I have devoted some of my professional life to studying power. For example, in October 1992, I served as master
Read More
Last summer I reread Either/Or, after a long hiatus. The book was written by the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren
Read More
In this final episode of a three-part series, George concludes his exploration of The Arrow of Time. It may sound like a contradiction in terms, but the future has a history – this episode focuses on projections since the Renaissance of human longing for the perfect society into the future. This episode creates sound pictures of secular prophecies, from Thomas More’s Utopia, to Francis Bacon’s Utopia, and Condorcet’s failed dream of progress to Karl Marx’s ideal but cruel working-class state. The episode wraps up with Samuel Butler’s satirical Erewhon and the technocratic fantasies … and nightmares … of H.G. Wells
Read More
They say cats have nine lives. I must have used up one of my nine lives, the time I went
Read More
I have occasionally written a fan letter to an actor or musician I admire. And I have occasionally heard back.
Read More
In this second episode of a three-part series, George continues presenting The Arrow of Time. This episode examines the importance of chronology. Does the world have a beginning and an end? Basing themselves on the Bible, Early Church Fathers sought to date the divine Creation of the world (in 4004 BC), as well as to anticipate the Second Coming (perhaps in 800 AD). They tried to reconcile their hope for a better future with the disasters of their own day. After the Renaissance and Reformation, chronologies began to fan out – the world no longer seemed thousands of years old, but stretched back millions of years. Recent discoveries put the origin of life on Earth some 4 billion years ago.
Read More
Memory is powerful. As a historian and novelist, I have devoted a lot of my career to memory. Moreover, when
Read More
I occasionally use metaphors from the predigital age. They may seem out of date to some people, but I like
Read More
In this first episode of a three-part series, George explores In this first episode of a three-part series, George presents the history of an idea – The Arrow of Time. He starts off showing humans have not always seen time as a unique past pointing to a unique present and then to a unique future. There have been several competing models of time, from the cosmic wheel of time to the cyclical model of time, and from the regressive to the flux and Nemesis models of time.
Read More
Love is a leitmotiv threading its way through Mind the Gap – whether a son’s love for his mother, a
Read More
Whale biologist Richard Sears has devoted his career to understanding the blue whales, humpbacks, fin whales and belugas of the Gulf of St. Lawrence of Eastern Canada. In this archival interview, he tells George what he has discovered, how humans tend to project their own emotions and way of thinking onto whales, and what new knowledge we may gain in the future.
Read More
A friend tells me about a recurring nightmare. She is walking through the mist. Huge leafless trees loom about her,
Read More