Scratch deeply enough at the hide of any hero and you will find some dirt. Commonly, we refer to “feet of clay” when we find fault in those we first admire, but today the art of finding fault has reached new lows. From “gotcha” to... Continue

The ability to concentrate our attention and focus precisely upon an object or a thought requires filtering and mediating our experience of the world. Our five senses afford us the ability to detect information only within a limited range. Our eyes perceive certain wavelengths in... Continue

I recently noted the passing of Washoe, the 42-year-old chimpanzee that became a pioneer in human-chimpanzee communication. Washoe was taught to use human sign language and the manipulation of symbols to communicate, and researchers claim Washoe was able to construct complex sentences and engage in... Continue

It seems just like any other ordinary day, when Wham! My father suddenly ends up in the hospital – seriously anemic. As soon as he is doing better and things begin to feel normal again, Wham! My sister gets thrown while white-water rafting in Thailand,... Continue

People have been arguing about art for a very long time. The cave paintings in Lascaux, France, are reported to be over 20,000 years old, and no doubt they stimulated considerable dialogue, “It looks more like an ox than a horse to me,” or “My... Continue

The excesses of the sub-prime mortgage lending industry are inevitably pointing to a huge bailout by the taxpayers, and potential collapse of housing prices overall. Due to the wide popularity of home equity loans, a housing price collapse will subject many millions of homeowners to... Continue

The early Hebrews created the first written alphabet, which they called the aleph-beth, which was later adapted by the ancient Greeks. The alphabet we use today is itself derived from that Greek alphabet. Unlike Chinese, which uses tens of thousands of symbolic pictograms with multiple... Continue

Thigh bone. Thigh bone connected to the knee bone. Knee bone connected to the foot bone. I hear the word of the Lord! In its simple wisdom, the old spiritual “Dem Bones” by James Weldon Johnson neatly summarizes the true nature of the body and... Continue

For the past seven years I have enjoyed the dependable companionship of a pacemaker. I’m not talking about a life coach or a personal trainer; I’m talking about a pacemaker that is actually wired into the chambers of my heart and makes it beat. Actually,... Continue