Italo Calvino observed, 

behind the doors of the bookshop a formidable array of needy volumes is always waiting to ambush you.

A Modest Proposal

 

Assuming folks have heard the news from Texas, criminalizing abortion. What gets me is that nowadays the father could easily BE accountable (DNA tests!) also, but this is never considered.  

I propose some percentage of the father's income for the mother and child, by law, at least. 

update on Gobekli Tepe research

 

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210815-an-immense-mystery-older-than-stonehenge

Wordsworth, 1798

 

.....

Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.

.....

Reconciling Time and Eternity

citation 

....A 1946 transcription of a 1646 manuscript written by Cornelius Burges. The editor has omitted some commas....

THE

CONFESSION OF FAITH

OF THE

WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES

---

CHAPTER I.

Of the Holy Scripture.

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased....

 

Ronald Fernando Garcia Ruiz

"If the laws of physics are symmetrical as we think they are, then the Big Bang should have created matter and antimatter in the same amount. The fact that most of what we see is matter, and there is only about one part per billon of antimatter, means there is a violation of the most fundamental symmetries of physics, in a way that we can't explain with all that we know," says Ronald Fernando Garcia Ruiz, assistant professor of physics at MIT.

From the poet of "The Owl and the Pussycat"

we read Edward Lear:

Two old Bachelors were living in one house; One caught a Muffin, the other caught a Mouse. Said he who caught the Muffin to him who caught the Mouse,-- 'This happens just in time! For we've nothing in the house, 'Save a tiny slice of lemon and a teaspoonful of honey, 'And what to do for dinner -- since we haven't any money? 'And what can we expect if we haven't any dinner, 'But to loose our teeth and eyelashes and keep on growing thinner?' Said he who caught the Mouse to him who caught the Muffin,-- 'We might cook this little Mouse, if we had only some Stuffin'! 'If we had but Sage and Onion we could do extremely well, 'But how to get that Stuffin' it is difficult to tell'-- Those two old Bachelors ran quickly to the town And asked for Sage and Onions as they wandered up and down; They borrowed two large Onions, but no Sage was to be found In the Shops, or in the Market, or in all the Gardens round. But some one said, -- 'A hill there is, a little to the north, 'And to its purpledicular top a narrow way leads forth;-- 'And there among the rugged rocks abides an ancient Sage,-- 'An earnest Man, who reads all day a most perplexing page. 'Climb up, and seize him by the toes! -- all studious as he sits,-- 'And pull him down, -- and chop him into endless little bits! 'Then mix him with your Onion, (cut up likewise into Scraps,)-- 'When your Stuffin' will be ready -- and very good: perhaps.' Those two old Bachelors without loss of time The nearly purpledicular crags at once began to climb; And at the top, among the rocks, all seated in a nook, They saw that Sage, a reading of a most enormous book. 'You earnest Sage!' aloud they cried, 'your book you've read enough in!-- 'We wish to chop you into bits to mix you into Stuffin'!'-- But that old Sage looked calmly up, and with his awful book, At those two Bachelors' bald heads a certain aim he took;-- and over crag and precipice they rolled promiscuous down,-- At once they rolled, and never stopped in lane or field or town,-- And when they reached their house, they found (besides their want                                                                              of Stuffin',) The Mouse had fled; -- and, previously, had eaten up the Muffin. They left their home in silence by the once convivial door. And from that hour those Bachelors were never heard of more.