Want to know if you have an empathy deficit?  Try this experiment.  Without looking into a mirror, draw the letter E on your forehead.  If you print the letter as it might appear on the back of your eyelids, rather than the way someone else might read it, you may want to consider a

 Scientists are playing around with Time again.  A few of them in Moscow say they’ve reversed Time at the quantum level.  Those at MIT say “no.”  It only looks as though Time’s been reversed. These geniuses on both sides of the argument should stop fooling around, in my op

Stop by any department store cosmetic counter and you’ll see why the female of the species has mystified men for centuries. The number of eye creams, alone, climbs past double digits, if we count private labels along with national brands.  Prices range from a few dollars to over $2

Cultural differences can have humorous consequences. Others may be surprising.  Still others depict differences that are endearing, as does the video on  same-sex marriage I encountered one cultural difference I never forgot was while traveling by train somewhere in east Africa.  A

Was it madness or was there method in it?  That is a question political historians far into the future will ponder as they assess the conduct of America’s 45th President.  Several months ago, I raised the potential for his madness on a local talk show, comparing Donald Trump’s p

During my conversation with a book editor, recently, she mentioned that, as yet, she’d had no morning coffee and didn’t feel up to facing our bizarre world.  I felt sympathetic.  The only reason I was awake at that hour was to accommodate a fire inspection scheduled for my apart

The media seems to have ignored Judge Clarence Thomas’s comments during a recent libel case before the Supreme Court.  He referred to a 1964 landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan,  saying he thought it should be overturned.  That ruling made it difficult for public offi

A Facebook friend sent me a video in which a pop star proposed we  create a new organization to “take back our government.”  My reply, I’m afraid, was jaded.  We don’t need another political organization to which we can write checks.  We’re up to our ears in those, the A

“When it’s impossible to distinguish facts from fraud, actual facts lose their power.”  So writes Zeynep Tufekci in his insightful article about identifying  falsehood in the media. (“Don’t Trust, Verify: Finding the Facts in A World of Fakes,” Wired, March 2019, pgs. 18

I know what it’s like to slam my finger in a car door.  The pain is intense.  Yet, at the same time, I curse myself for being stupid. That’s how I feel whenever I watch the 45TH American president on television.  I suffer when he lies; I curse the embarrassment we’ve heaped u