The year 1888 was not an uneventful year. The National Geographic Society was founded, and began telling a hungry public about the wonders of people and places all over the world. De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. was founded in South…
Sixteen years ago, I visited China for the first and so far only time. The purpose of the trip was to attend the dedication celebration of a Torah scroll a friend of mine had purchased for the Chabad of Pudong…
Last night we had a Chanukah party at my house. I was busy preparing for an important lecture, so I was hoping to stay out of the kitchen entirely. But just when I thought I was free and clear, I…
Dying, like birth, is something best done alone. But while in birthing there are occasional Buy One Get One Free twin deals, when it comes to dying, if two people are dying together it is usually the result of a…
“There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) This of course also applies to the topics we humans love to fight about. For millennia we’ve been arguing about the ideal temperature in the house in winter time, and an…
I can’t wait for the self-driving car. I can’t wait to get into my car, which will know where I’m going because it’s connected to my calendar, and take out a book and start reading, or take out my laptop…
I remember seventy-six cent gas. Just saying that makes me feel like a dinosaur, but I do remember gas selling for seventy-six cents a gallon. I had a good buddy who lived down in Memphis, and he once took a…
High on the list of my least favorite things to do is giving medicine to my children, especially the really small ones. This past Shabbos, I noticed that my son, who just turned one, was feeling a bit warm. The…
Little Boy, the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, used one hundred and forty one pounds of enriched uranium to produce its big bang. With improved technology, today’s nuclear bombs can be created with thirty five pounds of Uranium-235 or even…
It’s well known that getting accepted into the NYC Sanitation Department to work as a garbage collector is significantly more difficult than getting into Harvard University. About 90,000 people apply each year for the prestigious position of NYC Sanitation worker…