It’s an understatement to say that Columbia University was transformative for my Dad. He was a poor kid from a Depression-beaten family in the Irish ghetto of Dobbs Ferry. In 1939 Columbia gave him a $600 scholarship and a part-time job and said “Make it if you can.” Four years later he was an honors History graduate, managing the campus laundry service, and voted Most Likely to Succeed by his classmates. He never forgot the doors that Columbia opened for him, nor the personal potential that Columbia...

Boston.com recently published a couple of anti-recycling columns by Jeff Jacoby. I can’t bring myself to write down the link. If you want you can find them easily enough. They’re standard diatribe. Recycling is a pain in the neck. Recycling costs more than throwing stuff away.

Backed by standard sources for persons with Mr. Jacoby’s point of view: The Heartland Institute (Wikipedia: “The Heartland Institute questions the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that global...

Because statistics tell you that is was just a matter of time until we had a catastrophic spill in the Gulf. There are thousands and thousands of oil and gas wells in the Gulf, each one with a very small probability of failing. BP and Deepwater Horizon drew the short straw.

It’s particularly disheartening to hear the blame being piled on BP. As if, yeah, BP would cut...

I spent a couple of weeks in the Bay Area last month, mostly in Silicon Valley. For someone who’s lived in New England for many years, and particularly for someone who tries to notice the different ways that different people interact with their environment, it’s a different kind of place.

There are no people. A space alien looking in on Silicon Valley would say to himself (or herself, or itself, whatever a space alien is), “What are these strange metal creatures that live on this planet?”...

The humanitarian crisis caused by the Haiti earthquake has fallen out of the evening news. But that doesn’t mean the crisis is in any way diminished.

At this point, four months after Haiti’s earthquake, the situation has been stabilized in terms of the most urgent needs for food, water, medicines, and temporary shelter. These supplies are flowing into the country and are being fairly efficiently distributed where they are most needed.

Another top priority has been to...