“Bitch!” said the gentleman, before he sipped champagne. “I hope she takes a tumble,” said the lady next to him, nodding. “What a monster,” drifted across the room in a voice I couldn’t identify. The infamous 1994 Women’s Figure Skating Olympics was about to be...
I first met Stephen Burt some 30 years ago when he was an elementary school classmate with my son, Auran. I was exposed to his brilliance already then when he visited my laboratory at the National Institutes of Health and demonstrated a sophisticated knowledge of...
In a blog last April Defining Flaws, I considered flaws, or imperfections, a characteristic of creativity. I wrote, “…the flaws in design, and characters, and execution may be the most important contributions you make, whether intended or not…Creativity is...
“Going once…going twice…sold,” said the auctioneer, as he pounded the gavel and the spectators gasped at Christie’s auction last week. Imagine, if you can, $450.3 million dollars – almost half a billion dollars – for Salvator Mundi, a painting by Leonardo...
There can be no progress in life without transitions – the ability to move from one state to another. The transitions can be physical, emotional, intellectual, whatever. If not for evolution, Earth would be lifeless. Evolution is all about transitions in genetics...
As a scientist, I lived in a world of “How?” rather than “Why?” We may have strong feelings for the reason something works the way it does – why sickness strikes one person and not another, or why Dartmouth accepted Mary and not Joe – but the answer will remain...
