Jews love to recite blessings. We have a blessing to thank God when we wake up, when we put on our clothes, and of course before we eat – with a specific benediction for each category of food. Spices and fragrances have their own blessing as does viewing the first blossoms on a tree, strange looking animals, a rainbow, and a host of other phenomena and events. One blessing is recited when hearing good news, and another when hearing sad tidings. A meticulously observant Jew tries to make no less than one hundred blessings each day! One explanation for this …
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The term stigmergy was coined in the 1950’s to describe the structures that organisms build – things that are “outside” the organism, but clearly a fundamental part of that organism’s life. Giant termite mounds or ant hills or bee hives are as much a defining part of the animals that build them as their wings or legs are. The beautiful shell that murex and other snails build is another example of a stigmergy structure. Which leads to the existential question (that termite philosophers no doubt endlessly debate) as to what are the borders of that which constitutes the “self.” As …
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I can’t imagine doing what my son, Yair, did in the picture. Bungee jumping off a bridge over an Ecuadorian gorge hundreds of feet deep is incomprehensible to me. I could barely muster the courage to accompany another son, Gilad, on Treetop Adventures near Turtleback Zoo. Balancing on a rickety bridge a few feet above the soft ground (albeit securely holstered) seemed as daunting as walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. My fear of heights was outstripped only by my fear of being forever labeled a wimpy dad.   But in life, sometimes you have to be willing to …
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As far back as I can remember, I always loved science. I would read popular books on different science-related topics like Isaac Asimov’s essays or Broca’s Brain by Carl Sagan. My favorite movie was The Andromeda Strain and I dreamed about working in a high-tech laboratory with lasers and test-monkeys and vacuum-sealed air locks. The first time I actually learned any real science was in my first year at college (having spent the four years of high-school in a teacher-induced intellectual coma). My first year physics teacher was a young graduate student who I thought was brilliant, and he introduced …
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I guess that the first thing in starting up a blog is to define what exactly you are trying to do. It is important to set some expectations with respect to what subject matter you intend to write about, and to put your ideas into some sort of context as far as who you are and where you are coming from. Maybe we can leave those last two things, namely my background and how I define myself, for later posts. As our book, The Rarest Blue, goes to print, I decided to initiate this blog as a running discussion relating …
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