• February 5, 2018
• by
• Adam

The Berlin Wall -- the wall that "nobody has the intention of building" -- stood for 10,316 days. As of today, it's been 10,316 days since it fell. I can't image what it was like living behind it, but for those...

• February 4, 2018
• by
• Adam

I spent most of the weekend finishing up a big project and was reminded of something I've known for a long time: people resist change. I don't know if it's more a matter of resisting change or defending the status...

• February 3, 2018
• by
• Adam

In society it was once common for public servants and polymaths to write in newspapers under pen names. We now have bots and nameless naysayers poisoning public discourse on social media. Somewhere, something went wrong. Maybe there're more who are...

• February 2, 2018
• by
• Adam

Individuals make for poor judges of themselves. Amateurs, knowing so little of all there is to know, assess their abilities too highly. In the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself." Those who are more skilled,...

• February 1, 2018
• by
• Adam

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." When considering the cost of a...

• January 29, 2018
• by
• Adam

If I go more than a few weeks without taking time to look up at the night sky -- free from artificial lights and atmospheric pollution -- I begin to feel claustrophobic. I benefit from gazing up at the beauty...

• January 23, 2018
• by
• Adam

Cool Runnings is 25 years old, and I probably haven't seen it in 20. It's a 90's classic. Even after all these years, I can still quote many of the memorable lines: "Sanka, mon, whatcha smoking?" "I'm not smokin', I'm...

• December 18, 2017
• by
• Adam

I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music lately. I finally found the Christmas radio station, and my Spotify playlists are finely curated masterpieces. Even when I'm not listening to my favorite songs, I can imagine every harmony, every...

• December 10, 2017
• by
• Adam

In an early scene in Lawrence of Arabia, T.E. Lawrence finds himself in a stuffy basement, a place he’d rather not be, doing a job he’d rather not. He’s bored, brooding, and wishing he were out in the desert and...

• December 5, 2017
• by
• Adam

An ecosystem is a community of plants and animals with common characteristics composing a common environment. Sometimes referred to as a biome -- but including the nonliving components of the environment -- an ecosystem can be classified and subdivided in...