Wishing for the good-old-days, makes me look old-fashioned, no doubt.  But I wish for them, all the same.  The electronic age has complicated my life in so many ways.  I’m in a perpetual race to manage the upgrades, master new apps and avoid hacker traps along the way

In a recent opinion piece, Clive Thompson begins with the question, “What do you do when you discover you are wrong?” (“Retraction Heroes,” by Clive Thompson, Wired, Feb, 2018, pg. 034.)  He goes on to extol the merits of an evolutionary biologist, Daniel Bolnick, who pub

In 1952, a man flew to Denmark and came back as a woman.  Her new name was Christine Jorgensen, and she made headlines around the world.  I was 16 at the time and, until Christine made her sex change public, I never understood people could  be uncomfortable with their gender. Sadly

Recently, there was a dustup at Reed College, my alma mater.  Like elsewhere, the students are balking against the curriculum.  In particular, they resent being dragged through the Humanities, a survey course on western culture that begins with ancient Greece.  To focus

Recently, I spent an hour dealing with one of the companies that provides credit score histories. I didn’t have a problem.  I was trying to prevent one after the business was hacked.  I’m not clear how these enterprises came into existence, or why they’re allowed to  track my

When one woman raises her voice to push forward the boundary on women’s rights, other women stand ready to play whack-a-mole with her head. (Blogs 2/3/27, 11/7/17)  Most recently, two former French sex goddesses of the 1950-60s, Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot,  (Click)  ha

One of the challenges of living at my retirement center is keeping up with the reading recommendations of fellow inmates.  My list is long and growing. Nonetheless, when I heard about an article on brain tumor surgery, one that obliges a patient to remain awake while the surgeon saws

The other day, I sat in an overstuffed chair in the lobby of the retirement center beside a 92 year-old woman who tends to have her finger on the pulse of the community.  Since I’d heard rumblings about recent staff changes, I imagined I might glean more insights.  As for the chan

Yesterday, I wrote about the dark side of robotics, which stems largely from a wariness about ourselves. (Blog 8/31/15)   Writer, John Mooallem raises our level of consciousness about “them” and “us” further in, “Is it ok to kick a robot?” (Wired, July 2015 pg. 52.) Besi

Many times I’ve noted a large gap exists between what our brain tells us about the world and truth. My novel Trompe l’Oeil is a study of that gap – the difference between appearance and reality. Even so, we infinitely small creatures of a small planet among billions of galaxies