My father used to say "life can be good." A cautious man, he was wise enough not to categorically state "life is good." He knew, and the fact is, life can be difficult. Life's difficulties are both natural and unnatural. Our natural difficulties arise from... Continue
Public Citizen
I know it sounds like the name of some aggressive law firm, but Mean and Hurtful is the way we sometimes treat each other. Exposure to the news is most often how I witness Mean and Hurtful, but the other evening I unexpectedly found myself... Continue
In the end, the skein of civilization turned out to be thinner and less substantial than most anyone had expected. Collapse of modern society took only a matter of weeks, not months. Once the electricity stopped the whole of industrial and mechanized society came crashing... Continue
I recently read a Facebook post by a fellow who, just having had an RIFD chip implanted under his skin, described himself as "trans-human." For those of you unaware exactly what an RIFD chip is, you'll find one in the latest version of credit cards... Continue
How funny it is that everybody's talking 'bout The Cloud! English lexicon has caught up with the reality of human consciousness: we have always had our heads in the clouds. Human beings float in a boundless sky of mental and emotional ambiguity from which we... Continue
While I was having lunch with "the guys" I began talking about "how we know what we know." One friend interjected that what I was saying was "too abstract" to be of interest. This has happened to me before, and in such social situations switching topics... Continue
The rise of Donald Trump has many people shaking their heads in disbelief. How, they wonder, can a man who is so brutish and nasty rise to the Presidential candidacy of the Republican Party? The form of this query betrays a fundamental error: Trump is... Continue
I get Donald Trump. I don't like him, but I get him. I understand why he acts and sounds like a jerk; The Donald is annoyed. Being annoyed places him the company of a lot of New Yorkers and former New Yorkers, like me. When... Continue
I'm old enough to have been right in the middle of the cultural, political and social turmoil of the nineteen sixties, and amidst the world's current upheavals I sometimes feel as if history is repeating itself. It's not difficult to make comparisons about then and... Continue
I think that if we are going to alter human genetics, we should get going on it right away and concentrate on giving human beings the gift of photosynthesis. As you most likely know, through photosynthesis plants feed themselves with sunlight. Chlorophyll, water, carbon dioxide... Continue