dvd of the week Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reboot of Carl Sagan’s iconic PBS series Cosmos is the best nonfiction on television this year, updating Sagan’s science and the show’s visuals and using Tyson’s remarkable explanatory power to make astrophysics, evolutionary biology, geology and the history of science as entertaining as most network dramas. Tyson, who…
When Brendan Eich resigned from Mozilla last month, a group of marriage equality supporters penned a public statement “Freedom to Marry, Freedom to Dissent: Why we must have both.” They argued that “diversity is the natural consequence of liberty” and that “disagreement should not be punished.” Then LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling was caught on…
It’s pretty easy to imagine how Pompeii got made. Some screenwriter said, “Gladiator crossed with Titanic. In 3-D.” And I can imagine that if I were a producer with a few boatloads of cash and a throbbing desire to get a few more boatloads that sort of pitch would give me a tingling, ecstatic thrill….
A recent road trip with my gal-pal Ms. Scarlett, a brassy broad and long-time resident of Scottsdale who never lost her Long Island accent, reminded me of how intimate and romantic our National Parks can be in winter. Our nearly 800 mile excursion, dubbed A Very Thelma and Louise Christmas, was similar to past adventures…
Given the recent disasters around the globe, I was reminded of my mother’s crisis of faith after the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia where more than 227,000 people lost their lives. My mother asked fundamental questions like “Why would God kill all those people?” “They were not all evil, why were so many taken” or “Why…
