Let us not divide the human race into Eloi and Morlocks: pretty children-“elves” as the eighteenth century often idiotically called them-with their fairytales (carefully pruned), and dark Morlocks tending their machines. If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults. They will, of course, put ( Read more... )

During moments of insight, cognitive filters relax momentarily and allow ideas ( Read more... )

Some intriguing local stories about revenants ( Read more... )

Stephen Kepler: They told me this was going to be the new Eden. Paul Ballard: Eden wasn't a prison. Stephen Kepler: Are you kidding? The apples were monitored...
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( Brittany, Phantoms, and November )

The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch, and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in search of prey.

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... We were standing in a little ( Read more... )

Bladud was a most ingenious man who encouraged necromancy throughout the kingdom of Britain. He pressed on with his experiments and finally constructed a pair of wings for himself and tried to fly through the upper air. He came down on top of the Temple of Apollo in the town of Trinovantum [London] and was dashed into countless fragments.

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Ryan: So I guess the gentle hand of female diplomacy beats the warlike hand of man again. Margo: We both had our parts to play. Yours was being thrashed by elves.
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1878 Folk-Lore Record 43 [Fittleworth, Sussex] Mothers teach their children to say -- Beware the oak, It draws the stroke; Avoid an ash, It courts the flash; Creep under the thorn, It can save you from harm.

It is a plausible theory that the reverence which the ancient peoples of Europe paid to the oak, and the connexion which they traced ( Read more... )

In Oxford on May Morning, many pubs are open from sunrise, and some of the college bars are open all night. Madrigals are still sung from the roof of the tower of Magdalen College, with thousands gathering on Magdalen Bridge to listen to the choir and the bells that follow it. In a recent tradition, revellers have jumped from the bridge into the ( Read more... )