Dear Friends,   Thanks to "X-Men," "Heroes," and other sci-fi works that have worked their way into popular culture, the potential of genetic variation is practically a mainstream idea.  I acknowledge this, and also that this e-mail is going out to a group of intelligent individuals.  Having said that, please bear with me as I describe the concept briefly to set the backdrop for this e-mail.   DNA, the "blueprint of life," is a little unstable.  Because instructions...

According to my brand of existentialism... There is no such thing as reality or illusion. That which has been perceived has reached the height of reality. There are other people besides me, but they are no more "real" than chimeras. However, I acknowledge that those people significantly impact the reality that I perceive, and so I ascribe to them especial importance among the things I perceive. "Reality" is in fact a set of perceptions shared by myself and other perceptions of mine: th...

Some things just stick with me. Words and phrases strike with such force that they compress the stuff of my mind around them. Others are simply received, as if I was born with a crater just the size and shape of that idea. Usually it is serious. I remember being very young and very furious with my mother. She had done something to offend me, and she was apologizing. In self-righteous fury, I turned to her and said, "sometimes sorry just isn't good enough." She replied, "sorry will always...

Like any young philosophy buff, I've been confecting definitions of "love" since I was twelve. I've run the gamut of cliché pedantry and have even landed myself in the unenviable position of feeling enlightened by those arrogant tidbits of sophistry that masquerade oversimplification as epiphany. “Love is a verb,” I read; “Love is an action.” A couple years later, I label that idea twenty-five percent correct. Sure, love is an action; but it’s more than that. It’s a lifestyle. Love is...