Had I not been immersed in homeschooling and other activities in 1999, I still don’t think Sergey Brin and Larry Page would have invited me to join their startup, Google. They did invite Susan Wojcicki, who wrote on Dec. 17 in the Wall Street Journal that she was four months pregnant when she accepted their...
My husband and I passed through St. Louis twice last week. We interacted with supermarket clerks, airport personnel, rental car employees and assorted people waiting on line with or sitting near us. A fair number of those people were African American. To a person, they were helpful and cheerful. The question I wanted to ask was,...
Around the world, Jews greet the holiday of Chanukah by lighting one flame. On each successive night of this eight-day festival we add one additional flame, culminating on the eighth night with a fully lit eight-flame menorah. Among the miracles commemorated by Chanukah is that God made a tiny quantity of consecrated oil last for...
l Here is today’s Thought Tool quiz: Early in 1845, Henry David Thoreau, along with about twenty of his friends, began a two and a half year-long party in a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord Massachusetts. True or False? In 1971 Ted Kaczynski, his wife, six children, a nanny, a tutor,...
A lot of anger has erupted on the streets of America. Do you have the feeling we’ve been here before? I was too young to pay much attention to the Watts riots of 1965 in Los Angeles or the campus demonstrations of 1968, but between last year’s Occupy movement and the mayhem spurred by events...
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55… What comes after 55? That’s right! 89 is the correct answer. Each number is obtained by adding the two preceding numbers. This series of numbers is called the Fibonacci sequence and is a little different from common arithmetic or geometric series like 3, 6, 9,...
Have you noticed how many men seem allergic to something broken? Often a man acquires a new car and the first thing he does is lift the hood to see if anything needs doing. Perhaps he installs a police-radar detector or buys safety valve stem caps for his tires. Here’s the secret: for men, engagement...
I don’t know if there is factual proof for the idea of “six degrees of separation,” stating that everyone on the planet can be connected to anyone else by no more than six contacts. Certainly, it seems reasonable to think that it would be more true within one country than, for instance, my being able...
I know a lawyer who really wishes that he was a rabbi. I also know a rabbi who really wishes he was a doctor. Have you met the plumber who really wishes he was a poet or the bookkeeper who really wishes she was a ballerina? The lawyer is doing nothing to change his profession...
Just as the first three rules of real estate are said to be, “location, location, location,” the first three rules of the new Republican Congress should be, “language, language, language.” Have you noticed that the opposition to the pro-life movement doesn’t call itself, “anti-life”? Instead, they speak of being pro-choice. Could it be because “anti-life”...
