The Universal Archive

This acrylic on canvas work utilizes a classic pyramidal composition, providing a sense of stability and rest. The artist employs a high level of contrast between the smoothly blended skin tones and the expressive, almost impasto-style texture of the background. By focusing the light on the subje...

Exploring the Foundation of Sapience: Is Imagination the Base?
Exploring the potential role of imagination as a foundational element reveals it is not necessarily for all forms of awareness, but for the complex cognitive abilities associated with sapience.
There is a distinction between basic, reflexive responses to stimuli and the more sophisticated, learned behaviors that characterize higher intelligence and flexible interaction with the world.
By examining examples ranging from simple pain...

OLD MAN'S WAR
John Scalzi
PART I

ONE


I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.

Visiting Kathy's grave was the less dramatic of the two. She's buried in Harris Creek Cemetery, not more than a mile down the road from where I live and where we raised our family. Getting her into the cemetery was more difficult than perhaps it should have been; neither of us expected needing the burial, so neither of us made the arrangements. It's somewh...

Men make them fires on the hearth Each under his roof-tree, And the Four Winds that rule the earth They blow the smoke to me. Across the high hills and the sea And all the changeful skies, The Four Winds blow the smoke to me Till the tears are in my eyes. Until the tears are in my eyes And my heart is well nigh broke For thinking on old memories That gather in the smoke. With every shift of every wind The homesick memories come, From every quarter of mankind Where I have made me a home. Four ...