Dear friends, Instead of bringing you my newsletter I bring you a heartfelt and moving message. This message that I encourage you to read is entitled A Parting Prescription for America. It is written by Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy who  is Vice Admiral in the US Navy...

I love the idea of the creative spark. Creative ideas come out of no-where, and that is why we liken these flashes of inspiration to a spark. That comparison is well chosen, a spark is a bright flash of light which symbolizes creative growth. But there is another...

On one of my trips this year I walked by the hydrant shown below. As a former firefighter, I was shocked and amused. This fire hydrant is in a busy neighborhood, it is great they had fire hydrants. What is not so great is that the pavement around the hydrant is built...

I have the privilege to play in a jazz ensemble with a group of students. We meet twice a week, play jazz classics and improvise. In the process we hone our playing skills, and we experience the joy of making music together. We recently played at the homecoming...

To be honest, I was in doubt whether to write a newsletter on being grateful because this topic is often rehashed around Thanksgiving. But I decided to go ahead for two reasons that are related. The first is that we live in a time when many of us our preoccupied with...

In his book The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra offers two ways of thinking: the self-assertive paradigm and the integrative paradigm. The self-assertive paradigm involves linear and analytical thinking, it is based on a reductionist point of view where a complicated...

We all want to be seen and heard, but are you truly listening in your conversations? From my perspective as a physicist, it seems that listening is a simple skill: we just absorb the sound waves, and that’s it! But the reality is not so simple. We only process...

My 19 year old Subaru was doing fine. Well … it had an occasional problem starting. It would need to crank for about 10 seconds and spit out fumes of unburnt gasoline, but then it would run smoothly. This happened only occasionally, about 90% of the times it started...

In the movie “Our souls at night”, Louis is an elderly widower. One night, his neighbor Addie, who is a widow, comes over with a question that she asks with trepidation. Her nights are long and lonely, and she asks Louis if he wants to come over to sleep with her. She...

Pilots use checklists on every flight. There are different checklists for different stages of the flight to make sure that all critical steps are taken. In addition, there are separate checklists that help pilots deal with complexities and emergencies that may arise....