Essays by Larry Barnett
When the moon is full, I don’t sleep very well, and either I was dreaming, or cable TV has gotten awfully weird. Reclining on the couch with my feet draped across the coffee table, remote dangling from my right hand, my left cradling two ounces of Calvados, I doze and stumble across one program after another,… Read the rest
The scientific method requires that to be called truth, theory be confirmed through experiment and yield quantifiable and replicable results. Without such, theory will simply remain theory and will fade into obscurity.
When it comes to quantum mechanics (dealing with the very smallest forms of … Read the rest
While walking with my friend Stanley a few months ago, I happened upon an orphaned hardball in the gutter. It’s been 45 years since I held a hardball, sensed the stitches snaking around the leathery surface and grasped its perfect hand-held size.
I tossed the ball to Stanley. “When’s the last time you … Read the rest
We live in an accelerated age, one in which each change hastens the next. It may seem like the world is moving faster, but it is really karma that is accelerating. Karma is simply the law of cause and effect, and as the causes… Read the rest
True understanding of the vast workings of the economy are reserved to those who have mastered the perfection of financial wisdom, bestowed upon them by the great masters of Wall Street. These masters have passed down their wisdom through endless transactions, mergers, acquisitions and accumulations,… Read the rest
When I first joined the Sierra Club in 1975, I fully understood that being labeled an “environmentalist” was not too far from being labeled an “anarchist.” This was, after all, in the era when “tree-hugger” was not a compliment, and many thought that recycling was about riding used bicycles. Despite… Read the rest
Holding four-day old Isabelle, our first grandchild, on my lap and gazing at her features, I could not help but think about how this new world looks and feels to her. Isabelle’s world is a non-conceptual one unfettered by distinctions, discrimination or structured thinking, a completely unified and… Read the rest
In his lengthy speech about race and politics, candidate Barack Obama made a point of distancing himself from the historical anger of racism, choosing instead to focus upon reconciliation and acceptance. He challenged us to shift our… Read the rest
Like many other medical patients confronting mortality, I have had to come to terms with my broken heart. No doubt our modern American lifestyle has made its contribution to heart disease – super-sized portions, trans-fat and processed foods, refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, lack of exercise,… Read the rest
When it comes to today’s marketing of products, there is no word more powerful and effective than “natural.” Natural evokes the primordial benevolence of nature and qualities of purity, freshness and beauty. It is used to promote food, deodorant, candles, clothing and cosmetics. Almost everything… Read the rest
For most of human history, society and government have been organized in other than democratic form, including many variations of monarchy, autocracy and theocracy. In this day and age, we tend to speak of these other systems in a highly pejorative way and view democracy as the pinnacle of governmental… Read the rest
Once upon a time, when people in America wanted to save money and build up a little nest egg for the future, or to pass on to the kids, they used to work hard and be thrifty. A dollar saved here, a dollar earned there, and over the years most people could set a little something aside for a rainy day.
With today’s… Read the rest
When Watson and Crick revealed the structure of DNA to the world, science concluded that genes were destiny. At the time the double helix blueprint containing millions upon millions of individual coded genes seemed to be of such magnitude and complexity that it would forever be beyond the reach of science… Read the rest
Scratch deeply enough at the hide of any hero and you will find some dirt. Commonly, we refer to “feet of clay” when we find fault in those we first admire, but today the art of finding fault has reached new lows.
From “gotcha” to unearthing… Read the rest
The ability to concentrate our attention and focus precisely upon an object or a thought requires filtering and mediating our experience of the world. Our five senses afford us the ability to detect information only within a limited range. Our eyes perceive certain wavelengths in the visible spectrum,… Read the rest
I recently noted the passing of Washoe, the 42-year-old chimpanzee that became a pioneer in human-chimpanzee communication. Washoe was taught to use human sign language and the manipulation of symbols to communicate, and researchers claim… Read the rest
It seems just like any other ordinary day, when Wham! My father suddenly ends up in the hospital – seriously anemic. As soon as he is doing better and things begin to feel normal again, Wham! My sister gets thrown while white-water rafting in Thailand, cracks her helmeted head into a rock and suffers serious… Read the rest
People have been arguing about art for a very long time. The cave paintings in Lascaux, France, are reported to be over 20,000 years old, and no doubt they stimulated considerable dialogue, “It looks more like an ox than … Read the rest
The excesses of the sub-prime mortgage lending industry are inevitably pointing to a huge bailout by the taxpayers, and potential collapse of housing prices overall. Due to the wide popularity of home equity loans, a housing price collapse will subject many millions of homeowners to the reality of… Read the rest
The early Hebrews created the first written alphabet, which they called the aleph-beth, which was later adapted by the ancient Greeks. The alphabet we use today is itself derived from that Greek alphabet.
Unlike Chinese, which uses tens of thousands of symbolic pictograms with… Read the rest