https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z91n5Vskjg

Let me take a stab at this, though there are some beautiful comments below that are hard to top.

I first heard this song on WNEW-FM during my sophomore year of high school, 1972-3. Though my family life was decent, I did not enjoy social acceptance. That year was the first year I had some. This song reminded me that there were others less fortunate.

That period of my life was particularly meaningful for other...

12-16-2022

"Actually it means to ooze or discharge fluid. " Wasn't there a note on that? Maybe after all we should change "secrete" to "hide"...

More and more ethicists say yes (but I say strongly "no"!) Most animals that are commonly kept as pets (and I am not talking about exotic pets) have become pets because that's what the species' in question wanted. These two articles, Opinion: We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us. and How Accurate Is the Theory of Dog Domestication in ‘Alpha’? make a very strong case that dogs, at least, domesticated themselves. Some wolves began hanging out near human habitations, picking...

This obituary, Andrée Geulen, Savior of Jewish Children in Wartime, Dies at 100 (link), literally brought tears to my eyes, three or four times while reading. A few excerpts:
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In Soviet Russia, at least during the 1970s, citizens could not travel abroad at all without permission. Even travel within the country often required permits.

In the Western world now, there have been efforts to hem the right to travel in, on various grounds such as the "energy crises" of the 1970's, Covid restrictions and now the coming mandate for electric vehicles. If you think about it, it seems that the ability to, as the Mamas and Papas said...