Our four-footed companions go through life on a quite different timescale from we humans. Matilda Beagle was the second dog that we have nursed through old-age infirmities and held as she left this world, this one shortly after her 13th birthday. As I come through the human equivalent of aging myself, this passing could not help but prompt a lot… Read more »
A fragile peace fire holds this morning, but political support for Bibi Netanyahu’s actions against the Palestinian Hamas military actions and control over Gaza is one of the few issues these days that seems to cross party lines. At least there are multiple views within the Democratic Party, and there are clearly neo-Nazi elements among Trump supporters who hold Israel… Read more »
Trumpeter and singer Chet Baker died 33 years ago this week in Amsterdam. He was found dead on the street underneath his room, and with traces of heroin and cocaine in his system. The circumstances behind his death were never officially determined, but one biographer has commented that it was equally likely that he either fell from the window, or… Read more »
“Think as I think,” said a man, “Or you are abominably wicked; You are a toad.” And after I had thought of it, I said: “I will, then, be a toad.” — Stephen Crane (1871–1900) It can be dangerous to bisect any part of the world around us into two paths, but I have come to view human expressions of… Read more »
I still remember the classic picture of the atom from my Michigan high school physics class, about the same time MIT professor Frank Wilczek was in a similar class in New York City in the late 1960s. Called the Rutherford model, that atom was pictured as a miniature solar system. with electron “planets” revolving around a sun-like nucleus, which was… Read more »
These two statements, I assert, can be simultaneously true: I want to live in a secure society. I want to live in a free society. And most of the time, for most of us (cough, cough, middle-class white Americans), these two statements rest comfortably together in our heads as our view of “the real America.” I feel free to leave… Read more »
“You have a greater chance of being in a car accident on the way to getting this vaccine than you have of having a problem from this vaccine. But that’s not how people view risk.” — Paul Offit, vaccine expert at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital. Maybe it is because I do not seem to have a gambling gene in my body…. Read more »
When I purchase some stock online, I never try to nail my “limit price” down to the penny. I do not believe that ordinary people can do market timing that well. But that penny means a lot to the high-frequency traders and their AI computer algorithms. In a story that you might not see as connected, Amazon has had to… Read more »
Imagine that there are just two cafés in your town at which you can dine. At Café Safe the menu is limited and rather bland, your parent’s music is playing over the PA system, and people are friendly but stand-offish. However, the place is clean, and they follow all health protocols. Business is good at Café Safe and it is… Read more »
Now that the massive container ship Ever Given has been freed from clogging up the Suez Canal, perhaps we can step back from “crisis economics” to look at the larger state of global transportation logistics. I agree with Australian economist John Quiggin that this event was more of a temporary glitch in this complex system, and perhaps a warning flag… Read more »