On necessary heresy

With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow audience into the core of one of the crucial issues of our time: What makes some religions lethal? How do they employ aggressive irrationality to justify threatening and controlling non-believers as well as believers? What should be our response?

Harris. . .   Read More

Time capsule secrets

High school classes and world’s fairs do it. Universities and builders and companies and municipalities do it. They bury little hoards of things they think people in the future will treasure— the future being ten years or ten thousand or never (most time capsules are immediately forgotten). Something strange, deep, and. . .   Read More

The Long Now

Brian told the origins of his realizations about the “small here” versus the “big here” and the “short now” versus the “long now.” He noted that the Big Here is pretty well popularized now, with exotic restaurants everywhere, “world” music, globalization, and routine photos of the whole earth. Instant world news and. . .   Read More