Richard Tresch Fienberg

focal pointScience and Religion: Can We Talk?George V. Coyne, S.J., addresses a timeless topic from his perspective as an astronomer-priest.Did the universe begin out of nothing? Did it have a beginning at all? Is there anything special about human existence? Is there a God? Even now, pairing off...

The GlazeChris Alper discovers an odd zoological phenomenon that occurs all too often when he's around.I once read that many animals have clear nictitating membranes that snap over their eyes to shield them from dust and wind. I have now confirmed that this protective membrane, in fact, exists in...

Silent(ly) RunningJay White ponders the lonely isolation of a spacecraft bound for the stars.It's been more than 30 years since that night when the lights in the theater came up and tears filled my eyes. The film Silent Running, just ended, should have affected me because it showed Earth's last...

FOCAL POINTAstronomy as PlayQCIENCE is a wonderful thing!3 if one does not have to earn one's living at it," wrote Albert Einstein. He knew that science is play. He played with his equations like a kid with a new toy. "Only when we do not have to be accountable to anybody can we find joy in...

FOCAL POINTFeeling the PinchAs a graduate student she was pinched . in the buttoclts by a faculty member. She protested. He said he did it as a "joke" and told her to "lighten up." At a party, another male faculty member asked her how many grad students she had slept with. Years later, the same man...

FOCAL POINTSomber ImpressionsNot since the incept: ment five years L triggered as much ings of a Malcontent" in thi page 364. California amateur offers one rebuttal here, and other readers' responses car Letters to the Editor on pag

focal pointSpace: The Non-IssueIN THIS ELECTION year in the United States, the pohtical debate on the nation's space policy has been deafening in its silence.The presidential candidates have only recently begun to make an issue out of the health of the civilian space program, and then only because...