Ever since the largest trees in my neighborhood were cut down, including a Red Mahogany Eucalyptus topping out at one-hundred feet tall, habits of the wildlife in my yard have changed. Squirrels, for one, disappeared entirely for several months. There had been a crew of... Continue

Andrew Cuomo is just the latest high-profile man to become ensnared in the #me too movement. By today’s count four women have come forward with complaints about his flirtatious sexual advances, and in my experience, where there are four, there are forty. Men like Cuomo... Continue

Our planet’s major religion is a materialist ideology that’s quickly bringing civilization to its ultimate crisis: consumerism. Having transformed humankind into Homo economicus, consumerism has invaded and replaced virtually all indigenous cultures, producing a homogeneous world civilization based on accumulation of wealth. Although we think... Continue

I’m unhappy about the number of times I hear the word “fight” invoked in political discourse from representatives on both sides of the aisle. “I will fight for you” has become standard fare for politicians seeking public support, along with “fighting for legislation,” “fighting for... Continue

When the likes of Marjory Taylor Green, the newly elected representative from Georgia, starts spouting her QAnon nonsense about Jewish space lasers and baby-eating democrats, it’s easy to dismiss her as simply “looney” (as Mitch McConnell did) or a shameless publicity-seeker. Either or both of... Continue

In the midst of America’s “red scare” of the 1950s, Hollywood responded with films like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the horror flick that generated the meme of “pod people.” In the film, a psychiatrist is visited by a growing number of people who... Continue

In describing Adolph Eichmann, a Nazi officer who dutifully accounted for the genocide of nearly uncountable victims of Hitler’s Nazi terror and extermination, author Hannah Arendt famously coined the phrase “the banality of evil”. In Arendt’s evaluation, Eichmann was not an enthusiastic Nazi true believer,... Continue

When asked if he were a pessimist or an optimist, the brilliant Bucky Fuller - inventor of the geodesic dome, prefab dymaxion house, and coiner of the phrase ‘Spaceship Earth’ - replied, “Neither. I’m a realist.” His answer was predictably Zen, which is to say... Continue

I grew up being told that democracy is messy; the events of this year certainly prove it. The freedom to vote is not - and has not been - a “human right;” rather it’s a privilege bestowed upon particular groups of people deemed eligible. As... Continue