Today, I am here to complain about a cheap trick that writers use to stretch out their stories. The reality of length requirements — short story, novel, half hour show, full hour show, etc. — is that the writer must come up with sufficient content to fill space allotted. …

Enrico Fermi, a physicist who excelled both as a theoretician and an experimentalist, is also famous for a conversation that he had with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski on the topic of UFO sightings in which Fermi at one point did a rough calculation of the…

I came across a discussion recently of a Christian apologist who, if offered the opportunity, would travel back in time to 33 C.E. — though he would describe it as Anno Domini, no doubt — to witness the crucifixion of Jesus, even if this journey were to be a one-way…

For the sake of my mental and cardiovascular health, I probably should not read headlines. My complaint here is not about what is going on in the world. There is plenty of cause for objection to that, but for the moment, I am going to call out a writing tic…

Reading a book for a certain kind of reader is akin to inviting guests to spend vacation in one’s home. Their conversation echoes around the living spaces, and their personalities leave odors in the atmosphere. …

According to John Keats, whose alter ego of a speaker of odes quotes what he imagines a Greek pot to be saying, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” This may be exactly what Hellenic crockery believes…

I have worked from time to time as an editor, both freelance and for small presses, in addition to my two decades of making suggestions increasingly strident over the course of the semester to composition students, most of whom had no desire to become writers. In that time, I have…

Edward surveyed the factory floor from the manager’s office high above. The machines stood in neat rows, each being run by a diligent worker. The troubles of last year had been smoothed out — his son, Randall, had seen to that. The boy had grown into a worthy heir, and…

According to the French philosopher, Voltaire, “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him,” the idea being that we must have a center around which all of reality organizes itself. …