Author Archives: Sterling Eisiminger

“Should Colony Collapse Disorder worsen, and we lose the bees, an engineering lab at Harvard is perfecting tiny drones, neither male nor female, that will pollinate our crops. Lamentably, the drones will gather no pollen, nor produce any beeswax or honey. Or in Aesop’s words, no ‘sweetness or light.’”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Skip […]

“Life is a river of incalculable length, width, depth, and direction. Like the Biblical Jordan which rises in the Syrian hills before crossing the Sea of Galilee, life ultimately dribbles into the Dead Sea, which has no outlet being the lowest point on Earth. But like all rivers, at some point, the ripples flatten out […]

“So, exactly how do humans reproduce if we don’t bifurcate, pupate, or molt? I’m glad the answer to the overwhelming question of my adolescence was not left entirely to my parents.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger “The mad, white fish of the oval realm/often led me to ask, ‘Who’s at the helm?’” “The […]

“In Italy, Gaetano Donizetti scored the mad scene in his opera Lucia di Lammermoor for a glass harmonica, but a flutist had to be hired when no ‘ghost fiddler’ could be found.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger “This Mozart quintet/and the voice of God/are frail and unseen,/yet we feel their prod.”—The Wordspinner CLEMSON […]

“While Emily Dickinson found ‘a little madness in spring,’ I used to find this lunacy in the fall. Faced with a half-acre of wet leaves, many of which slid between the tines of my rake, and which no leaf blower would budge more than a few feet, I have been frustrated as hell. Now, in […]

“Now, enter Goldilocks on a planet that was finally just right. Observing the nearly universal presence of bilateral symmetry in the plants and animals who shared her magnificent planet, Goldilocks embarked on a great journey, carefully balancing her sail and ballast. When she landed, she was careful to juggle time for herself and with others, […]

“In 1975, the parents of a 13-year-old girl were relaxing in New York’s Central Park, basking in the glow of a Broadway-musical matinee. In the distance, Dr. Bill Bruehl, the father, spied the Dalai Lama and his entourage strolling their way. Hurriedly, he explained to his daughter who this esteemed man in the flowing, red […]

“My high-school plane geometry teacher once told a class that only God can draw a triangle with more or less than 180 degrees. When someone asked him how God could do this, he said He might draw the first on a sphere and the second on a saddle with negative curvature. ‘Hmm,’ I thought, ‘even […]

“Ravitch had gained access to a vast glossary compiled from ‘bias guidelines issued by major educational publishers and state agencies’ for any writer preparing texts or tests for K-12 students. Presumably, with this template, no one would submit the following sentence to a selection committee: ‘The deaf lumberjack, who’d become a bookworm since his accident […]

“On the other side of the Facebook coin, there’s ‘online validation’: buying 500 ‘likes,’ for example, for $6.99. According to one validation provider in an odd effort to reassure customers, their ‘likes’ are ‘100 percent organic.’ And for those who are even more desperate, there’s an online service that provides digital rhinoplasties.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the […]