I recommend reading the first footnote before starting It started with Plato, but it didn’t end there[1]. This fact isn’t often discussed. Plato lived in Athens in Ancient Greece about 2400 years ago. He himself studied informally under Socrates, and Plato, in turn, had his own students and disciples at a school (of sorts) called The Academy.[2] The very first person to succeed as...
Editorial notes: This is Shai’s first dedicated write-up relating to Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is referenced in two earlier essays and between Jan 2010 and Nov 2017 is referenced by Shai 17 times. The Writing of the God (Spanish: La Escritura del Dios; also sometimes entitled The God’s Script) is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. It first appeared in Borges’ short story...
History has recorded Anaximander as one of the first of the Ancient Greek philosophers, preceded only by his teacher Thales. Anaximander lived around 2600 years ago, in the large Ionian city of Miletus, which can be found on the West coast of modern day Turkey. Anaximander is famous, together with his teacher Thales and his own student Anaximenes for being the first Greeks to begin a tradition of...
I hadn’t intended to review this book – Men and Cartoons: Stories by Jonathan Lethem – but then, like with so many other things, I got thinking. This was the first thing I’d ever read by Lethem – surely there must be something unique about a person’s first introduction to an author? Surely there must be something unique about my introduction to Lethem? But...
Editorial notes: In September 2010, Shai begins the first phase of his intellectual journey with an essay dedicated to the Greek mathematician, astronomer and pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales of Miletus. This the first of 80 essays, written between September 2010 and July 2015, dedicated to analysing the thoughts and writings of the great ancient Greek and classical Western philosophers. A close...
Editorial notes: In September 2010, Shai begins to share his writing in Everything2, or E2 for short, a collaborative web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. Between September 2010 and July 2015, Shai submitted 60 items to this writers forum. Once I was in Fiji, at a village called W– which sits above the Sigatoka river. Those incredible vistas...
The Eyes of the Beholders is the number thirteen of the TNG books, and is written by A.C. Crispin. The plot begins quite traditionally with the Enterprise ordered to investigate an area of space from which a number of ships have gone missing. Some sort of field soon captures the Enterprise, and draws it towards its source, which is revealed to be an artificial object of unknown purpose. Once in...
Editorial notes: Shai continuously explores different channels through which he might best document his life’s research work. Having traversed from hand-written notebooks to on-line writers forums and blogs, he begins using his Google Drive as a repository for documents he wishes to store on the web. It seems highly likely that some of his work, originally written and stored in Google Drive is...
Doomsday World is the twelfth numbered TNG novel, written by a whole host of authors: Carmen Carter, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Robert Greenberger. Carmen previously wrote The Children of Hamlin, which I quite liked; David has already authored two TNG novels by this time (#5, #10), and his proclivity for (and style of) humour comes through in a notable Monty Python reference early on;...
This is number eleven of the TNG novels and Keith Sharee’s only Star Trek novel. Troi has some dreams, the Enterprise follows a signal from a missing ship, some characters are taken prisoners on the planet, and then it’s explained what the dreams had to do with everything, the end. In short. In long: the Enterprise crew find themselves at a planet called Rampart, where a Federation...
