I was grateful to my neighbor for helping me with a technical problem.  He’s the resident guru on computers at the retirement center and far too modest about himself. Aware that I might need his advice in the future, I asked if he’d care to adopt me despite my advanced age.  A s

“My grandmother has trouble with her phone too,” the sales representative said. “My advice is to call your cell number once a month to avoid letting it fall into sleep mode.” Who knew?  My cell phone goes catatonic if I don’t talk to it enough. Needless to say, my transitio

A recent article in Business Insider pit the brains of humans against whales and the whales won.   That was two hundred years ago when Sperm whales learned to avoid the fishermen’s harpoons by swimming against the wind that powered the schooners.  History records that out of  80

Given the many life and death threats facing our species, an algorithm to help identify which challenges are imminent and which can wait five minutes sounds great. Unfortunately, technology is part of the problem. The more we rely on it, the more we are likely to find ourselves in a d

  Sometimes, I forget a web larger than the world-wide web exists.  You know the one I’m talking about. Nature, that place where every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  That place where a butterfly flaps its wings in Argentina and Japan suffers a tsunami.  To be ho

I recall in my college readings a story about David Hume, a philosopher of the 18th century, who believed only what his eyes confirmed — though he was wary of that information as well.  During a conversation with the literary figure James Boswell, Hume asserted a gap existed be