December 2011
12 posts
“There was a full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever seen. It was the wild dream of an opium smoker, a vision of delirium. The head was like that of a fowl, the body that of a bloated lizard, the trailing tail was furnished with upward-turned spikes, and the curved back was edged with a high serrated fringe, which looked like a dozen cocks’ wattles placed...
Ikat stopped walking, and mimed a toast. “To the coming generations. May they always start something they can’t finish.”
—Induction, by Greg Egan
“If only I could tell you what I know, oh! how you’d dance!”
On the lonely job of progressive activism.
Dear activists, helpers, those who rail against the onslaught of ignorance and the like.
You get in many arguments, I see, and on topics that are well worth speaking up about. Social injustice, racism, sexism, ableism, privilege and a whole host of other inequalities that still exist in a world that isn’t what it could be.
Please know you’re making a difference. Remember when...
With apologies to Greg Egan
“For most people, navigating their own psyche is like wandering in circles through a maze. That’s what evolution has bequeathed us: a miserable, confusing prison. And the only thing crude drugs like cocaine or heroin or alcohol ever did was build short cuts to a few dead ends – or, like LSD, coat the walls of the maze with mirrors. Grey knights allow you to reshape the entire maze, at...
“That particular rat, number two hundred, had a theory about humans. He suggested that perhaps, despite their obviously large heads, considerable manual and verbal dexterity, their complex nesting and decorative structures assembled from inanimate objects, and behaviour patterns in general suggesting a fairly high level of curiosity about the universe, humans didn’t really know what...
The second best year of my life
Happy birthday, me!
I wanted to write another piece much like I did last year, but really there’s so much in common with it that I’ll just link back to then for the curious and for my newer followers, with a few additions and re-affirmations tacked on here.
The centre of all that change was a change in my attitude. Damned near everything from there onwards changed all those trite...
