Here’s a set piece, so to speak, written for the newspapers.  The title refers to Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, a fashionable book in my college years, and is a pun suggested by my friend, Fayette Hickox.  It was about the coming drastic changes wrought by the technological advances of the 60s, and had an apocalyptic […]

I heard Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak talk about research a few days ago.  In the anxiety surrounding the retirement of Steve Jobs, he responded to the reporter’s query about the possible uncertainties of new product timelines: “Oh, everyone at Apple works very far in advance—way into the future—like 1 to 1½ years!” Apparently, agriculture and […]

Three years ago this spring I wrote an op/ed piece for the New York Times (my third) about the then raging “natives versus exotics” controversy. They called it “Border Wars” and it contained a typo (8,000 versus 12,000 years ago for the recession of the last glaciers, due to my confusion over BC and AD).  […]

Thanks one and all for the thoughtful feedback about Space Genie.  It was meant to be light-hearted.  Please understand I shall not post readers’ mean-spirited attacks or dyspeptic rants. Sorry if I slightly missed the mark. I appreciate “true believers” and understand your passions. Maybe I’m a bit the same way. I was attempting humor, […]

My predecessor David Burpee opined toward the end of his life that he regretted only that he would not live to breed the plants of other planets with earth’s. Odd, but then he was a genius born in 1893 who was interviewing a newspaper reporter in the late 60s, still a hot time in the […]

  As we slog into the New Year, I want to share one of my personal enthusiasms with readers.   This pastime requires little or no expense, can be done with minimal or no equipment, and engaged in wherever you happen to be. It can be practiced in solitude or with others. No batteries or […]

“Nice place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit”, I muttered to myself last week as I wove around Manhattan.  My midtown hotel was practically empty and the traffic light for mid-December—a terrible season for retailers.  In the hotel bar guests stared glumly at each other, mostly Brits and Europeans.  The waitress said, “A […]

I had the chance recently to experience two institutions you wouldn’t think at first glance were alike.  Over a few weeks I visited a well-regarded liberal arts college and later a famous casino.  The bizarre similarities were both fascinating and disturbing. Who benefits? The college is bookish, so it’s not surprising that the professors were […]

The Great Financial Meltdown of 2008 has left investors and politicians stupefied, collectively scratching their heads in the absence of real explanations or solutions. Pundits sagely call for greater “transparency,” so investors, regulators and the public might better assess an offering’s underlying value. What we really want is VISIBILITY. Wall Street’s savvy insiders basically couldn’t […]

The newspaper and magazine industries continue their steep slide into oblivion.  At risk, literally, is the public square, since newspapers emerged a couple hundred years ago in order to deliver the news—and often rules and regulations—individually to the newly literate and urban citizens who used to receive it from the town crier, or read it […]