Last Monday I went to see Jane Goodall give an evening talk, part of her brief tour through China promoting Roots and Shoots, an organization she founded several years ago in the hopes of enlisting young people acros…

Yesterday (October 6) was the mid-Autumn festival, a main event in the lunar calendar that was doubly significant this year, since it fell in the middle of the week-long National Day celebration, when all of China is on vacation and most of China is on the road. Considering that the festival also fell on a Friday, it was nearly the ultimate party weekend, spoiled only by a bit …

When it comes to the future, we were robbed. Raised in anticipation of the new millennium, we let the grown-ups fill our ears with sweet promises even as they failed to do any of the basic or applied science needed to make them a reality. The year 2000 was supposed to bring us flying cars, flying robots, moon cities, undersea bases, bionic medicine, artificial brains, orbiting …

I paid a brief visit home two weeks ago, flying to New York in a plane carrying at least twenty newly-adopted Chinese babies, who cried in shifts. I could hardly blame them, though in the end I wished I could join them. The flight is thirteen hours long and from the middle of coach class has almost nothing to recommend it. Coming home, …