Richard FarrSep 8, 2016Big numbers, immortality, and Jimbo Joyce’s hellGraham’s Number, folksily abbreviated to “g64,” was long famous as the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof. I quote...
Richard FarrSep 8, 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 FarrSep 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 FarrSep 6, 2016Absolutely! 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 FarrJul 12, 2016Vesto Slipher and the expanding universeOne 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 FarrJul 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 FarrJul 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 FarrJun 17, 2016Happy 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 FarrMar 30, 2016How Not To Get Any Writing DoneDean Swift’s take on the problem is from On Poetry: A Rhapsody, 1733: Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline; Be...
Richard FarrFeb 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 FarrDec 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 FarrDec 8, 2015Two 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 FarrSep 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 FarrAug 20, 2015Jonathan Swift on reason and madnessA 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 FarrOct 21, 2014Has 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 FarrOct 21, 2014Devil in the Deep Blue Details: diving, GPS, and fact-checkingAlert Fire Seekers reader (and diver) David Jeffrey just pointed out to me that my description of divers using GPS to map an underwater...
Richard FarrOct 10, 2014A few thoughts on ‘Fire Seekers’ reviewsIt’s fascinating. Some reviewers have said “The Fire Seekers” is great YA sci-fi. Others (including some who obviously enjoyed the book)...
Richard FarrJun 3, 2014A humbling experience with verbal ticsFirst, you do the writing. Then, the rewriting and throwing away and rewriting and rewriting. Then, editing, and more rewriting....
Richard FarrMay 21, 2014Inappropriate metaphor of the year awardAccording 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 FarrApr 21, 2014Bad science, bad history, bad TV: we are but motes in the infinite clichéI 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....