Authors Electric

The other day, stuck between paragraphs, I dusted off a vintage Magic 8 Ball I had picked up at a yard sale, gave it a shake and asked: "Will I finish writing this book soon, if ever?" "No doubt about it!" Came a viscous, bobbing, red-lettered response in its little round window. The thing about oracles, as I learnt when I got into doing the I Ching back in the 1970s, is that the questions are more important than the answers, just don't ask the same question twice. Never one to pass up an opportunity to distract myself, I kept going - trending towards the ridiculous to see if I could get Mr. 8 Ball to melt down. "Why this? Why that? Why do I write, anyway?" Foiling 8-Ball is harder than one might think, using conventional wisdom. Really, it's foiling oneself. The standard Magic 8-Ball  (developed in the 1950s and inspired by a World War II, Three Stooges skit) has 20 possible responses floating in its mystic liquid of possibilities. They ru...

Eric M. Knight and friend on MGM lot, 1942 They say now, that we humans coevolved with dogs over the past 30,000 or so years, rather than our prehistoric ancestors simply domesticating hapless wolves like sheep. Each changed the other. Though much remains vague, socioanthropologists theorize that certain Asian and European wolves chose us as handy sources of scraps. This suggests that humans were as messy then as they are now. Wolves who danced with humans morphed towards friendlier dogs in a symbiotic relationship that made humans more efficient apex hunters, which led to heartier nutrition supporting expanded tribal encampments. These, in turn, led to settlement, cultivation, agriculture and eventually to civilization in which dogs perform so many essential jobs beyond their central roles as family members and all around pals. My childhood experiences with Canis Lupus Familiaris leads me to speculate that a parallel process may apply in the uneven, ever unfolding evo...