Eighty years ago this week, and two years into World War II, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service launched a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu. More than 2,400 American soldiers and civilians lost their lives in the attack, and nearly 1,200 were wounded…
A student told me about a story he had read in The New York Times. According to the story, NASA launched a spacecraft with a mission to smash into an asteroid to see if it could “nudge it into a different trajectory.” The experiment, called “Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or…
Every relationship goes through conflicts. They are unpleasant, but inescapable. Overcoming conflict is necessary to deepen and strengthen a relationship. You can trust that a relationship will last only if it has overcome several conflicts. The problem is that because conflicts are unpleasant and often frightening, we try to avoid…
Transition periods are always prone to trouble. We are living through one of the most volatile transition periods in human history as we are rising from a self-centered mindset to a more holistic one where we are interdependent, interconnected, and consider the well-being of others in our actions. Regrettably, while…
A few days ago, Wyss Institute at Harvard University, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Vermont and Tufts University, published a paper showing that they have developed biological robots that can move on their own, “feed” themselves, and even self-replicate and reproduce. With this feat, these robots have…
Buy Nothing Day is a day of protest against consumerism. It is held the day after Thanksgiving, concurrent to Black Friday. In my opinion, the protest accomplishes nothing because shopping fills a void that makes us briefly happy. If you asked me, I would say, “Open the stores and let…
We haven’t finished with Delta, yet here comes Omicron. The new strain of coronavirus is said to be five times more infectious, but there is as yet no evidence that it causes serious illness in vaccinated people. Nature’s precision is astonishing. Like a skilled judge, it punishes us for our…
David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, said that billionaires “need to step up now, on a one-time basis,” and donate $6 billion to save 42 million people “who are going to die if we don’t reach them.” He also said, “I’m not asking them to…
“Pundits” and experts galore keep warning us that soon there will not be enough food to feed humanity, and not enough fresh water to drink. Remember peak oil, when a slew of “experts” warned us that soon we will run out of oil, that gas prices will skyrocket, and lines…
I received an email from a concerned mother who wrote the following, “Today, grownups, too, are insecure and fearful. How can we raise children to be confident? What can we rely on? …
