Cats are among our closest animal companions. There are about 100 million cats in the U.S., a number that continues to grow. Yet there is a distinct downside in this relationship. Some consider them an environmental disaster; our feline friends kill an estimated 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds each year, and they’ve been blamed for
Today, in honor of the inauguration, I’m reprinting a poem from my book Some Poems About Life. I Wish I Had Met… I wish I had met Washington To see just how he led to risk his fortune and his life, To hear what’s in his head. I wish I had met Jefferson To
In the last century or so we’ve focused a great deal on equal opportunity. Sometimes in the conversation we tend to forget women, hence the rise of feminism. Recently I ran across an article that reminded me yet again that equal means just that — equality in all phases of life, only in this instance
This Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Then the real work begins. So what’s it like to be a presidential staff member working in the White House? This week’s Time magazine (cover date Jan 23, 2017) has a twenty-page cover story entitled “Incoming:
From the “Something You Normally Don’t Think About” department — I was skimming through an informational email from the Smithsonian magazine and came across the following question — “Do people who were born without sight have visual elements in their dreams?” It’s an interesting question I’ve never thought about. This is how the Smithsonian experts
Speaking of fake news, how do you counter dangerous speech on social media? The best idea I’ve seen so far has come from Kenya. This country went through a very violent election cycle in 2007 with over 1000 people killed. It seems cellphones were just becoming very popular, and incendiary text messages helped fuel the
I am old enough to have been fooled many times by many things in my lifetime. But it’s not always my fault. Sometimes it’s the limits of our senses. This was demonstrated to me yet again by a clever video on the EarthSky website entitled “How Your Brain Plays Tricks On You”. Rather than try
What do you need for a successful democracy? One of the most important elements is a free and independent press. I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying about power corrupting, so having a watchdog on the beat is essential. I’ve been thinking about this for two reasons. The first is all the discussion about “fake
There is a fine line that separates us from anarchy — our legal system. Most of us think our system works pretty well, the occasional horror story on social media notwithstanding. And yet, I’m finding enough of those horror stories to give me pause. For example, Jim Parsons was convicted of murdering his wife twelve
They don’t call economics “the dismal science” for nothing. Yet it’s such a critical part of our lives. And it’s such an important part of history. As a history nerd, I’ve found books that provide a historical perspective in many different ways — wars, natural disasters, disease, pests, and even sex. (How would English history