Friends, I think it is time to address the elephant in the room- #MeToo. Women in India (and elsewhere) are rising in massive numbers to report cases of sexual harassment and assault. What should men do? How should they react? To decent men who are wondering what they should do at this moment: speak out … Continue reading #MeToo: what should men do? →

One of the greatest archaeological discoveries in modern times is the library of Ashurbanipal in the Assyrian city of Nineveh, where there were tens of thousands of tablets with gorgeous Akkadian cuneiform text. This is an image of a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh from Nineveh, now at the British Museum. I hope to … Continue reading Nineveh →

What is our place in the universe? To know this, it is important to know who we are and where we came from. Anthropologists believe that modern humans have existed on earth for roughly 300,000 years. If I used my calculator correctly that translates to 0.008% of the time all life has existed on this … Continue reading Before I go to the grocery store →

No one could have predicted in 1690 that in 50 years tea would become the national drink of England. Tea was perhaps the first truly global commodity. The East India Company had a wildly successful marketing campaign to popularize tea in its early years, but all of it came from China. Along with tea, came … Continue reading Tea time →

Hokusai is by far the most famous Japanese artist in the world. The Great Wave off Kanagawa from "36 Views of Mount Fuji" is well known everywhere. Hokusai was a creative genius but he was very humble. He painted all his life and was famous, but is known to have said- "I didn't do anything … Continue reading Hokusai and the pursuit of perfection →

Take a good look. This looks like an ox's head, and comes from an Egyptian hieroglyph. This is the aleph, the first symbol of the ancient Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks had no sound for it, so they flipped it around and called it Alpha. That's our letter A now. The Phoenicians were responsible for popularizing … Continue reading A is for aleph →

It is Monday morning and I feel miserable like the rest of you, so I'd like to share a few random thoughts on the creation of the universe and how Einstein was wrong. Einstein assumed like Newton did before him that the universe was static- that it did not move or expand. To account for … Continue reading The expanding universe →

No city is a postcard. Not even Paris. I took a lot of photos of a grand, magical city. That is only one snapshot. My lasting image of Paris will be the sad look of a poor Syrian refugee and her small child begging on a cold, wet Easter Day at Place de la Concorde … Continue reading Another Paris →

We take for granted that things are as they should be often without understanding why. Clock hands move "Clockwise" because they followed sundials. If human civilizations had developed primarily in the Southern Hemisphere, "clockwise" would be in the opposite direction. Do you ever wonder why there are 60 seconds to a minute and 60 minutes … Continue reading A brief history of the history of timekeeping →

A bookbinder's apprentice got enthralled by a volume of Encyclopaedia Britannica and a slim book of chemistry written for English ladies of the day. He then went on to change the course of history by developing the basic principles that power all of modern society. More than anyone else, Michael Faraday was the "purest" experimental … Continue reading Faraday and the Royal Society →