Turn With Me Now to the Mind of a Great Philosopher as He Muses on the Issue...
What follows is a very long quote by the standards of length I intend for quotes in this space. My rules are violated in this instance because of my intense interest in the troubling issues produced by...
View ArticleWe Just Keep Making the Same Old Mistakes and Using the Same Old Arguments—As...
As hard as I try, I can’t keep Mark Twain’s posthumously published story, The Mysterious Stranger, off my mind for very long these days. That’s because I keep reading the daily newspaper. Twain’s story...
View ArticleTopics and Attitudes—Not to Mention the Opening Event’s Keynote Speaker—at...
A few days ago—in mid-November—the Society for Neuroscience met in Washington, DC, in an event that, if it had any message at all (and it had many), it was this: in terms of exploring and understanding...
View ArticleJust When I Was Ready to Discuss What We Could Do to Encourage New Thinking...
I am accustomed to being questioned by prospective business clients on all kinds of issues. What I’m not accustomed to is having them ask me, unexpectedly and point-blank, as happened over dinner not...
View ArticleFrom that Other Denmark (The One in Western Australia), Leo Bakx Offers...
Leo Bakx from Denmark, WA, Australia writes: Your blog post on the Denmark Cartoon Incident piqued my interest as I live in Denmark (the place in Western Australia, LOL!). Well, the whole thing with...
View ArticleDear Amanda, Twelve Years Later I’m Wondering if You Have Gotten Any Closer...
In a used bookstore earlier this week, I discovered this note, written on the inside cover of a copy of Karen Armstrong’s work, A History of God, in the still-childish hand of a young woman wise beyond...
View Article“To Be or Not To Be?” Really Isn’t the Question, and Never Has Been. So What...
The future of the human species, and the future of the many other species whose fate is tied to ours, however directly or indirectly, hinges on what the human brain can be taught to do with this...
View ArticleIf Your Sense of Curiosity Likes Big-Picture Inquiries and Great Mysteries...
For me, one of the things that makes the estimable “times in which we live” so doggone mesmerizing is the shear scope of the questions being asked. Add to that new technologies for pursuing answers....
View ArticleThe Buck Stops with You and Me on the Issue of Breaking the Cycles and the...
Listening to myself—talking with my children about (grand)children or the neighbors about the (neighbor)hood or my friends about (geo)politics or my colleagues about where “descent with modification”...
View ArticleWas One Side of Moses’ Brain Talking to the Other Side at the Burning Bush?...
It has happened to me only twice. Each time, only a single word was spoken. But the impact of hearing someone who isn’t there speak to you is profoundly unsettling, even if it is only single word. I...
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