Thomas L. Friedman, author of The World is Flat, has a recent book with the unlikely title of Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. The world is changing quickly, too quickly for many people. Friedman identifies three major change agents — Moore’s law (the increase in
We’ve been hearing a lot about sustainability and recycling as a way to conserve resources. How far could we take this if we put our minds to it? Pretty far. One of the more novel ideas I’ve heard regarding recycling the byproducts of food production comes from designer Sacha Laurin. Her career began as a
For some reason, I can’t import any of my photos into this article. Photos are on my Facebook page. Several weeks after I’d signed up for my Africa trip, the travel agency called me. “Would you like to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro?” I thought that sounded like a real adventure. At my age, this would
It’s hard to be an optimist when you keep uncovering horror stories about the human race. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by a species that once believed in witchcraft, but it still can be shocking. Recently while catching up on reading, I found an article entitled “The Perils of Pale” in the June 2017
Think back to the early days of our country. We were a collection of 13 disparate colonies, each with a unique reason for being. We had just won our independence by throwing off an authoritarian king and now we were suspicious of a strong central government. How do you pull a country like that together?
In my last post, I mentioned traveling to Kenya as a kind of homage to all the great runners who have come from that region. Not only did I get to see some iconic wildlife up close and personal, but I supported girls’ education by participating in the Amazing Maasai Marathon (http://www.marathontours.com/races/amazing-maasai-marathon-333). The Maasai tribe
I’ve just returned from an amazing trip to Kenya and Tanzania, which I will write about in the upcoming weeks. I describe this trip as amazing because it was both ambitious and exotic, visiting places most people never see. This is a shame because these people have proud cultures stretching back thousands of years, and
I grew up on a farm in western Ohio, and every summer I can remember watching lightening bugs from my bedroom window. But like everything else in this world, it’s complicated. First, most people call them fireflies. According to an entry in the July 7, 2017 Smithsonian magazine’s VIP newsletter by Jason Bittel, they are
I grew up during the height of the Cold War, when every home-improvement show we attended had a model bomb shelter. Thankfully, we won that one. But today we may face a threat that is even more insidiously dangerous. I’m sure you’ve heard the accusations that Russia was behind the email hacks during the 2016
Have you ever read about scientific research and thought, “Well, that’s a waste of time”? The truth is we never know where our ideas will lead. Benjamin Franklin was watching an early flight of a hot-air balloon when another spectator remarked, “But of what good is it?” Franklin replied, “Of what good is a newborn