Humans have long been, and remain, deeply attached to morality. Even confirmed criminals, for example, routinely say things like, “That ain’t right,” which is purely a moral judgment.
This focus on morality holds firm across the panorama of human of life. Examine any workplace and you’ll find a long stream of moral judgments: “He didn’t treat me right,” “She’s arrogant,” “That’s a man you can respect,” and so on. Continue reading “The Dispersion of Moral Energies”
The next day I slept late, had breakfast, then checked out of my hotel and walked around Midtown, amusing myself as I went. I was at Grand Central long before six o’clock for the 20th Century Limited, but soon enough was on the train, heading back to Chicago. I was in my cabin and asleep before ten o’clock.
I slept well, until I was awakened by a fairly large thud, right in my cabin. I pulled open my eyes to see a naked man, picking himself up from the floor and smiling at me. Feelings of shock, startle and fear rose in me, but slowly, I suppose because I was coming out of a fairly deep sleep. And before I could process those impulses, the man, in a cheery British accent was speaking. Continue reading “Return Engagements: Book Three (Part Sixteen)”
Your responses to my request for family-friendly entertainment were overwhelming. Thank you all.
At first I intended on vetting the list and commenting on the various titles, but there were far too many. And so, you’ll have to look into these yourselves prior to viewing. Imdb.com seems to be a useful resource for that. I’ve also appended a useful comment at the end.
Here’s the list, in no particular order: Continue reading “A List of Family Entertainment”
It was now one minute before JTM would head out into the world. He had to find some way to do something meaningful. He still had no idea of what that might be, but he was sure that he couldn’t find it in Louisville or in any of the other “islands of civilization” that were administered by the New Order. Those people were just as distracted with shiny images as he had been.
The clock reached 9:01 am and he started to roll off his table. As soon as his hips slid over the edge he had to grab it and hang on; if he hadn’t, he would have fallen. After a minute or so, he stabilized and found that he could walk steadily, but he was still nauseated and in pain. He looked around for drugs but found none. Continue reading “The Redemption of J. Taylor Mohammed, Part 2”
The morning after Yom Kippur (Thursday, Sept. 25th)I rolled out of bed and began checklists for my next steps, just barely squeezing in my homesick routine. Everything came together fast and hard. That afternoon I made my travel reservations.
I was as sure as I could be that none of my contacts went to the government with their letter (if they didn’t think I was serious, they’d write me off as a crank), but I was about to go to large cities, carrying pieces of a spacecraft the Feds might know was on the loose. After all, they would have seen impact marks, skid marks and truck tracks at the crash site, not to mention the motorcycle. It was obvious that someone made away with one of the spacecrafts. Continue reading “Return Engagements: Book Three (Part Fifteen)”
This is the story that opened my first draft of The Breaking Dawn. I replaced it because a new opening suited the book far better, but also because it was misunderstood. People saw the name, “Mohammed,” and thought, “terrorist.” That wasn’t how I wanted to open a book.
Still, I like the story and so I’ve decided to post it here. To be clear, J. Taylor Mohammed is a young, American, black man. Back in the 1960s, Americans of African extraction began switching to African names, and there are a lot of Mohammeds in Africa. This young man was not a Muslim; he was merely carrying one of those names.
This is his story. Continue reading “The Redemption of J. Taylor Mohammed, Part 1”
The purpose of my trip to the East Coast was to mail my first batch of letters. Washington DC, I had decided, would be the best place from which to send them; it would keep anyone searching for me far away from where I really was, and might convince them I was some kind of government insider, again misdirecting them. Continue reading “Return Engagements: Book Three (Part Fourteen)”
Those of us who aren’t mainlining TV and Facebook have a fairly clear understanding that the rulership of the West is in trouble: their debts are far beyond payable, while the global East and South are starting to pull away. Having only two primary options – system collapse or reduced standards of living – they are opting for the second.
The great challenge facing rulership, then, is to make their flocks accept being poorer… to get used to being poor. And to make that happen, they’re promoting a new religion, which we can simply call Green. Continue reading ““Green” Means “Poor””
To be a parent is to be assaulted with hard questions. And what’s especially hard is that these are fundamental questions, and most of us lack solid answers to them.
For example, when a child says, “Well, why shouldn’t I lie? It keeps me out of trouble and gets me what I want,” most parents have no real answer. We can say, “Lying is a sin,” or “Lying is wrong,” but that doesn’t actually answer the question. It merely steps around it, referencing an authority saying to not do it. Continue reading “Assaulted With Hard Questions”
By the first week of August I had bought myself a car (a Buick Super), settled into my apartment, developed all my film, made friends with a few workers at the small factory next door to my garage, and began collecting the names of journalists who might have some actual guts. I also bought a good mimeograph machine. (A mimeograph was a low-tech version of a copy machine.) Continue reading “Return Engagements: Book Three (Part Thirteen)”
