Asylum Earth: The Voices in My Head are Scientists
“Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true” – Niels Bohr We’re smart. We’re handsome. We …
Category Archives: Philosophy
All Your Axioms are Postulates: Pseudoscience vs. Pseudometaphysics
“I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief …
The Enchanted Universe and Its Enemies
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” – Friedrich Nietzsche Two nihilists …
Eternalism vs. Presentism: How Soon is Now?
“Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations” ― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels I have a …
Release the Calamari: Hans Egede and the Greenland Kraken
“Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty” – Brian Greene On the internet, nobody can hear you scream. Unless you use …
If It Weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, We’d Still be Eating Frozen Radio Dinners
Veteran anomalist Seriah Azkath and I spend an hour discussing the vagaries of strange history, the War between the Pygmies …
Our Furry Forefathers: The Basque History of Inter-species Relations
“When the fox is engaging you in conversation, keep an eye on your chicken” – Basque Proverb The Basque people …
The Ecstasy of Error: Green Cards in Magonia
“It is then that ceasing to take the natural, the spiritual view of the world and its waywardness, he takes …
Haunted House Hunting with Mrs. Butler
“It is curious to think that what to one of us means so much to another is without any signification. …
Bugging Out During the Second Great Dying
“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten …
Lies, Damn Lies, and Anomalies: Fake News and Skeptical Schadenfreude
“Every science is made up entirely of anomalies rearranged to fit” – R. A. Lafferty Every Tom, Dick, and Harriet …
Divine Messaging for Fun and Prophet
“As we see from the Scriptures, it had become a common and proverbial expression that if someone wanted to refer …
The Specious Present: It’s the Size of the Moment that Matters
“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what …
Our Colonized Consciousness: Defense Against the Doppelgänger
“If you meet your double, you should kill him” – Chris Cabin, Double Take The marketing potential with doppelgängers is …
EsoterX: Podcasts are the Retina of the Mind’s Eye
The inimitable Greg Bishop and I discuss folklore as an early warning system, skeptics vs. believers (who often have the …
Statutory Murder: The Trial of Theagenes of Thasos
“A fiction of law shall never be contradicted so as to defeat the end for which it was invented, but …
Where the Wild Things Are: Anomalies and the Poverty of Critical Thinking
“People tend to say ‘I like independent thinkers but they must think what I want them to think independently’” – …
Sympathetic Empiricism and the Palatine Lights
“Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response” – Arthur M. Schlesinger How many …
Skepticism and the Post-Human Economy
“Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism” – Louis Pasteur I’ll take a true believer over a …
Perish, then Publish: Jacopo Alighieri and the 13 Missing Cantos
“Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live anymore” – Carlos …
Political Mysticism: Eugene Vintras and the Saviours of Louis XVII
“Experts often possess more data than judgment” – Colin Powell Politics is a kind of mysticism, in so far as …
Our Xenomorph Who Art in Heaven
“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult” – Rita Rudner That darned Enlightenment. …
Anomalistic Beer Goggles: The Consequences of Doubt
“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge” – Abraham Joshua Heschel Some days I wake up on …
EsoterX: It’s Not True I Had Nothing On, I Had the Radio On
Saturday night, I spent two hours with the Dark Wizards of Podcasting Roejen Razorwire and Lobo on their Project Archivist …
The Danmar Experiments: Chasing Ghosts to the Tail of the Earth
“Empiricism and idealism alike are faced with a problem to which, so far, philosophy has found no satisfactory solution. This …
Philosophical Monsters Ship in Black Boxes
“Not all stories have happy endings; but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth the read” ― Cassia Leo, Black Box …
Why We Elect Monsters
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies” – …
I’ll See Your Fear of Death and Raise you Some Existential Anxiety
“Death is the last enemy: once we’ve got past that I think everything will be alright” – Alice Thomas Ellis …
Primate Estate Planning: Monkeying Around with Extinction
“I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other …
Clowning Around: At Play in the Uncanny Valley
“I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one …
Jabberwocky in the House of Uncommons: The Honorable Apparition of Sir Carne Rasch
“I work for myself, which is fun. Except when I call in sick, I know I’m lying” – Rita Rudner …
Everyone’s a Little Bit Crazy: Schizotypy and Strange Phenomena
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re …
Training Wheels of the Gods: João Vaz Corte-Real and the New Land of Codfish
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it” – Winston Churchill Should you decide to become …
How to Measure Useful Fictions: Science, Anomalistics, and “As if” Philosophy
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if …
Mongrel Gods and Demon Mutts: Heathens in the Woodpile
“Every invasion or collision or mingling of races thus brought their respective religions into contact and rivalry; and as no …
Punking the Plague: Anthropomorphic Disease is Dumb
“What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise …
Ghost Morality and Celestial Bureaucracy: What Would Casper Do?
“By aiming for paradise, we lose sight of earth. Hope of a beyond and aspiration to an afterlife engender a …
Supercivilization and the Shoe Event Horizon
“We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; …
Sisyphus was a Sissy: The Ghost of Benjie Gear
“Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to …
First You Get the Money, Then You Get the Women, Then you Find Out it’s a Simulation
“Either we’re going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist, those are the …
