William Stobb

Lights up on interrogation room, dim lighting except spotlight on SUSPECT   SUSPECT is visibly afraid DETECTIVE ONE is slick and intimidating DETECTIVE TWO lurks in the background SUSPECT It was just cheese!   I swear to God!       DET. ONE Just cheese, huh?   Well then how do you explain this ?! DETECTIVE ONE reaches across the table and grabs SUSPECT’s shirt, revealing a big blobby white stain.                         SUSPECT All right.   All right.   It was squeeze cheese.                         DET. ONE Liar!  [sniffs stain]  Think I don't know what yogurt smells like?  DETECTIVE ONE begins to throttle SUSPECT.            ...

In Basin and Range , John McPhee explains that, for the most part, we're capable of living with five generations in our minds--our own, two before us and two in the future.  Meanwhile, the Earth is telling us a story in hundreds of millions of years.  "Numbers do not seem to work well with regard to deep time.  Any number above a couple thousand years--fifty thousand, fifty million--will... awe the imagination to the point of paralysis." Applying the Bible story of creation's seven days to the geological evidence of 4.5 billion years, McPhee concludes that Jesus appeared at one fourth of a second before midnight on Saturday, the seventh day.  McPhee quotes David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club: "at one fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution began.  We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing in that one fortieth of  second can go on indefinitely.  They are considered n...