My Morning Routine: Tarrying With the Negative

...I had great difficulty with this book and had to read chapters twice, sometimes three times and I’m still unable to summarize large sections. Žižek assumes familiarity with Hegel and Lacan, two notoriously difficult thinkers. Lacan’s thought evolved over his life and you’d have to read a lot of material to get a handle on his ideas, not to mention also being familiar with Freud. That said, Žižek helped me better understand Hegel’s dialectics whil...

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Camping on Halloween Night

...eard water and ran to the stream bed. The day before it had been dry, now it ran with water. I knew it was a temporary flow, but the sight of running water after a long dry summer brought tears to my eyes, and I remembered that Halloween is the Celtic New Year. It’s a time of darkness, and a time of death (the traditional time for slaughtering stock), but in death there is renewal, and I felt that renewal in the moist loam beneath my feet and the...

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How to Roast Coffee in a Whirley Pop Popcorn Maker

...do a post about how to install a thermometer in the future, but until that time, you can look at these directions on the Sweet Maria’s website. Whirley Pop Coffee Roasting Procedure Roasting coffee is pretty straightforward and is basically all about adjusting the heat on your burner so that you don’t either roast the beans too quickly or too slowly. It takes a few times to get the hang of it, and while installing a thermometer in your popper will...

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Stellarium: A Handy Desktop Planetarium

...the Persead shower that reached its peak last week). You’ll want to pick a time when the moon is not up. Or let’s say you want to have some friends over for some planetary viewing and a glass of bourbon (as happened last night at the Root Simple compound). In that case you might want to pick a time when you can also take a look at the moon. In the pre-personal computer era I used to use a planisphere. I still have my 1980s era plastic planisphere....

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A Season of Light in Darkness

...t said to me, with tears in her eyes, “Honey, I’ve been a nurse for a long time and…well, you need to call your loved ones. Now.” Okay, so imagine being in this position. Imagine having to call your mom and tell her, in roundabout terms, that you might be dying soon. You may not see her again. To be sure, many are not even granted that much grace before dying, but my point here is that there are no words. Words are simply inadequate in moments lik...

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