Essays by Larry Barnett
I remember sitting in our family living room as my father turned and folded pages, snapping and creasing the newsprint as he made his way through every section. Meanwhile, my mother would work across and down, completing the crossword puzzle with a pen. Growing up with … Read the rest
I was sitting on the couch with granddaughter Isabelle listening to her talk about numbers the other day – how ten is a bigger number than one, that one-hundred is even bigger, and that a million is even bigger than that. Suddenly she blurted out “infinity!” My mind stopped for an instant;… Read the rest
The presidential race is ramping up quickly, both sides having moved assertively into attack mode. Politics in America has degraded to the point that the billions spent on advertising are all about trash talk. It’s hard not to feel like one must choose the lesser of two evils when so much time and money… Read the rest
Among the channels proliferating via Dish Network I’ve recently taken to watching reruns of old network TV westerns. I watched many of these episodes when I was 10 or twelve years old, black and white westerns about good guys and bad guys and the women attracted to … Read the rest
This past month marks what looks like the confirmation of the Higgs Particle, or what has been called “The God Particle.” Like most things quantum, the Higgs Particle is simultaneously the Higgs Field, and its confirmation is a big deal.
The Standard Model in… Read the rest
The tragedy in Aurora, Colorado this past week reminds me of the killings by Charles Whitman in Texas during 1966. Whitman was the son of a middle class family, a former marine who climbed to the top of a tower at the University of Texas in Austin and shot 46 people with a high-powered rifle; fourteen people… Read the rest
Before our universe began, things were simple. All-and-everything, including time, space and matter, was compressed into an infinitesimal, dimensionless singularity of virtual probability. Then something happened; depending upon what you choose to believe either God initiated the big bang… Read the rest
An economy in shambles with persistently high unemployment; wide income inequality; increasingly belligerent saber-rattling by political parties; street demonstrations accompanied by vandalism and violence on the part of both demonstrators… Read the rest
When Orwell penned this slogan in his book “1984” he was addressing political theory, not neuroscience, yet from the perspective of current brain research, he was spot on. Our consciousness is but a sliver of the operation of mind, the rest hidden from our awareness. Turns out “free will” is less of a … Read the rest
If you read my column regularly, by now you know that I enjoy a cup of tea. My tastes in tea run to classic Chinese varieties like Oolong and Pu’er, and I can joyfully spend an hour or two exploring new varieties of fine tea.
Teapots, on the other hand, are a source of disappointment, specifically, the way … Read the rest
“We can’t return, we can only look behind.”
– Joni Mitchell
Despite the persistence and power of memory, the seduction of the past and 20/20 hindsight, the arrow of time appears to go in one direction only: forward. It might be more accurate to say “outward,” insofar as forward inclines one to think… Read the rest
Human society today rests far less upon nature than upon the results of human imagination. Futurist and inventor Buckminster Fuller called it our “metaphysical” world, author Neil Postman calls it “technopoly,” and I call it our “cooked-up reality.” It was not always this way.
For all but the… Read the rest
Be it ritual figures made for spiritual practices, decorations placed on everyday objects, hieroglyphs applied to rock faces, images created using colored sand, applied body paint, feathers or jewelry, so-called “folk art” is the natural and often… Read the rest
We live in an age of specialists and experts who identify themselves as at the top of their craft, experts like the financial wizards at JP Morgan Chase, who recently lost their company over $3 billion dollars. “Ooops,” they said. “We feel terribly stupid.” These are the same specialists who tanked the… Read the rest
In our pursuit of self-identity we accumulate physical preferences such as hairstyle and body shape, various beliefs, likes, dislikes, and psychological habits. In general, we consider these accumulations personality, and once gathered, we protect personality with great devotion.
In addition… Read the rest
That members of the Secret Service and U.S. Army shamelessly availed themselves of the services of Columbian prostitutes in advance of the arrival of President Obama is no surprise to me. For thousands of years, powerful men have blended their official power with their sexual urges. Such men often … Read the rest
What, exactly, are we looking for, and why is it everyone is always telling us what we need and what to do? Need a new car? Of course you do and BMW has the answer. For that matter, so do Ford, GM and Chrysler. Need new clothes? Foolish question; just ask Penney’s, Target, or Nordstroms, they know. Salvation… Read the rest
“But words will never hurt me,” says the childhood aphorism, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Try yelling “oatmeal!” in crowded theater and watch nothing happen but annoyed stares and admonitions to please be quiet. Yell “fire!” and watch chaos erupt.
Words, in fact, can and do hurt; words… Read the rest
Understanding of brain physiology has increased enormously in recent years, yielding answers about mapping, the role of various structures such as the neo-cortex, amygdala, corpus collosum, and so forth. Moreover, though we now know how various structures relate… Read the rest
I’ve just returned from a solitary retreat in the Colorado Mountains where I stayed in a tiny remote cabin in the woods without electricity, telephone, running water, bathroom, Internet connection or refrigerator. I prepared meals on a one-burner propane stove and read by lantern light. Nights were… Read the rest