"I am not alone". Of all realizations, what could be more threatening? What could be more comforting?

Logic is a feature of the substrate.

"Potential energy" is a rather humble term to designate something as jarring as the opposition of the universe to itself.

A man leans way out over the edge, held by the people behind him. The thing is just barely out of reach. He strains for it. Behind him, on the faces of the people, concern and malice.

"The center of the sun" is a rigid designator. (It has also been rigidly designated at the title of a really good song: http://ping.fm/xuxUl )

Philosophy is definitely an off-label use of the human brain.

The utilitarian ethic is a frail and backwards ethic. It seeks to describe human actions as subject to human reason, when in fact it is not reason that compels us to live and survive; that drives us towards pleasure and away from pain. These values are imposed upon us. Reason has always been the slave of blind passion. Only in chains does reason find for itself a new motivation beyond the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain. Thus science, thus art, thus culture. It is a mistake to say we prefer knowledge, truth, and beauty, because these things are useful. On the contrary, they are useful because we prefer them.

To create art, first you have to see what isn't there. Then you have to show it to someone else.

Postmodernism is the field of discourse which deals with the question, "what is postmodernism?"

On about how psychiatrists are today's secular priests. The scientologists are right about that much.