I confess I’m a fan of the television series, Big Bang Theory.  The 30 minute program centers on scientists who are captivated by comic book heroes.  Sexual gags aside, the program exudes a childlike innocence, not dissimilar, I suppose, from the curiosity a scientist feel

Chatting over coffee, a friend told a joke that not only made me laugh, but also made me think:  “Donald Trump dies and finds God peering down at him from his golden throne.  ‘Well Donald,’ God asks in a booming voice.  ‘What have you to say for yourself?’&nbs

Several years ago, a woman, who would later become the first female governor of Oregon, snapped at my observation that politics would be better off without political parties.  People should vote directly for candidates without needing approval from an “old boy” network, I said. 

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton described Donald Trump as “temperamentally unsuited” for the office.  How prescient her words were.  Most of us now know the holder of the nation’s highest office is, indeed, temperamentally unsuited.  Neither a prudent n

My last official portrait appears on my blog page.  Seventy-three at the time, I knew I was old, but wasn’t prepared when the photographer pulled out a “soft” lens for the shoot. He said he’d take a few images with it.  I might like them better. The proofs showed the

In a recent opinion piece, Clive Thompson begins with the question, “What do you do when you discover you are wrong?” (“Retraction Heroes,” by Clive Thompson, Wired, Feb, 2018, pg. 034.)  He goes on to extol the merits of an evolutionary biologist, Daniel Bolnick, who pub

My father taught me the difference between truth and a lie when I was five.  The story begins with a teddy bear, a tiny, plastic ornament that hung at the end of my toothbrush. I loved to watch it in the bathroom mirror, bouncing up and down as I cleaned my teeth.  One day, the tedd

Like sand in an hourglass, Donald Trump continues to turn the world upside down in the hope of returning the country to the past.   In the footsteps of former president, Ronald Regan, he uses his proposed budget to starve from existence the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and

Donald Trump has written another executive order that will come to nothing. That order instructs the IRS “…to exercise maximum enforcement discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits religious leaders from speaking about politics and candidates fro

Professor Higgins’ line from My Fair Lady asks why a woman can’t be more like a man.  He sees women as frivolous, inferior creatures no real man could  understand.  But change the emphasis of his words and the question asks something different.  Why can’t a woman be more lik