One of the important issues in the 21st Century is how to preserve personal privacy. Microsoft, for example, is offering Windows 10 for free but in exchange, its default setting gives the software permission to “pass your data to Microsoft’s servers, gobble up your bandwidth and p

A while ago, I wrote a blog mourning the passing of Tony Hillerman (9/25/12) and how, unlike him, many writers of mystery novels give us complex plots but protagonists with little depth. They forget readers have to care about their sleuths, enough to make them flinch when the door to

Turning the last page of the August edition of Money Magazine, I noticed an article, “Money Well Spent,” written by a quilter, Cindy Dawn. (2015 pg. 84). In 1983, while doing her military service in Germany, she stumbled upon the sale of a Pfaff sewing machine. She was 24 and hadn

Recently, I discovered that on Amazon’s book rankings, the works of John Keats and William Wordsworth are listed 796,426 and 2,337,250 respectively, only slightly higher than mine. (“Counter Culture,” by Caleb Crain, Harper’s, July 2015 pg.82.)  Naturally, I, a modest wr

Situational dynamics is a proven way to seduce  good people into doing bad things, a discovery that began as an experiment and was later documented in The Lucifer Effect, by Phillip Zimbardo in 2007.  The study upon which the book was based, and which will be dramatized this month a

Yesterday, I had lunch with my retirement center gaggle of men, all over 90. (Blog 7/15/15)  As the day was sunny, they were seated near a window.  One had ordered a bowl of soup; the other sat before a cup of coffee; a third had grabbed a boiled egg from the salad counter.  When m

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” written by a 22 year-old T. S. Eliot, turns a hundred this year. A brilliant poem, according to those who keep the cannon, though many despaired it was written by a man deemed a fascists, whose title character was named after a furniture

There’s a gaggle of men, all over 90,  who hang together at my retirement center.  Often, I join them for coffee and the laughter can get pretty rowdy.  Sometimes, though, I’ll find one of them dozing in an overstuffed chair in the lobby.  Whichever one it is, I always hope he

In a recent interview, Nobel winner Toni Morrison talked about growing up as an African American and what color and beauty meant within the black community.  At Howard University, which she attended, she said there was a test for beauty.  The ideal was to have skin no darker than th

There was a time not long ago when government funded most of the medical research in this country.  (“Tech’s Quest for Immortality,” reprint from The Washington Post article by Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Week, May 8, 3/15 pg. 37.)  Now, two-thirds of that research is funded by bi