Meditations

The winter rains came late this year in California. A series of storms this spring have made the land verdant beyond belief. Sitting on the lip of the narrow gorge…

There’s a new installation on roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, “a spare and unsettling sculpture” according to the New York Times of two huge creatures—a…

The search for life on other planets is intensifying. A field that was dismissed as fringe science two decades ago is now closing in from different angles on the question…

In the early 1980’s, after 15 years of intensive philosophical inquiry into the question of how human disorder could evolve out of the natural order, I had a shattering experience…

At bottom, “localism is the belief that communities can and should find solutions to their own particular problems, within their own particular contexts.” The seeming irrefutability of this idea is…

One of the most renowned neuroscientists in the world, Gerald M. Edelman, calls the human brain “the most complicated material object in the known universe.” Edelman has advanced a theory…

When “2001, A Space Odyssey,” came out in 1968, I was in the 10th grade at a small Catholic high school in Michigan. Like many boys of my generation, I…

An old friend and I are having a friendly argument about how many people still give a damn. He thinks about 30% still care. I said it’s become more like…