A friend I hadn’t seen for almost a year dropped by for tea the other day.  As the leaves steeped in the pot, she folded her hands in front of her.  “I’ve decided to get a dog.”  The quizzical look in her eyes made the statement seem more like a question.  “Should I?”�

With the Democrats in control of the U. S. House, President Donald Trump seems to be reviving his base with fiery rhetoric.  We all know who members of that base are — Woebegone innocents of earlier days, a time when, if corn prices flourished, so did the nation. As a kid, my f

Wherever there are humans, there is a pecking order.  In the field of research, the dividing line lies between science and social science.  Hard science works with data that can be measured and the results verified by others.  Social sciences can sometimes seem a little more like j

Living in the real world and the virtual one may be more than my simple mind can handle.  My fear gets worse when I realize the virtual world is  split in two — between the worldwide web and the dark web. Add to that bifurcation, my need to  remember there are two kinds of mo

Daniela Karnuts, a fashion designer with Safiyaa in the U. K. observes “A woman is never attractive if she is not comfortable in her skin.” (The Modest Moment,” by Paula Knight, Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec. 17, 2018, pg. 69.)   Karnuts is not talking about real skin, of course

Over the holidays, a couple  introduced me to their son who was visiting from Boston.  As he was a young man, I asked what he did for a living.  He said he was a medical researcher and was working on a drug for multiple sclerosis.  A lump hardened in my throat as I remembered a br

Donald Trump doesn’t reason like a typical politician and has no fiscal discipline, says David Hoppe, Paul Ryan’s former chief of staff.  (“Hey, Paul Ryan, What’s Up?” by Anna Edgerton, Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec. 17, 2018, pg. 40.)  Hoppe blames Trump for a looming finan

The title of this blog says it all.   On Facebook, our data doesn’t belong to us.  Ditto our “authorial rights” according to information scientist, Amelia Acker at the University of Texas at Austin.  (“Preservations Acts,” by Nora Caplan-Bricker Harper’s Magazine, Dec.

One of my computer gurus ran into trouble with his machine recently.  For two days, he bent over it, wondering what went wrong inside its “little black box.”  He finally fixed the problem, but  isn’t certain why it occurred.  I shouldn’t laugh because I depend on this guy�

The beginning of a new year is a good time to take stock of the human race.  Frankly, I’m surprised we’re still around, having been in one conflict or another for the past 2000 years.   Beyond that, we spend a good deal of time thinking about money and are willing to gut the pl