The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

Indeed, in today's educated-class homes, the kitchen has become the symbol of domestic bliss, the way the hearth used to be for the bourgeoisie.

That's why when you walk into a newly renovated upscale home owned by nice, caring people, you will likely find a kitchen so large it puts you in mind of an aircraft hangar with plumbing. The perimeter walls of the old kitchen will have been obliterated, and the new kitchen will have swallowed up several adjacent rooms, just as the old Soviet Union used to do with its neighbors. It's hard to tell where one of today's mega-kitchen ends. You think you see the far wall of some distant great room shimmering in the distance, but it could be a mirage reflected off the acres and acres of Corian countertop. And then when you turn into the pantry, you observe that it is larger than the entire apartment the owner lived in while in graduate school.

Kitchens this big require strategizing. The architects brag about how brilliantly they have designed their kitchens into “work triangles” to minimize the number of steps between, say, stove, dishwasher, and sink. In the old kitchens you didn't need work triangles because taking steps was not a kitchen activity. You just turned around and whatever you needed, there it was. But today's infinite kitchens have lunch counters and stools and built-in televisions and bookshelves and computer areas and probably little “You Are Here” maps for guests who get lost on their way to the drink station.

As for kitchen equipment, today's Bobo kitchen is like a culinary playground providing its owner with a series of top-of-the-line peak experiences. The first thing you see, covering yards and yards of one wall, is an object that looks like a nickel-plated nuclear reactor but it is really the stove. No more flimsy looking cans with glorified Bunsen burners on top for today's domestic enthusiasts. Today's gourmet Bobos want a 48-inch-wide, six-burner, dual-fuel, 20,000 Btu range that sends up heat like a space shuttle rocket booster turned upside down. Furthermore they want cool gizmos, like a lava-rock grill, a built-in 30,000 Btu wok burner, brass burner igniters (only philistines have aluminum ones), and a 1/2-inch-thick steel griddle. They want an oven capacity of 8 cubic feet minimum, just to show they are the sort of people who could roast a bison if necessary, And they want the whole awesome package covered in metal with such a high nickel-to-chromium content that magnets won't stick. That's how you know you have purchased the sort of utilitarian gear your family deserves. La Cornue makes an adequate stove with gas and electric simmer plates for about $23,500. The AGA 59-inch cooker, patented in 1922, has the unadorned sturdiness that suggests it was once used to recycle horses into glue, but it also features such conveniences as a warming plate, a simmering plate, a baking oven, a roasting oven, and an infinite supply of burners. It uses no direct heat, only radiant surfaces, and thus expresses a gentle philosophy of life. It costs only $10,000.

Presiding over the nearby quadrants of the kitchen will be the refrigeration complex. The central theme of this section is that freezing isn't cold enough; the machinery should be able to reach temperatures approaching absolute zero, at which all molecular motion stops. The refrigerator itself should be the size of a minivan stood on end. It should have at least two doors, one for the freezer section and one for the in-law suite, in case you want to rent out rooms inside. In addition, there should be through-the-door delivery systems for water (carbon filtered), ice (cubes, crushed, or alphabet style to help the toddlers with their letter recognition), and perhaps assorted microbrews. There should be gallon door bins, spillproof split shelves, sealed snack pans, full extension slides, and scratchproof bin windows, and the front doors should not be white, like those regular refrigerators they sell at Sears, but stainless steel—the texture of culinary machismo.

A capacious kitchen with durable appliances is a sign that you do your own chores, sharing the gritty reality of everyday life, just as Gandhi and Karl Marx would have wanted you to. It means you've got equipment with more power than all but six of the NATO nations. It means that when you throw those fish sticks into the oven, you know they will be browned evenly, and you could boil the water for the macaroni and cheese in eight seconds if you really turned the thing up full blast. It means that you have concentrated your spending power on where it matters, on the everyday places you and your family actually use. Spending on conspicous display is evil, but it's egalitarian to spend money on parts of the house that would previously have been used by the servants.

For those of you who don't know, let me explain what the male orgasm is like. It starts with an irritable sensation in our testicles and the end of our penis. W.H. Auden memorably called this “the intolerable neural itch”. Try to analyse the “itch” and it soon becomes apparent that it consists of little more than a large body of semen hollering to get out and go swimming as fast as possible. The mechanism by which this cargo of gunge will be released is as crudely sensitive as it is simple. It is so eager to go that, often, especially when we are young and eager, it will happen before we have even got our trousers off. But whether our sperm makes its exit in that undignified manner, or as a result of well done sex, or badly done sex, or, indeed, in the course of a good solo session, the sensation is identical. There is a slight, sweet/sour twitch from the prostate gland; a rather pleasant muscular gurgle from the testicles, followed within nanoseconds by a reasonably satisfying liquid rush the length of the old John Thomas; then, a further fraction of a second later, a moderately agreeable liquid awareness around the tip. And that, other than a few moments in a lifetime when there may be an extra fusillade within the same orgasm (typically, when we have avoided ejaculation for a lengthy period), is it. There follows a brief spell when we feel content and sleepy, and our prostate (if we are aware of its existence, which most of us aren’t, until it starts to go wrong in our forties) aches in quite a nice way.

I am almost sorry to admit this, but more than 30 years of sex have convinced me that the male orgasm in itself is not much more satisfying than a desperately needed pee. It is my strongly held conviction, having been doing this stuff since the mullet haircut was unironically fashionable, that, because of the disappointing nature of their orgasms, it is men who crave the romantic garnish of the slow build-up, the wistful gazing, the expression of undying love around their sexual meat and two veg. Women, however, blessed with a vastly more satisfying orgasmic mechanism, are able to be more pragmatic about enjoying sex for sex's sake.

You will want to perfect a code to subtly downplay your academic credentials. If asked where you went to school, you will reply “Harvard?” with a little upward lilt at the end of the pronunciation, as if to imply, “Have you ever heard of it?”

“Every woman's fantasy is having two men at once, but most men don't realize that in the fantasy, one man is cooking and the other is cleaning.”

This may be true for normally socialized women who have had their inner rampaging wenchbeast extinguished by too much contact with slope-headed, testosterone-poisoned fratboys who couldn't find a clitoris if it were two inches across, glowed bright green, and played John Philip Sousa marches when it felt perky. Such women are easily brainwashed into Martha Stewart syndrome, in which normal, healthy urges to fling cute geek guys onto the nearest soft horizontal surface and pounce on them, snarling and biting, are sublimated into an unhealthy fascination with cleanliness and interior decorating.

I, for one, can think of much better things to do with two men at once, and have done most of them. And before you start drooling about double penetration, let me tell you, that's a logistical nightmare that should not be attempted in a gravity well—though get me into free fall with two cute geek guys and some bungee cords and it's another story. No, I am talking about the shiny happy situation of having two mouths and four hands available to turn one's neural tissue into radioactive jello. Three men at once would be really optimal, but the difficulty of finding people for group sex who all get along and whose emotional baggage does not heterodyne makes this a statistically farfetched scenario. Damn it.

Eckels glanced across the vast office at a mass and tangle, a snaking and humming of wires and steel boxes, at an aurora that flickered now orange, now silver, now blue. There was a sound like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time, all the years and all the parchment calendars, all the hours piled high and set aflame.

A touch of the hand and this burning would, on the instant, beautifully reverse itself. Eckels remembered the wording in the advertisements to the letter. Out of chars and ashes, out of dust and coals, like golden salamanders, the old years, the green years, might leap; roses sweeten the air, white hair turn Irish-black, wrinkles vanish; all, everything fly back to seed, flee death, rush down to their beginnings, suns rise in western skies and set in glorious easts, moons eat themselves opposite to the custom, all and everything cupping one in another like Chinese boxes, rabbits into hats, all and everything returning to the fresh death, the seed death, the green death, to the time before the beginning. A touch of a hand might do it, the merest touch of a hand.

The jungle was high and the jungle was broad and the jungle was the entire world forever and forever. Sounds like music and sounds like flying tents filled the sky, and those were pterodactyls soaring with cavernous gray wings, gigantic bats of delirium and night fever.

The jungle was wide and full of twitterings, rustlings, murmurs, and sighs.

Suddenly it all ceased, as if someone had shut a door.

Silence.

A sound of thunder.

Out of the mist, one hundred yards away, came Tyrannosaurus Rex.

“It,” whispered Eckels. “It……”

“Sh!”

It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker's claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men like toys, while the snake neck coiled. And the head itself, a ton of sculptured stone, lifted easily upon the sky. Its mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers. Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger. It closed its mouth in a death grin. It ran, its pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes, its taloned feet clawing damp earth, leaving prints six inches deep wherever it settled its weight.

It ran with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and balanced for its ten tons. It moved into a sunlit area warily, its beautifully reptilian hands feeling the air.

“Why, why,” Eckels twitched his mouth. “It could reach up and grab the moon.”

“Sh!” Travis jerked angrily. “He hasn't seen us yet.”

“It can't be killed,” Eckels pronounced this verdict quietly, as if there could be no argument. He had weighed the evidence and this was his considered opinion. The rifle in his hands seemed a cap gun. “We were fools to come. This is impossible.”

The Tyrant Lizard raised itself. Its armored flesh glittered like a thousand green coins. The coins, crusted with slime, steamed. In the slime, tiny insects wriggled, so that the entire body seemed to twitch and undulate, even while the monster itself did not move. It exhaled. The stink of raw flesh blew down the wilderness.

The Monster, at the first motion, lunged forward with a terrible scream. It covered one hundred yards in six seconds. The rifles jerked up and blazed fire. A windstorm from the beast's mouth engulfed them in the stench of slime and old blood. The Monster roared, teeth glittering with sun.

The rifles cracked again, Their sound was lost in shriek and lizard thunder. The great level of the reptile's tail swung up, lashed sideways. Trees exploded in clouds of leaf and branch. The Monster twitched its jeweler's hands down to fondle at the men, to twist them in half, to crush them like berries, to cram them into its teeth and its screaming throat. Its boulderstone eyes leveled with the men. They saw themselves mirrored. They fired at the metallic eyelids and the blazing black iris,

Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell.

Thundering, it clutched trees, pulled them with it. It wrenched and tore the metal Path. The men flung themselves back and away. The body hit, ten tons of cold flesh and stone. The guns fired. The Monster lashed its armored tail, twitched its snake jaws, and lay still. A fount of blood spurted from its throat. Somewhere inside, a sac of fluids burst. Sickening gushes drenched the hunters. They stood, red and glistening.

The Monster lay, a hill of solid flesh. Within, you could hear the sighs and murmurs as the furthest chambers of it died, the organs malfunctioning, liquids running a final instant from pocket to sac to spleen, everything shutting off, closing up forever. It was like standing by a wrecked locomotive or a steam shovel at quitting time, all valves being released or levered tight. Bones cracked; the tonnage of its own flesh, off balance, dead weight, snapped the delicate forearms, caught underneath. The meat settled, quivering.

We live without sensing the country beneath us,
At ten paces, our speech has no sound
And when there's the will to half-open our mouths
The Kremlin crag-dweller bars the way.
Fat fingers as oily as maggots,
Words sure as forty-pound weights,
With his leather-clad gleaming calves,
and his large laughing cockroach eyes.

And around him a rabble of thin-necked bosses,
He toys with the service of such semi-humans.
They whistle, they meouw, and they whine:
He alone merely jabs with his finger and barks,
Tossing out decree after decree like horseshoes—
Right in the eyes, in the face, the brow or the groin.
Not one shooting but swells his gang's pleasure,
And the broad breast of the Ossetian.

Following the premières of the Second String Quartet and Erwartung, the critics gathered, themselves resembling nothing so much as a swarm of giant moths, ready to kill off this shining sun. But the performance was heard of in silence, and when it was over, Schoenberg was given an ovation.

Frank Oppenheimer: “I think he [J. Robert Oppenheimer] and I were lying down right next to each other flat on the desert right outside the control [room] at the time the bomb went off.”

Robert Wilson: “When it went off … we saw what was just a tremendously overpowering vision of this thing happening. Seeing the mountain small beside it. Seeing… some kind of beauty, but awesome … as it slowly developed, went up in the air, and made the whole desert light up as if at noon. A large desert rimmed by mountains appeared to be a small place. And that was something that, once that had happened, I was a different person from then on.”

Frank Oppenheimer: “At the time it went off I think absolutely — I knew sort of what would happen but I didn't expect the heat from the flash at five miles away to be nearly that intense. And then there was a cloud, the radioactive cloud sort of hovered there.

[…]

So there was this sense of this ominous cloud hanging over us. It was so brilliant purple, with all the radioactivity glowing. And it just seemed to hang there forever.

Of course it didn't. It must have been just a very short time until it went up.

It was very terrifying.

And the thunder from the blast bounced on the rocks and then went — I don't know where it bounced, but it never seemed to stop, not like an ordinary echo with thunder. It just kept echoing back and forth and then — it was a very scary time when it went off.

I wish I could remember what my brother said, but I can't. But I think we just said, 'It worked.' I think that's what we said, both of us.

And nobody knew it was going to work.”

The world's first thermonuclear device —a hydrogen bomb— was tested on 1 November 1952, on the small Pacific island of Elugelab. Observers forty miles away saw millions of gallons of seawater turned to steam, appearing as a giant bubble, and the fireball expanded to three miles across. When the explosion was over, the entire island of Elugelab had disappeared, vaporised.

I was born in the city of Bombay…once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it's important to be more… On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came.

Changes between the past and the present sometimes do represent progress. In a field like physics, if we disagree with past generations it's because we're right and they're wrong. But this becomes rapidly less true as you move away from the certainty of the hard sciences. By the time you get to social questions, many changes are just fashion. The age of consent fluctuates like hemlines.

How can you see the wave, when you're the water? Always be questioning. That's the only defence. What can't you say? And why?

Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think.