Random Thoughts

When I  took Hwy 88-E toward Fermilab, shortly after landing at the Chicago O' Hare Airport yesterday afternoon, it occurred to me that the first time I had driven there happened 26 years and…

In late 2014 I came downstairs from my home office and said to my wife, "Herb London just left me a message." "Is he any relation to Stacy London?" she asked in her offhand humor way. Well, yeah, she…

Tourists are not alarmed by Proposition 65 cancer warnings on nearly every product in every store in California, it quickly becomes a joke to them. Scientists in California warned that would happen…

During the Obama administration, James Clapper, America's Director of National Intelligence exposed Russian efforts to undermine U.S. natural gas ("fracking") by supporting environmental groups using…

In Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur", French and English tales were reworked into the definitive mythology of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. But he may have gotten one thing wrong.…

Next month, a Microsoft developer, a classical pianist, and a philanthropist for kids' health will compete in the Miss America pageant. And they are all the same person: Allison Farris. Farris…

What is chance? Or better, does the word "chance" really have an absolute meaning? I believe this is not an idle question. We tend to use that word to describe phenomena which we cannot trace back to…

I've never been much for the word "tribe." It sounds too insular in 2018, the kind of term (see also "zeitgeist", "heteronormative", and "schadenfreude") thrown around by postmodernists with their…

It can't have been easy for former environmental activist Mark Lynas to change sides. His friends were on the anti-science side, he was a dutiful reader of The Guardian, where activists and…

Summer is coming, and with it some more intense than usual travel for me. I actually started last month, when my path touched Rome, Athens, La Londe Les Maures (a small town on the south French…