Short story: Screwj

It is not the night before Christmas. Instead, it is a nicely warm night in the middle of spring. The rich Mr. Evan E. R. Screwj has just settled into bed, when the ghost of his old workmate, Matthew Scrimp, appears in room.

Scrimp warns Evan that he has not given to charity, friends or family in his life enough, especially friends, nudge nudge, and will be visited by three ghosts over the night. Evan mentions in a cautious voice that Scrimp kept on loosing all his money on cards.

But the ghost of Matthew Scrimp has gone now, and is replaced by a fat, jolly ghost who calls himself the Past. He takes Evan through time to see a piece of his own history. They observe a large gathering where his family met for a large meal. He sees his cousin, Phil, stuffing everything he can lay a hand on down his gullet, and remembers that he died of heart failure later that year. His family, who were all quite large, had practically been proud.

Debate vs. Discuss

We usually think that whoever 'wins' a debate or discussion is 'right'. It seems more true to say that whoever 'wins' these is either the better debater, or has the most facts and data to hand, or both.

I do, of course, still believe that we can discern what is 'Right', or true about reality, from debates and discussions. But I'd like to distinguish between my thoughts on two words here, and which one I prefer.

Short Story: Belt Life

Soar through the stars and galaxies, and into one. There is the sun at the centre, it is our sun in fact. And on the other side, a few planets away, is the earth, but it is not our present day earth.

It looks slightly darker than the earth you are sitting on now, but as we keep getting closer, we can see that there is a ring around it. No, not around it, but on it. The ring goes around the entire equator, and looks to be the width of a medium-sized continent. As earth fills our vision, we can see that the ring is a man-made structure, and also, is moving around the earth, constantly rotating around the globe.

On ground level, it must be moving at an amazing pace. We dive down to this level, on part of the moving structure, and meet a little girl, Lindsey.