Despite their differences, a pristine landscape, a colorful parrot, a flawless ballet, a concert by a virtuoso musician, a painting by Rembrandt or Renoir, or simply e=mc2 are each beautiful in their own way. There’s no need to define beautiful. We know what it means. Everyone has seen it or heard it or felt it [...]
Sometimes a novel absorbs me so completely I keep turning pages to find out what happens. If the outcome satisfies me, say the boy gets the girl (or vice versa!), I’m happy. If the girl marries someone else, such as in the short story White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, I’m crushed, as if I was [...]
“Let’s go,” said Lona’s brother Larry many years ago. “I invite you all to Turkey to see the total solar eclipse for my 60th birthday.” The eclipse was going to be on August 11, 1999, literally the precise date of his birthday. I thought the birthday boy got the present! He wasn’t kidding, and Larry, [...]
We’ve sunk to new depths. Disguised as saviors for elephants, we’ve again vented our killer instincts. This time in Central Park. “Ivory is Destroyed to Save Elephants,” read The New York Times headline on Aug. 3rd. This wasn’t the first such event. The last was also in Central Park in December 2015, and in 2013 [...]
My last blog, “Wrapping Up My Memoir,” announced my memoir in its final stages. Reconciling my science career with the background of my artistic family is an important theme in the memoir. Collecting Inuit art was an activity, apart from the science itself, in which I expressed my bent for art, which is represented in [...]
Not long ago, having lunch with colleagues – all known scientists – I brought up our pervasive world of television, especially the deluge of serials that can be streamed. There’s Breaking Bad – riveting, and The Wire – amazing, the drug world of Baltimore seen through a prism, and The House of Cards – oh [...]
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