By the Dawn’s Early Light
2016-09-22 – It’s fall. And, no, I can no longer see by the dawn’s early light. I don’t sleep well, so I’m usually up before my alarm goes off. Last […]
Presidential Preference Polls Are Like Reality TV—Fiction
2016-09-19 – As frightening as they are, I pay no attention to recent polls showing Donald Trump catching or passing Hillary Clinton. By the same token, I don’t pay attention […]
Shatnez Testing: Finding the Thread of Kindness in a Tangle of Human Experience
2016-09-15 – Saturday I’ll be bar mitzvah five times over. I’m 65. My bar mitzvah Torah portion (parsha) was Ki Tetze (כי תצא – Deut. 21:10 – 25:19—read this year on […]
You Could Put Half the Press Into a “Basket of Deplorables”
2016-09-12 – Over the weekend Hillary Clinton committed something that the media calls a “gaffe.” I don’t think it was a gaffe at all—except in the way it was reported. […]
Prepping to Bike Across Iowa
2016-09-08 – Next year, the last week of July, I’m hoping to bike across Iowa in an event called RAGBRAI (The [Des Moines] Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa). […]
Why Do We Celebrate Labor Day When We Despise Labor?
2016-09-05 – Happy Labor Day! Well happy might not be the word that first comes to the mind of politicians who march in the Labor Day parades and yet vote […]
A Day to Celebrate Truth-Telling: #DiogenesDay is October 1
2016-09-01 – I know it’s quaint. Honesty is not in vogue. It’s become a last resort. But if you want people to trust you, what choice do you have? A […]
Dawning of the Anthropocene Epoch
2016-08-29 – Scientists have now declared a new geological epoch, starting around 1950, called the Anthropocene. The defining characteristic of our period in geologic history is the influence of human […]
No Safe Spaces at the UofChicago
2016-08-25 – My alma mater (the University of Chicago) has declared to incoming students that it does not support trigger warnings or safe spaces. I mostly agree with this. Mostly, […]
If You Look for Rainbows, You’ll See Rainbows (But You May Get Wet)
2016-08-22 – People I know are surprised to see a rainbow. I see them pretty often. And they are rarely a surprise—because I look for them. I saw one early […]
Eightoh9 