–Thinking about internally displaced people or those who go hungry can help us gain perspective on our own lives—Two U.N. reports are worth noting. The first tells us that one sixth of the world now goes hungry, more than a billion people. The second draws our attention that there were 16 million refugees and 26…

–Violence touches many victims besides the obvious ones, and we ought to include them in our thoughts– Erik von Brunn, the son of the man who shot the guard at the Holocaust museum, said he felt remorse and thought his father ought to have died instead of the 39-yer-old Mr. Johns. His statement also said…

–A comment by an astronomer becomes a catalyst for thinking about looking at our culture–Frank Drake is a 79 year-old astronomer and astrophysicist, founder of the SETI project that looks for extraterrestrial transmissions, someone who approaches his field academically and not prone to some of the notions usually associated with ET seekers. In an interview…