Culture

I spend some of my free time in Washington DC’s Rock Creek Park, bicycling or hiking.  This slender gem winds its way through the northwest sector of the nation’s capital for five miles, following the aptly named Rock Creek.  Heavily wooded, the park is a haven for urban hikers and …

  Usage of facial recognition software, which identifies a person by his or her facial features, is spreading throughout the government and commercial sectors. Federal agencies and police departments are using it to identify criminals and threats to national security. Facebook, which has an enormous trove of photographs, provides it …

  Unless you live in a cave without Internet, you’ve probably heard about the killing of a lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe last month. The hunter who dispatched Cecil has been identified as Bloomington, Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. The Zimbabwean government claims that the lion was lured off of the …

August –  Three-year-old McKenzie Elliott sits on a neighbor’s front porch in Baltimore.  She waits excitedly for her stepfather. It is a sweltering day and he will take her swimming. He is late – traffic is bad. A car stops at the corner of 36th St and Old York Road. …

This month, a hotel staffed almost entirely by robots opened in Japan. The robots at the reception desk include a human-like “female” robot that bows and blinks her eyes and a likewise polite English-speaking dinosaur. Robots perform other functions at the Hann’na Hotel (which means “strange hotel” in Japanese) normally …

  The recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) mandating legalization of same-sex marriage has changed the legal definition of marriage that has existed since well before the nation’s founding. In broadening the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, the court majority cited the due …

The reaction of the people of Charleston to last week’s mass shooting at the city’s Emanuel AME church, particularly in the faith community, has been nothing short of inspiring.   The killing of 9 worshippers at the church by an apparently deranged white supremacist young man has shocked the city. Predictably, …

The popular adoption of the Internet and cable television as sources of information in the past 30 years has revolutionized the way that the average person receives news. Before the 1980s, the available sources of daily news were limited to newspapers, radio, and broadcast television.   Many small towns had a …

For at least the past 50,000 years or so, humans have entertained themselves and others with music and singing.   Up until about 100 years ago, those artists good enough to perform for a living made their money by, well, performing. Only since the advent of recorded music have performers had …