At the end of my walk during a warm summer day, I paused beneath a maple tree to watch one of its seedings as it spiraled to the ground, two seeds, each attached to a wing that jutted from a single stem.  As the afternoon was calm, it twisted lazily, like a dancer performing a slow p

  Pericles, an Athenian statesman born in 495 B. C., credited much of his medical knowledge to witches.  (Man Made God, by Barbara G. Walker, Stellar House Publishing, 2010, pg. 278.) As women historically have been keepers of hearth and home, it’s reasonable to suppose their

Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted he was stunned to see people of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) applaud when they learned Tennessee had halted all vaccinations for minors, including those for Covid-19.  The state said it wanted to protect parents’ rights to make medic

“Are you willing to fight for your country?” This was the question in a 2015 Gallop poll taken across 64 countries.  The results were surprising. Nations with the largest number of patriots were among the least developed, their positive responses as high at 80-90 percent.  Weste

Predicting the future is difficult. Who could have foreseen the pandemic in 2020?  Or the insurrection on January 6 of this year? Even so, people do make a living as prognosticators. Land use planners are among them. They attempt to predict human migrations, for example– urban

  Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel, Klara And The Sun speculates on how a robot might learn to adapt to humans.  The question he poses is interesting, but we humans should spend time thinking about how we ought to adapt to them.  First, we should consider what we want from robot

Recently, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, called Nancy Pelosi to express his objection to the many tech anti-trust bills making their way through the U. S. House. If he hadn’t been serious when he made his comments, it would have been funny: Apple is concerned the current proposals would ha

A film clip posted on my Facebook page showed a mother beating her two-year-old daughter with a stick.  All the while, the child peered into the woman’s face, her round black eyes terrified yet tearless. No screams emitted from her throat. What was the meaning of this terrified, vo

Commemorating the upcoming July 4th holiday. Let us remember the best in us.

Technology has given us marvelous opportunities that outstrip the pace of evolution. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up, which means we may fail to see the consequences of a change until it smacks us in the face. Social media is one example. On the plus side, drugs that treat deadly dis