What if we could use science to predict the future of humankind and, thereby, prevent the collapse of civilization as a result of wars, economic crises or any other unforeseen event that could endanger its existence? This is the starting point of the Foundation saga, a series of seven books written by the brilliant and
READ MOREI’d hated guns since I was a teenager. It was a gun that killed John Lennon, after all. Guns killed President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. Get rid of the guns, problem solved, or so I thought. In December of 2012, I even tweeted President Barack Obama, urging him to
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President James Garfield named his beloved dog Veto. The pooch was a monstrous but lovable black Newfoundland weighing more than a hundred pounds. Congress got the message: A bad or unconstitutional bill would go straight to the Garfield doghouse. (Sadly, none ever did because Garfield served only five months in office.) The veto itself is a
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”I’m no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.” Thus did Leonard Bernstein famously conclude his Norton Lectures on the nature of music at Harvard University, 1973. This year we commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bernstein’s birth Aug. 25, a good time to unpack his statement.
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Sales of George Orwell’s utopian novel 1984 (1949) have spiked twice recently, both times in response to political events. In early 2017, the idea of ‘alternative facts’ called to mind Winston Smith, the book’s protagonist and, as a clerk in the Ministry of Truth, a professional alternator of facts. And in 2013, the US National
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Does it ever seem to you that a politically correct student can do no wrong? That question crossed my mind when I read about a recent incident at the University of Manchester. According to The Guardian, the University of Manchester recently refurbished its students’ union. Part of the décor involved a mural of the poem
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