Package labeling has become the art of deception, the intentional use of language to confuse and deceive the consumer. This is particularly obvious as food companies seek to exploit the organic food movement, currently the fastest-growing segment of the food industry, but the cosmetic and... Continue

I remember sitting in our family living room as my father turned and folded pages, snapping and creasing the newsprint as he made his way through every section. Meanwhile, my mother would work across and down, completing the crossword puzzle with a pen. Growing up with... Continue

I was sitting on the couch with granddaughter Isabelle listening to her talk about numbers the other day –  how ten is a bigger number than one, that one-hundred is even bigger, and that a million is even bigger than that. Suddenly she blurted out “infinity!”... Continue

The presidential race is ramping up quickly, both sides having moved assertively into attack mode. Politics in America has degraded to the point that the billions spent on advertising are all about trash talk. It’s hard not to feel like one must choose the lesser... Continue

Among the channels proliferating via Dish Network I’ve recently taken to watching reruns of old network TV westerns. I watched many of these episodes when I was 10 or twelve years old, black and white westerns about good guys and bad guys and the women... Continue

This past month marks what looks like the confirmation of the Higgs Particle, or what has been called “The God Particle.” Like most things quantum, the Higgs Particle is simultaneously the Higgs Field, and its confirmation is a big deal. The Standard Model in modern... Continue

The tragedy in Aurora, Colorado this past week reminds me of the killings by Charles Whitman in Texas during 1966. Whitman was the son of a middle class family, a former marine who climbed to the top of a tower at the University of Texas... Continue

Before our universe began, things were simple. All-and-everything, including time, space and matter, was compressed into an infinitesimal, dimensionless singularity of virtual probability. Then something happened; depending upon what you choose to believe either God initiated the big bang or quantum mechanical probability self-ignited and... Continue

An economy in shambles with persistently high unemployment; wide income inequality; increasingly belligerent saber-rattling by political parties; street demonstrations accompanied by vandalism and violence on the part of both demonstrators and police; legislative grid-lock; polarized elected officials unable to work together; political campaigns funded by... Continue