I am walking downtown in a pleasant cosmopolitan city, perhaps Portland or some other northwestern community. I notice that a light-rail transportation system is in full operation, and crowds of people are hustling and bustling, as they tend to do in active metropolitan spaces. Moving... Continue

As if the recent tragedy of the Maloney family - father, mother and two children killed by a speeding motorist as they headed home from vacation were not enough - we’ve now been subjected to the horror of two people burglarizing the Maloney’s vacant home.... Continue

What exactly is a moment, what we commonly call nowness? Does it have duration, and if so, how long is it; if not, does nowness actually exist at all? (Warning to the easily confused: This might be a good place to stop reading). Nowness has... Continue

I usually don’t stop at garage sales; I’ve accumulated too much already. Nonetheless, I still find myself attracted to signs that say “estate sale” and this past weekend I impulsively pulled over to the curb and strolled into a back yard filled with boxes of... Continue

A recent article in the New York Times Magazine highlights the work of two social scientists named Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, who have concluded that happiness is contagious. Unhappiness is contagious too, but 2% less contagious, it turns out. The research used data from... Continue

I’ve been spending time lately watching live and recorded transmissions from the International Space Station. Unlike the videos and transmissions of the past with poor image fidelity and sound, the quality of the current transmissions is fantastic. The color is great, the image clarity and... Continue

People think in words, but the world is not words. Language is an expedient method to describe reality using words in an attempt to communicate what we or others actually experience, but it never quite suffices. Life has an ineffable quality that’s hard to pin... Continue

Profiling has been a hot topic lately, and the arrest of Harvard Professor Gates certainly stimulated a fresh round of examination of the topic. The issue is not whether or not people quickly form opinions of others; it is abundantly clear that “sizing up” others... Continue

Nobody can argue this economic recession has not been painful; jobs have been lost, homes foreclosed, pensions and retirements diminished or eliminated. People are suffering and this despite the fact that most have worked hard and lived honest, decent lives. Over 10 percent of Americans... Continue