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March 10th, 2014
Room without a roof.
Last night I watched the first episode of the revived “Cosmos,” the legendary television science series created by charismatic astronomer Carl Sagan.
Sagan was less known for his scientific achievements than for his amazing ability to make science comprehensible, and even entertaining, to audiences not normally interested in hard-to-grasp […]
February 3rd, 2014
I was told there would be snacks.
Yes, I watched the Super Bowl. No, I don’t care about football.
But I am continually amazed by the peculiarities of my species, and those are on display with extra sprinkles during our nation’s annual rite of roughhousing. Love it or hate it, football is entrenched […]
June 17th, 2013
The goddess Saraswati encourages all to grow wise in harmony.
For those of us unable to feel the electric buzz of religious faith that motivates some people to acts of kindness or terror, there are nonetheless times when we wish we could find something above and beyond the mundane demands of daily life […]
February 11th, 2013
The calm before the protest.
It’s hard to sell the concept of global warming to folks digging out from a couple feet of snow.
However, the winter storm which silenced much of the Northeast barely frosted the windows here in D.C., where we’ve been enjoying a snow-globe kind of winter. Every couple of […]
January 21st, 2013
The Inaugural dawn evoked poet Richard Blanco's line about "Hope, a new constellation, waiting for us to map it."
So I wimped out on going down to the National Mall to watch the inaugural hoopla. But I watched it on TV. That counts, right?
At least I was able to hear all the […]
January 12th, 2013
Sock It To Me
Okay, so here’s my guilty secret. I like movies where things explode.
Not all movies where things explode. But when Bruce Willis, or someone of his stripe, sets off to save the planet with a quip and a smirk, I enjoy the payoff as much as any backyard […]
December 20th, 2012
Here Come Santa Clauses
Washington, D.C., is known around the world as a center of power. Traditionally, men in suits are the ones wielding that power.
Suits change, but do they change the men inside?
I wonder.
If, as they say, clothes make the man, shouldn’t it follow that if all men wore […]
November 8th, 2012
Where there's light, there's hope.
Ahhh. Savor the pause button.
Now that the election season with its attendant antagonism and anxiety has finally blown past, maybe we can get back to work on the real problems in an atmosphere of quiet cooperation.
In a way, this started almost before the marathon voting began, […]
October 24th, 2012
Just Another Brick in the Wall
The first time I participated in a national election I cast my vote for George McGovern.
I believed in him and his entire platform. Some people may remember him only as the man who suffered a crushing defeat against Richard Nixon in 1972, but McGovern was so […]
September 15th, 2012
So I see that Ang Lee has made a movie out of Yann Martell’s brilliant fantasy The Life of Pi.
This seems a bit ambitious to me, but then, Ang Lee is a genius, so perhaps he can handle it. Yet when I read the book about a boy who survives 227 days in […]
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