The article I was reading posed the question, “Can we prove the world isn’t a simulation?”  (by David J. Chalmers, Nautilus, Issue 42, pgs. 47.)  It’s a tech version of a long-established philosophical conundrum, “Can you prove you’re not asleep?” After finishing the a

Unfortunately, the threat of nuclear war looms as possible today as it did when I was a child. I no longer practice hiding under my desk whenever a siren goes off, but I shudder to read Vladimir Putin’s cavalier talk about using nuclear weapons against Ukraine in his stalemated war.

The Flynn effect is over. That’s the trend whereby human intelligence increases by about 3 points a decade. Recent research reveals the trend is in reverse. Humans are getting dumber.  Scientists speculate the reasons are varied:  changes in our education systems, nutrition, the c

While Russia persists in its ambitions for world dominance, I wonder if Putin notices technology is inventing other realities. First, there was the worldwide net. Next came virtual reality. Now there is the metaverse.   According to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, the metaverse

  Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” lists the attributes of a rational human being. Paramount is to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…  That’s a tall order these days.  Robert Reich, famed economist and liberal commentator, lost his head recently. Furious

Donald Trump’s presidency taught us the strength of our institutions depends upon our goodwill.  They work because we want them to.   If we doubted the integrity of the ballot box and our judicial system, for example, we’d condemn ourselves to second-guessing every outcome.  I

Being someone who meditates for enlightenment, I decided to bend my thoughts to the state of our democracy. My reason for doing so was this statement: the public has more confidence in the military than any other national institution. (“Crisis of Command,” by Risa Brooks et al, Fo

Each evening when I turn off my bedside lamp, I pause to consider the cataclysmic shifts that will occur while I sleep. Somewhere in the universe, a planet may drop into a black hole or a pair of distant stars collide. From the sea, crabs might scramble toward the shore to lay their e

Sex is good. Sex is fun.  But sex isn’t power.  Some women don’t grasp that fact.  Crammed into padded bras that make chin rests of their breasts, these gals ought to know when a man faces so much cleavage, he can’t hear a word they say.    The young female who wore a see-

“We make lists because we don’t want to die.” So says, Umberto Eco, medievalist, philosopher, and author of Foucault’s Pendulum. With lists, we attempt to manage time, knowing time is a nonrenewable resource.  A list fixes a task to memory and gives us the psychological satis