Democracy’s an idea that’s been kicking around for thousands of years, an attempt to bring a particular form of order to a chaotic world. criticism of democracy goes all the way back to Plato’s Republic in Ancient Greece of 380 B.C., his thoughts on how to create a good society. Suffice to say, Plato was… Read the rest

Without doubt, the state of Arizona features some of the most spectacular landscapes in America, mind-boggling sandstone canyons sculpted by millions of years of wind and water and vast moonscape-like deserts which challenge life entirely. My wife and I are currently traversing such areas, and … Read the rest

When I hear a developer say how much they love Sonoma, it makes me cringe. I’ve lived here long enough to have seen and heard it all before; what such big talkers often mean by loving Sonoma is craving to possess it.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel tremendous affection for our community. I never say I love Sonoma,… Read the rest

The Homo line of bipedal humans sequenced through a variety of iterations before settling down, albeit uncomfortably, into the one we are today. Among others, there’s been Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and the now popular Homo neanderthalensis. All these primate species share… Read the rest

Our American culture famously celebrates freedom of expression. Freedom of speech is invoked as a catch-all justification for the most hateful of sentiments; the ACLU, defender of the First Amendment, has gone to court to protect the right of Nazi’s to march publicly while displaying swastikas and… Read the rest

The word “woke” is getting lots of airtime these days. The GOP uses it derisively as an insult, indicating that woke is synonymous with leftist attitudes and beliefs about family, religion, patriotism, gender, and politics. In other words, that woke means liberal, and liberal means celebrating difference,… Read the rest

My wife and I just went to the movie Oppenheimer, about J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb.” It’s well worth seeing, but prompted me to write about the other Oppenheimer, Robert’s brother Frank.

I met Frank Oppenheimer in the mid-seventies. He interviewed me for a job at the Exploratorium… Read the rest

According to the Big Bang theory, before the “bang” our universe was an infinitesimally small, non-dimensional singularity, a monad of the most basic and original substance or what the spiritually inclined call The Demiurge, The One or The Divine. From that perfect symmetry of wholeness emerged … Read the rest

Like any physical object used regularly, human bodies wear out; joints lose cartilage, cataracts develop, muscles get weaker, organs lose efficiency, healing happens slower, bones get more brittle, and memory…oh yes, memory gets worse. Now I remember.

The Watcher, the self-conscious “I” that … Read the rest

Neither of my parents were observant Jews. Yes, we belonged to a reform temple and would attend services there for the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but other than that, we were mostly Jews in name only. We ate bagels, cream cheese, and lox, but also bacon; that about says it all.

My brother… Read the rest

While walking this past week I noticed whitish imprints on the bike path, the result of muddy water having collected under wet leaves that had dried once the sun came out and had blown away. Evanescent, such imprints will disappear quickly, and it got me thinking about what we leave behind.

Few of us will… Read the rest

We live in a time of specialization. Higher education for example, has primarily become a workplace on-ramp preparing top students to enter professional careers in which to specialize and make lots of money. Scholarship and acquiring knowledge for its own value has… Read the rest