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
Public Citizen
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
Happy New Year! 2029 raced by so fast it’s hard to believe it is already 2030. It has been an eventful year. Our Granddaughter Lani entered Columbia University Medical School last year, and expects to perform her first remote robotics surgery soon. Larry remembers when... Continue
When you think about it, private property, the ownership of the earth itself, is a rather ridiculous idea. An artifact of culture buttressed by social compacts, laws, and precedent, the idea of land ownership is a mere 10,000 years old. Paleolithic hunter-gatherer culture was supplanted... Continue
This is a heavy nut year. Last year was light, but this year the black walnut tree in my yard is dropping bushel’s full of nuts. They bounce off the roof at all hours of the day and night, and by morning the patio is... Continue
The night before I recently flew home from New York I dreamt that while flying on Virgin Airlines the captain announced we would be making an emergency landing due to a passenger’s medical condition. In my dream, of course, I was that passenger. The next... Continue
While dutifully writing my weekly 500-word essay for the Sun, I realized that my seventh-grade music teacher, Mr. Davies, would have been pleased to know about it. Mr. Davies was a volcanic personality, a man of great talent and short temper. Capable of playing and... Continue
I spent last week attending to my ailing 88-year-old father. Generally good-natured and optimistic, he had been laid low by a sudden painful swelling in his right knee, accompanied by weakness, chills and shortness of breath. The combination landed him in the hospital for a... Continue