Feeling sexy or brave?  Maybe your cat is responsible.  Toxoplasma gondil’s, a parasite carried in cat feces has been discovered to alter the brains of rats and mice so that they mistake a cat’s odor for an invitation to romance.   Rodents that don’t run away from their arch

Somewhere in my 50’s I decided to take up painting.  One of my first classes was level 1 drawing. Students were given a Rembrandt etching and asked to copy it.  The purpose of the exercise was to see how observant we were. Finishing the task early, I waited with a certain degree o

A cry of rebellion has permeated the emails flashing back and forth among the newer residents of the retirement center where I live.  As might be expected, the complaints are about the food.  It’s too salty, the meat’s too stringy, the variety too meager and worst of all, the pr

Feeling out of control in your life?  Join the club.  Not only is there a growing gap between rich and poor around the world, but the gap between society’s leaders and the man in the street is enough to leave anyone queasy.  Take, for example, the gap between the way scientists v

At the turn of the New Year, an acquaintance wrote a long piece on Facebook which expressed his disillusionment with the human race, accusing us of being liars and users in whom he had no trust.   Needless to say, I thought his judgment overly harsh and wondered that a man with so m

Years ago, when I was misdiagnosed with a form of incurable cancer, I resorted to meditation to battle the disease.  But, according to Barbara Ehrenreich, writing in Baffler, meditation was the  worst activity in which I could have engaged.  (“Terror Cells,” by Barbara Ehrenrei

Hamlet marveled, “What a piece of work is man,” but that isn’t the half of it.  Two new books are out which talk about man’s place in the universe, both reviewed by Tim Flannery in Harper’s.  Dian Ackerman, whose affinity for understanding nature is undisputed by most,

A reader commented about my recent blog on meditation (Blog 10/14/14) to remind me that walking, as opposed to sitting, is a form of meditation, too, and once reminded,  I was quick to acknowledge he was correct.  Ancient mazes were designed to induce a meditative state and walking

During a recent lunch date with my mother, who is 98, she admitted to a growing sense of vulnerability.  Her memory was fading and she had difficulty finding the words she needed.   This loss of self, she admitted, was a cruel penalty for having a long life.  Stunned by her candor

A small news item with huge potential consequences appeared in the press the other day.  It touched upon the unified theory of everything, the quest for an understanding that would explain how electromagnetism, strong and weak forces in nature and gravity work together. (Blog 10/21/1