while millions of illiterates thrilled to the spectacle of Adam Sandler playing an angry manchild in “The … Continue reading
Make brains! Make Brains! or, The Laser of Life and Thought
Planetary atmosphere are entropy pumps. The surface of a atmosphere-clad planet is out of thermodynamic equilibrium, providing an inversion of available free energy, in the same way that a laser works through pumping a population inversion of metastable states. Life can be approximated as a classical refrigerator, using the locally available disequilibrium to pump out … Continue reading