When you go to high school in Rome, Italy and your school is called Notre Dame International and is run by the Brothers of the Holy Cross, there’s a good chance you will end up reading Dante Alighieri. Dante lived from 1265-1321AD. That period falls during the Late Middle Ages (also called the High Medieval period, transitioning into the Late Medieval period), and marks the early stages of the Italian Renaissance. When you travel around…
AI is changing every day. I remember back in 1996 when one of my friends brought out a new toy on one of our motorcycle rides to Vermont. He had been a Naval Officer in the past and considered himself quite the navigator. This gadget he had acquired was something he called a Global Positioning System and it was about the size of an old Nokia cellphone. On it, on a dimly lit screen was…
I’m sitting out on our deck on a Saturday morning in mid-October and the weather on our hilltop is pretty much ideal. It is 77 degrees with 53% humidity and an 8 mph breeze blowing in from the Pacific Ocean. There is not a cloud in the sky and on this west-facing deck at 10am it is cool and light and perfect weather to enjoy a lazy weekend autumnal day. Gary & Oswaldo are down…
Fingernails serve several important functions that were crucial for our ancestors and remain useful today. Given that our sense of touch mostly happens through our fingers, its only logical that they are very sensitive and have lots of nerve endings. Nails shield the sensitive fingertips and the underlying bone from injury and trauma. The nail bed underneath is rich in nerve endings and blood vessels, and nails act as a protective plate. Nails provide crucial…
I think its fair to say that we are all eating more chicken than ever these days. Protein consumption has been rising significantly in recent years. Chicken provides 7.2% of total protein intake in the United States. To put this in broader context: chicken accounts for 13.9% of animal protein consumed in the US , making it the dominant meat choice. Americans consume about 102.6 pounds of chicken per capita annually, and poultry accounted for…
Today I am going for my semi-annual doctor’s visit for a check-up. The general state of my health is good (I know its not “excellent” and I find myself debating if its just “good” or “very good” in the five level rating system the questionnaire asks). In fact, it’s much better than it was six months ago, which is before I lost twenty pounds, solved my edema problem and started wearing compression socks every day.…
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…
There are reasons why I read what I read and just this morning I am reminded about why I read the New York Times. Mostly I think I read it because it is, in my opinion, the single best voice of the America I believe in and enjoy. I chose my words carefully in stating that because there is a case to be made that perhaps something like Fox News is more representative of the…
This week I cannot recall how many articles I have seen with the headline about what the government shutdown means to me (or anyone reading the article). I know there are Republicans out there who do wish the government didn’t go into shutdown, but there are way too many that are busy finding it a good thing for apparently two reasons. The first is that it allows them, by virtue of the Senate voting process,…
It has quite suddenly become that time of year again when season has passed from summer to fall and the autumnal equinox is upon us. The equinox occurs twice a year when day and night are approximately equal in length across the globe. As we all learned in grade school Earth Science, the Vernal (Spring) Equinox occurs around March 20-21 in the Northern Hemisphere and the Autumnal (Fall) Equinox occurs around September 22-23 in the…