Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

It would be fair to say that the life of Stephen Hawking was a constant, monumental and all-consuming challenge. And with that challenge came an enormous sense of urgency. It would be hard to find a more curious and scientifically probing mind than that of Hawking, and his desire to meet and surpass the challenges he set out for himself was overshadowed by a sword of Damocles that hung by a hair above his head throughout his entire life. At age twenty-one, doctors “gave” him three years to live. From then on, and for the next half-century, he took the years he desired, in spite of that death sentence, and made every one count in terms of his discoveries and of his gifts of knowledge to the world at large. By the time Hawking died this past week at the age of seventy-six, he was, literally, about as close as any human could get to being an immensely active brain housed in what had become an almost entirely inert package. But despite his nearly complete physical disability, h...

There is a revolution afoot and there may well be more to it than first meets the eye. In just the last few months and days since October of last year, the MeToo and NeverAgain movements have mushroomed up and flourished in the United States, in the face of stubborn indifference and intentional inaction at the highest levels of political power. A sign of the times? Clearly. And a probable healthy reaction to the previous trend toward diminishing democracy and growing authoritarianism. Like the spark of all revolutions, this one could well kindle replications throughout the rest of the world as well. Especially throughout the West, where reactionaries have emerged victorious in Washington, while gaining a level of still minority but no less troubling strength in Europe, a trend not witnessed since the fascist prelude to World War II. These brand new liberal democratic movements are, then, an acute and immediate answer to attempted mob rule and to the undermining of individual ri...

I recently read, with enthusiasm and fascination, the latest book by MIT Professor Max Tegmark, entitled Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Knopf, New York, 2017, available on Amazon). While the book has proven controversial—and rightly so—I have to admit that much of my interest in it stems from my own tendency to see the world from a positive viewpoint, and in terms of solutions rather than prophesies of doom, despite current events that make it less than easy to maintain a sunny frame of mind. Tegmark’s is not only a global but also a cosmic view into a future of millions of years hence. In other words, I found myself attracted to this work because of the way in which it looks beyond our fragile and ephemeral present toward a possible future of Humankind in which the seemingly insoluble problems of our current world will have found an intelligent fix that only advanced science can foresee today, but that may end up being calculated into a bright...

It is called NOW, and that’s no coincidence. Clearly, its members have long been tired of being told to wait, to be patient, that their day will come. NOW stands for National Organization for Women, and it is the largest organization of feminist grassroots activists in the United States today. The activists in NOW weren’t “born yesterday”. The organization was founded half a century ago, at the height of the sixties protest era by civil rights firebrands Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray. Friedan (1921-2006) would gain a well-deserved reputation as a leading US writer, activist and feminist, whose book, The Feminine Mystique , was considered by many to have sparked the second big wave of feminist activism in the turbulent 20 th century. She would continue to be a major voice for women’s rights throughout her life, although she would step down as the president of NOW in 1970, after serving at the head of the organization for a four-year term. She would go on to help establish the N...