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 Courtesy: National Geographic We’re an egoistical, delusional lot, us humans. We’re the only species on the planet who despoils its own life support system and who does not live within biological limits. Does that make us the most intelligent or least intelligent species? Preservation of our environment remains well toward the bottom of our priorities. Personally and collectively, in our daily lives and in the media, we fixate on career, financial accumulation, economic growth, political performance, consumerism, entertainment, social media, and external validation. None of these aspects of our lives mean anything without a livable planet full of basic resources, and every one of these fixations contribute directly or indirectly to our planetary degradation. Noam Chomsky has even begun to recognize that our precarious environmental predicament – primarily envisioned as the issue of climate change, though it encompasses so much more – is the most crucial existential...

Ten years ago on June 25, 2008, I was diagnosed with colon cancer. My grandmother passed away the night before. She was just two weeks shy of her 96 th birthday. I had planned to spend it with her. Instead, I re-routed the frequent flier miles I was to use for that visit to a plane ticket for my mother, who had now just lost her own mother, to be with me for my immediate surgery. Needless to say, this was one of the worst days of my life as well as my mother’s. Mortality had reached my beloved grandmother, and in nearly the same instant, had come for me. After finding a tumor in my colon, following a colonoscopy necessitated by several alarming symptoms that had progressed over five years, the results of the toxicology test on my tumor confirmed its malignancy. This shocked my doctor because I had no known risk factors, but I was  not surprised. Though I followed a fairly impeccable vegetarian diet for the preceding 15-20 years full of a plethora of whole food - largely fr...

For several days now, a small sector of the internet has been ablaze over the allegations of emotional abuse that actress/model Chloe Dykstra accused of her former boyfriend, media personality Chris Hardwick. If you have never heard of Hardwick, he was once a DJ at “world famous KROQ” in Los Angeles and co-host of MTV’s old show Singled Out.   He went on to become a semi-famous podcast and talk show host, creating a company called Nerdist Industries to produce his various pop culture media. Dykstra's account of Hardwick acting like a controlling, manipulative aggressor in their three-year relationship mimics the stories of countless women who have lived through emotional or physical abuse. Thus, for those who have experienced or witnessed such abuse or who have worked with victims, her tale rings true. Hardwick, for his part, countered her claims , denying “sexual assault” (though not any other behaviors), deflecting her accusations with the inane comment that as a “future...

Cartoon courtesy Tom Toro:  http://tomtoro.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/1-tom-toro-yes-the-planet-got-destroyed-but-for-a-beautiful-moment-in-time-we-created-a-lot-of-value-for-sh1.jpg Good afternoon students, parents, staff, teachers, guests, and of course the amazing class of 2018, arrayed before us here today. Congratulations to you for completing this stage in your lives and your education. Each of you is outstanding in your own right, but I want to commend you as a group. I have watched you throw yourselves, headlong, into every task, be it class discussions, presentations, Socratic seminars, group essays, skits, school plays, choir—anything really. Even if you were exhausted, depleted, overworked, flu-ridden, or otherwise indisposed, you embraced your work with determination and, well, gusto . Therefore, I’d like to thank you for working with me, and with all of us, day in and day out. You brought academic curiosity and a willingness to hone your critical skill...

Remember that silly game we used to play with fortune cookies from Chinese restaurants? Maybe people still play it. It’s the one where you read your fortune and tack on “… in bed” to the end of the sentence – like, “You will soon meet a mysterious stranger … in bed.” The supplemental phrase usually fits fairly smoothly onto the given fortune, and generates a few chuckles from listeners. Here’s a new game in a similar vein, but this one doesn’t engender much laughter. First, take a look at the statements below. See if you can identify which are true versus which are false. We can’t end poverty… We can’t end homelessness … We can’t feed the hungry … We can’t have livable wages … We can’t have a universal basic income so all people have the basic necessities to live … We can’t end sweatshop labor … We can’t work less … We can’t produce less … We can’t consume less … We can’t have universal, single-payer healthca...