Category: Politics

Several years ago why trying to build a megastructure on New York Harbor, the New York Wheel, I spent some time studying the whys and wherefore of megastructures in the history of mankind. People don’t “have to” build megastructures, but throughout history they’ve chosen to for several noteworthy reasons. The biggest of these is for demonstrating power and authority. Massive structures like pyramids show “we have the resources, organization, and power to do this.” They’re…

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I am aware that I live too much in my mind. I can’t seem to help it. Someone broke off my internal volume control knob and I’m fairly certain many people who know me only wish I had an accessible external volume control. I recall during my college fraternity days that there was a caricature artist who came to the fraternity once a year (with 54 fraternities and probably 15 sororities at Cornell in those…

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We all learned that Jane Goodall died today. Jane Goodall was a renowned British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist, best known for her groundbreaking research on wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. In 1960, at age 26, she began studying chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Her work revolutionized our understanding of chimpanzees and human evolution. She’s the person who discovered that chimps make and use tools, eat meat, and have complex social behaviors, findings that…

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I read a disturbing report this morning that probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did bring to mind an old expression…In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. This proverb has ancient roots, though its exact origin, like many proverbs is debated among scholars. The most commonly cited origin is that it is attributed to Desiderius Erasmus, the Dutch Renaissance humanist, who included it in his collection “Adagia” (1500-1536), a compilation…

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The world’s major deserts span across different continents and climate zones, each with distinct characteristics. There are hot deserts. The Sahara in North Africa is the largest hot desert, covering much of the northern third of the continent. The Arabian Desert stretches across the Middle East, while the Thar Desert lies between India and Pakistan. In North America, the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Mojave deserts cover parts of the southwestern United States and Mexico. Australia’s Great…

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