Big numbers, immortality, and Jimbo Joyce’s hell
Graham’s Number, folksily abbreviated to “g64,” was long famous as the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof. I quote...
top of page
Search
Richard Farr
- Sep 7, 2016
“Did someone really write a whole book on the meaning of the term ‘bulls**t’?”
Yes! One of the characters in Ghosts in the Machine mentions this, and it’s true! Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit is...
Richard Farr
- Sep 7, 2016
“You teach philosophy. What IS philosophy?”
In my first philosophy class, the professor began by saying something I've been repeating ever since: “Philosophy asks just two...
Richard Farr
- Sep 5, 2016
Absolutely! tough to eradicate
“Is the word ‘Absolutely!’ overused?” “Absolutely!” Or, for a change of pace: yes. I first heard someone complain about the Infestation...
Richard Farr
- Jul 12, 2016
Vesto Slipher and the expanding universe
One minor character in my Ghosts n the Machine is the Slipher Space Telescope. This is me giving a big fat fictional hint to NASA, in...
Richard Farr
- Jul 10, 2016
“No Twitter? No Facebook? No Instagram or InFog? Are you serious?”
The short explanation: I’m lazy. I can predict with great confidence that I will not die wishing I had spent more time at my computer....
Richard Farr
- Jul 9, 2016
“Does the Bretz Erratic exist?”
The Bretz Erratic, a giant rock, plays a minor role in the plot of Ghosts in the Machine, but it doesn’t exist, no—it just seemed like a...
Richard Farr
- Jun 16, 2016
Happy 200th, Frankenstein!
Today, June 16th 2016, is the 200th anniversary of the stormy night in Geneva when Byron told his houseguests they should all try their...
Richard Farr
- Mar 30, 2016
How Not To Get Any Writing Done
Dean Swift’s take on the problem is from On Poetry: A Rhapsody, 1733: Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline; Be...
Richard Farr
- Feb 26, 2016
“Is consciousness THE fundamental problem?”
The Babel Trilogy is about consciousness: what is it, and where does it come from, and how is it possible? But that problem is bound up...
Richard Farr
- Dec 21, 2015
“Tell me more about different cultures with spookily similar myths.”
In The Fire Seekers, Bill Calder is struck by the way similar myths emerge in cultures that have had no contact with one another, and in...
Richard Farr
- Dec 8, 2015
Two and a half “kudos” for language pedantry?
It’s spreading like rot, and there it is yet again, in this morning’s Seattle Times: a sports journalist praising one man but then...
Richard Farr
- Sep 1, 2015
“What’s a ‘great book’ you actually enjoyed reading?”
A lot of Americans hate JD Salinger’s A Catcher in the Rye because it was forced down their throats as a ‘classic’ at school. I missed...
Richard Farr
- Aug 20, 2015
Jonathan Swift on reason and madness
A note on re-reading Gulliver’s Travels: I’m struck again by the fact that it’s always fun to read the first three books, and always...
Richard Farr
- Oct 21, 2014
Has the Phaistos Disk been decoded at last?
As detailed in The Fire Seekers, many linguists have thought the Phaistos Disk will never be translated, because it’s a unique artifact –...
Richard Farr
- Oct 21, 2014
Devil in the Deep Blue Details: diving, GPS, and fact-checking
Alert Fire Seekers reader (and diver) David Jeffrey just pointed out to me that my description of divers using GPS to map an underwater...
Richard Farr
- Oct 10, 2014
A few thoughts on ‘Fire Seekers’ reviews
It’s fascinating. Some reviewers have said “The Fire Seekers” is great YA sci-fi. Others (including some who obviously enjoyed the book)...
Richard Farr
- Jun 3, 2014
A humbling experience with verbal tics
First, you do the writing. Then, the rewriting and throwing away and rewriting and rewriting. Then, editing, and more rewriting....
Richard Farr
- May 21, 2014
Inappropriate metaphor of the year award
According to a story in this morning’s New York Times, there’s controversy at Bryan College in Tennessee over a new addition to the...
Richard Farr
- Apr 21, 2014
Bad science, bad history, bad TV: we are but motes in the infinite cliché
I wanted to wish Neil deGrasse Tyson well on his rebooted COSMOS project, I really did: he’s a good scientist, and he can write well....
bottom of page