I want to continue my review of the book Humankind, which I started in my previous article. Author Rutger Bregman showed that many of the best and worst aspects of human behavior stem from a common desire to be “helpful.” Just as wolves domesticated themselves to be able to live among humans, humans domesticated themselves […]
With Putin’s attack on Ukraine, many of us wrote to President Biden to ask him to cut off Russian oil imports, even if it meant a rise in prices and/or rationing. In my message I called on him to speak to the American people to sacrifice for a greater good. I talked of how my […]
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As I write this, Putin is brutally attacking Ukraine. Do these things really still happen in the 21st century? Is it finally time to put an end to such unilateral behavior with a world government? The idea goes back to ancient times, when it was largely promoted by powerful emperors who wanted to expand their […]
I have friends who proudly say they shut out following the news. They find it depressing. I have another friend who is on top of everything in the news. Why should we follow the news? Democracy requires participation. And participation requires informed understanding. My friend who is on top of the news does not attend […]
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread – the rich as well as the poor.” So wrote Anatole France in The Red Lily (1894). It is difficult to express the injustice of the legal system better than that one brilliant […]
Christianity is all about forgiveness and I am writing this during the Christmas season. Could a society function with nothing but forgiveness as an ethical code? Astronomer and 1981 Humanist of the Year Carl Sagan wrote a brilliant essay about this for Parade Magazine in 1993. Here is a link to a copy: https://swt.org/sagan. It […]
Since I was a child, I have asked big questions about life, the universe, and everything (credit to Douglas Adams for that expression). I was fortunate to have a scientist father and a psychologist/philosopher mother to offer helpful answers. Out in the real world I discovered that people will often offer “helpful” answers that are […]
My last article talked about the climate crisis as an example of market failure. “Free” markets in fact require a vast government infrastructure: Laws, enforcement, courts, established financial systems. And a system to rebalance extreme wealth inequalities. Homelessness results from a lack of the latter mechanism. Wealth begets wealth. This can happen directly as wealth […]
How many of these claims about Monsanto and/or GMOs have you heard? Monsanto sues farmers for having GMO crops on their land due to wind-blown pollen? Monsanto uses a terminator gene to make their seeds infertile? Monsanto’s policies in poor countries are causing widespread suicide of farmers? GMOs favor large agribusiness over small farmers? GMOs […]
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Some things really are taboo, and I want to write more about that in the future. I recently posted a cartoon on Facebook that showed a guy saying, “Having a dog has convinced me that animals have souls. And that is why I became a vegetarian.” The other person says, “Yet you feed your dog […]
Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my! As expressed so well by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, these are the things we evolved to fear. Unfortunately, in the modern world, these are not the things that really matter. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just released its latest report emphasizing the urgency of […]
When you hear the word “infrastructure” do your eyes glaze over? As I write this, Congress is debating an infrastructure bill that is on the order of a trillion dollars. Is that a lot or a little? Almost by definition, infrastructure is all the boring stuff that enables all the cool things in society to […]
The 1960s TV show Get Smart often offered deep insights cloaked in humor. In the episode, “Do I Hear a Vaults?” the Chief gets locked in a bank vault with agent Larrabee. There is only enough air to last 24 hours and it is on a time lock that won’t open until the end of […]
“How many piano tuners are there in Boston?” That was the first question on our first problem set of freshman physics at MIT. The question was not really about pianos or the people who tune them. It was a way to get us to make estimates based on facts that we know. The first step […]
