“I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.”
—3A. ESSAY - Hugh Gallagher
April 2010
41 posts
Play
Play
“In five years it will be 2015 and you will be as far removed from 1985 as Marty McFly was from 1955.”
—
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
—Albert Einstein
Play
“
I remember when I taught creative writing to freshmen at Boston University. The first month almost every student wrote about sex. I went to my advisor and asked him why I am getting twenty stories about having sex.
He said, “Are all the stories terrible?”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “That happens every semester. When you love something, you want to write about it. But you never know enough about it to write it in an interesting way until you know it closely enough to hate it as well.”
” —Penelope Trunk (via diana-vilibert)
“Thousands are pouring in to the main square to stand in line. Some cheer but mostly they gawp. Those watching seem confused. “The Russian are behind this,” one rumor goes. But “what is going on?” is the most common refrain.”
—Blood in the Streets of Bishkek
“Bake ‘em away, Toys!”
—Chief Wiggum
Play
“One day, high above Arizona , we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. ‘Ninety knots,’ ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. ‘One-twenty on the ground,’ was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was ‘Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,’ ATC responded. The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter’s mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, ’ Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.’ We did not hear another transmis sion on that frequency all the way to the coast.”
—
The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 Blackbird
-More information on the Aspen 20 story
“But even if we accept Sicha’s take that the iPad is only for consumption, what’s so bad about that? Lots of human inventions offer no outlet for creating things—among them the DVD player, the Kindle, the Wii, and the paperback. None of these devices resulted in a dearth of art or criticism, and it seems paranoid to think that the iPad will have that effect on our culture.”
—You Don’t Need an iPad
“We know precisely when this story of projecting our lack into the sky began: 165 B.C., patented by the ancient Jews. Until then, heaven—shamayim—was the home of God and his angels. Occasionally God descended from it to give orders and indulge in a little light smiting, but there was a strict no-dead-people door policy. Humans didn’t get in, and they didn’t expect to. The best you could hope for after death was for your bones to be buried with your people in a shared tomb and for your story to carry on through your descendants. It was a realistic, humanistic approach to death. You go, but your people live on.”
—Trouble in Paradise - Why are Americans so credulous about heaven?
Play
