Category: Random

It’s proverbial in our society that you get more conservative as you get older. I mean more conservative in the traditional sense of wanting things to stay the same: this should not be confused with some platforms of the Republican party, which seeks radical changes in various areas (government reduction, government support for religious institutions,…

I’m back after a Thanksgiving trip. What do vegetarians like myself eat for Thanksgiving? All sorts of things, actually. That said, for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, we need a big centerpiece food item. Ideally it will both look festive and taste good. I find this combination to be harder for vegetarians. Lasagna or macaroni and…

I still read a daily newspaper, but we all know that newspapers are in decline. Their circulations are dropping slowly but steadily. I haven’t seen any data on the average age of newspaper readers, but I’m sure it must be increasing. Over time newspapers will have fewer and fewer readers. As technology advances, they will…

A few years ago, when my daughter was 2 years and 2 months old, my grandmother died. My daughter and I flew to Sweden for the funeral. As we were flying home, there was a blizzard in Boston, and our plane was diverted to Bangor, Maine. After we landed at Bangor, I told my daughter…

Time travel is often viewed as impossible because of the grandfather paradox: if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, then you would never be born, and you would not kill your grandfather. To think about that properly, we have to set aside normal conventions of causality. We see cause and effect because…