When one starts looking at the Old Testament for patterns, one of the patterns that emerges is a very odd one. There is a whole raft of people whose lives started out okay, and at some point may have even appeared to be heading towards glorious accomplishments, but who at…

A long time ago, I read Umberto Eco’s explanation of how he became an atheist. He was watching a soccer game from way up in the stands, and feeling disconnected from what was going on below. From that vantage point, all the people just looked like little ants moving around…

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? The traditional answer is: “Practice, practice, practice.” The popular interpretation of Malcolm Gladwell is: “Ten thousand hours of practice.” Hour after hour after hour, the practicer slogs on, doing the same scales day after day, first in D, then in A, then in…

Solon, an Athenian ruler in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, is said to have told a story of two brothers, Cleobis and Biton. They were leading what we today might refer to as “the good life”; they had all they needed, and they were hardworking, talented, strong and healthy…

Almost 4400 years ago, there was a powerful ruler in Egypt named Ptahhotep who wrote an instruction manual filled with cultural wisdom — like the Book of Proverbs, but way older. In it, he says things like the following : “Do not gossip in your neighbourhood, because people respect the…

Connie Willis, an award-winning science fiction author, has figured out how time works. In her time travel novels (which I read quite a while back, so my descriptions may not be exact), scientists of the future have invented a time travel machine that moves between the past and present —…