Death used to be simple. Your heart stopped, you stopped breathing, the doctor sighed, closed your eyes with two fingers, and that was it. Now we have ventilators, defibrillators, ECMO machines, organ transplantation laws, fMRI scanners and ethics committees. The border between life and death did not move; we just started to see how fuzzy it always was.
Underneath the drama there are very boring facts: cells need oxygen, neurons … Read the rest
Rationality, if you think about it, is the least celebrated form of heroism. It has no anthem, no flag, no stadium. Yet it has saved more lives than courage ever did. Commander Spock, that calm half-human mirror to our chaos, is the perfect metaphor: the eyebrow that rises when others shout, the voice that says “calculate” when everyone else says “pray.” Logic, done properly, is erotic — not in the … Read the rest
Rationality, if you ask me, is deeply erotic. Commander Spock, that cool monument of logic, never had to flex muscles or shout in stadiums to attract attention. His power was quieter: the sharp eyebrow, the stillness of someone who has calculated every path through chaos and chosen the least destructive. Rationality, in its true form, is the art of long-term seduction — the kind that promises civilization itself might survive … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
“The world is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel” – Horace Walpole
“Only the Lonely” was the signature song of a guy named Roy Orbison, a star in the early rock’ n’ roll era. Orbison died in 1988 of a heart attack at the age of 52. Songs are full of lonely guys; they were back … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ As we study history together, I often show documentary films to my students. When these films are about the distant past, there is a voice (or person-moderator) who walks us through the information, using whatever illustrations can be mustered. But as we get nearer to modern times the documentaries come to life: actual human action in black and white. From the late 19th … Read the rest
