Beloved Pharaoh. Born: June 3rd., 2003 – Died: June 19th., 2017. A very special dog that will never be forgotten.
Dogs live in the present – they just are! Dogs make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have. They don’t judge, they simply take the world around them at face value. Yet they have been part of man’s world for an unimaginable time, at least 30,000 years. That makes the domesticated dog the longest animal companion to man, by far!
As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer. Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming, thence the long journey to modern man. But in the last, say 100 years, that farming spirit has become corrupted to the point where we see the planet’s plant and mineral resources as infinite. Mankind is close to the edge of extinction, literally and spiritually.
Dogs know better, much better! Time again for man to learn from dogs!
Could you imagine if pagers made a comeback? Sure, your smartphone would still be your notepad-flashlight-camera-personal assistant-MP3 player-wallet-social media browser. But imagine if pagers made it so easy to do that one important thing – pinging your friends and associates – that we all brought them back into our lives, or adopted them for the first time.
A redemption arc like this is happening in cosmology, the study of the history of our universe. The hero – rather than old technology – is an epoch of cosmological history called Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, or BBN.
Some cosmologists have thought that BBN is too old-school to be as good a tool for cosmology as other probes of the early universe. But BBN is the darling of my research program, where I use cosmology to learn more about particle physics. I have seen firsthand how recent results from this old cosmological epoch can guide new research about our universe.
The smartphone of cosmology
Cosmology’s superstar is the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, which formed some 400,000 years after the Big Bang. It’s an all-sky mosaic of hot and cold patches of light, which appeared while electrons and nuclei combined into the first neutral atoms. Viewed from Earth, each hot or cold patch is small enough for the Moon to block out.
The CMB’s intricate patterning has been the subject of severalintenseobservationalcampaigns, and for good reason. The key scientific model in cosmology has six major unknown quantities that researchers must measure to understand the universe. All of these quantities can be inferred with good measurements of the CMB.
But the CMB’s much older, less famous cousin is starting to steal some of its limelight.
A game of musical chairs
The universe started with a bang – the Big Bang – and about 10 minutes later, the largest game of musical chairs in history began. By that time, the universe was still dense, and hotter than the Sun. But it had cooled just enough for formerly freewheeling protonsand neutronsto fuse into nuclei, which make up the centers of atoms.
The game started, and every proton searched for neutrons to fuse with. A proton lucky enough to find a neutron partner formed deuterium. That couple could snatch either another neutron to make tritium, or another proton to make helium-3. One more proton or neutron each finally made helium-4, which has a remarkably stable nucleus with two protons and two neutrons.
Particles fused together in the first few minutes of the universe to create larger and more complicated particles. Cara Giovanetti, CC-BY-SA
The catch is that the number of neutrons in the universe plummeted during the game, like chairs being yanked out of line. Neutrons are unstable when they’re not bound in nuclei, spontaneously spitting out lighter particles in about 15 minutes to become the slightly lighter proton.
The music stopped for good when the universe became too cold for these particles to continue fusing. By that time – just 20 minutes after the game started – nearly all neutrons had either turned into protons or ended up in helium-4. Any proton that wasn’t lucky enough to partner up probably remained single for millennia, and might even be wandering the universe alone today.
But a new measurement of the primordial helium-4 abundance, published in September 2026, has reached stunning precision, providing information about the universe during BBN at a level of detail never before known.
A window to the early universe
Just a few seconds after the Big Bang, neutrons could absorb lighter particles and become protons, setting the stage for Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in processes distinct from the decays that happened toward the end of BBN 15 minutes later. This conversion could occur as long as the universe was very dense and hot. The longer that condition was satisfied, the more neutrons could turn into protons before BBN began.
But the universe expanded quickly after the Big Bang. The stretching of the fabric of the universe was propelled by radiation, where “radiation” refers to hot particles with tiny masses. The rate of expansion – and, by proxy, the amount of radiation – determined how quickly the universe became less dense.
It’s harder for neutrons to absorb particles and convert into protons in a diluted universe, because everybody’s so far away. The quicker the universe expanded, the less time there was to turn neutrons into protons, and so the more neutrons there would be the start of BBN. More neutrons at the beginning of musical chairs means more helium-4 by the end of it.
In a dense universe, particles interact easily, and neutrons (blue) turn into protons (red). If the universe is not very dense, interaction becomes much harder, and more neutrons stick around. Cara Giovanetti, CC-BY-SA
The amount of radiation therefore determines the final helium-4 abundance. By measuring that abundance, my colleagues and I work backward to find the precise amount of radiation in the early universe.
That’s an important quantity to measure. Among other reasons, particle physicists can use it to learn more about dark matter, a largely invisible substance that constitutes 80% of the matter in the universe.
Manymodels of dark matter, or other hypothetical physics, call for slightly more or slightly less radiation than what’s expected in standard cosmology. Measuring this quantity precisely helps particle physicists differentiate these predictions from the truth.
Looking ahead
BBN now determines the amount of radiation in the early universe better than the CMB. And its newfound prowess doesn’t stop at helium-4. Measurements of primordial deuterium, taken throughout the 21st century, tell cosmologists the density of particles like protons and neutrons with extreme precision. The precision with which BBN determines this quantity rivals, though does not yet exceed, that of the CMB.
The CMB isn’t quite ready to give up its spotlight. Even more precise measurements of all of the major unknowns in cosmology are already underway, as the Simons Observatory – a new high precision CMB telescope – makes its first observations. But there’s no clear path to improved measurements after the Simons Observatory finishes taking data, since the next-generation experiment CMB-S4 was suspended indefinitely last year.
Maybe it’s good timing, then, for BBN to be making its comeback. Getting even better BBN data doesn’t require dedicated observatories. Instead, observers only need more time on existing or planned telescopes. With near-term improvements to astronomical observations, physicists may get closer than ever to understanding the makeup – and therefore history and future – of our universe.
Now there’s another thing I have just learnt (on the 26th). That is to copy and paste I now have to use the Command key plus the appropriate letter key.
Last Tuesday morning I started a peer-to-peer migration from my ten-year-old Mac to my new Mac.
I read from the Apple site that it would take hours. But I had no idea that it would be still migrating on Thursday morning, I have no idea when it will be done!
So, dear friends, that’s why there have been no posts. Sorry!
UPDATE September 25th
I am now on my new Mac. It is all very strange and I am going to take it slowly in becoming familiar with things.
We love living in Southern Oregon. This rural part of the countryside is a delight, and feeding the wild deer is a bonus.
However, we also have to take note of the changing climate and the potential risks that extremes of weather can bring.
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As cities prepare for 2026’s super El Niño, some crucial blind spots can’t be ignored
An affordable-housing crisis and a growing homeless population led Los Angeles to declared a shelter crisis during the 2015-16 El Niño. David McNew/Getty Images
Community planning for El Niño often starts by identifying infrastructure that’s vulnerable to extreme weather. What can be harder to address are the needs of the populations most at risk, including low-income communities and older adults who may need help preparing their homes and themselves for extreme conditions.
As communities prepare for the rising risk of extreme weather, they need to be aware of the blind spots.
What is El Niño and what’s at risk?
El Niño is part of a natural climate pattern that appears every few years when temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean rise.
Its effects can shift weather patterns away from what is considered normal. Typically wet regions can get unusually dry, while dry areas can experience extreme rainfall that causes flooding. Global average temperatures also tend to rise during El Niño conditions, leaving people facing dangerous heat, both indoorsand outdoors.
In winter, El Niño typically shifts weather patterns across the U.S. However, every El Nino is different – conditions during one El Niño may be very different from the next. NOAA
Preparing for the strong El Niño expected in late 2026 and early 2027 means ensuring that critical infrastructure is able to withstand flooding, temperature extremes and other severe weather conditions.
That means inspecting flood control and drainage systems, trimming trees that could knock down power lines during high winds, and reinforcing or maintaining infrastructure such as dams, stormwater channels, roads and bridges.
Aging infrastructure, in particular, can be a problem.
Old levees and dams, for example, can leave a community vulnerable to catastrophic flooding, as the Seattle area saw in December 2025 when flooding from heavy rainfall broke levees in multiple communities. Repairing and replacing large-scale infrastructure like this is expensive and time-consuming. Too often, by the time it fails, repairs had been discussed for years but not completed.
Where we’re finding gaps in disaster planning
Infrastructure is only part of the challenge. Preparing a community for El Niño also means preparing people for what could be unprecedented conditions.
A study I worked on with researchers at Tufts University reviewed climate adaptation and disaster preparedness in several high-risk communities in the United States. We identified gaps in the policies, resources and institutional capacity available to help communities adapt to rising risks.
Crews inspect damage to a Green River levee in the Seattle suburbs on Dec. 15, 2025. Thousands of people were urged to evacuate during a series of atmospheric river storms, and the National Guard was sent to monitor and reinforce several levees considered at risk. AP Photo/Manuel Valdes
In particular, we found that governments often focus heavily on physical risks while giving too little attention to social vulnerability.
In the Los Angeles area, homeless people often set up camp in normally dry riverbeds. But those areas are at high risk of flooding during El Niño. Heavy rains during the 2015-16 El Niño swept away this camp’s mattresses. Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
It is often easier for governments to identify and invest in physical infrastructure than to invest in policies that address complex social vulnerabilities like these. For example, building a seawall can be tied to a specific project or funding stream. Reducing social vulnerability, on the other hand, may require coordination across housing, healthcare, emergency management and social services. And it typically requires sustained investments over time.
Yet, preparing successfully for extreme weather often requires considering housing and shelter needs, healthcare access and support services.
A community’s preparedness often improves after an event, when the gaps become obvious. The challenge is identifying those gaps before a disaster occurs.
In Los Angeles, emergency managers are using a good method to meet that challenge in 2026: They are carrying out scenario exercises that bring together county departments and community disaster management coordinators to practice how they would respond to an El-Niño-driven extreme weather event.
These exercises are designed to identify gaps in existing plans and figure out what might be needed if severe storms, flooding or mudslides occur. Scenario exercises allow people involved in disaster response to work through a hypothetical event before it happens.
Heavy downpours in October 2015 caused mudslides that trapped vehicles on Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles. The storm was early in the season for El Niño damage and served as a warning of the risks to come. Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images
In both the San Francisco Bay Area and in Durham County, North Carolina, officials are talking publicly about the risks to encourage residents to prepare. Bay Area officials are stressing the importance of following emergency management notifications and weather forecasts, particularly for individuals living close to the water or on hillsides that could face flash flooding and landslides.
In Oceanside, California, city officials convened an El Niño working group that included representatives from their public works, engineering, fire and police departments to coordinate planning, communications strategies and the monitoring of the San Luis Rey River.
Broader lessons
The challenge of preparing for El Niño in the face of uncertainty reflects some of the broader issues humanity faces when preparing for future climate changes.
Keeping up with infrastructure maintenance, scenario planning ahead of heat or storm seasons, understanding the needs of vulnerable populations and having plans in place to meet them can help prevent a severe storm from becoming a major disaster for the community.
Some of the trees that we have are, potentially, too close to the house. I hate cutting down trees but then even worse than that would be that the house is badly damaged and we have to move out.
It is nicely summarised in that last chapter of the article, and I quote: “The challenge of preparing for El Niño in the face of uncertainty reflects some of the broader issues humanity faces when preparing for future climate changes.”
Heather Cox Richardson published a post on YouTube,
Despite the fact that Jeannie and I were born in London, and July, 2026 is now nearly three months ago, this video is splendid.
She introduces it as follows:
From the time of our country’s founding 250 years ago, the story of America has been one of the constant efforts of Americans—from all races, ethnicities, genders, and abilities—to make real the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our democracy. We will be telling their stories over the next several weeks because now, as ever, “We Are America.”
Penny is a generous person. I say that because she sends me on a regular basis posts that I can publish. So today’s post will be well-received by pet owners and that, potentially, is many people. When I did the research, AI responded by writing that 71 million U.S. households in America own a dog.
Thus Penny’s post is highly relevant.
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Simple Daily Wellness Tips Every Pet Owner Can Easily Follow
For busy pet owners balancing work, errands, and the steady rhythm of walks, feeding, and cleanup, personal health often slips to the bottom of the list. The challenge isn’t a lack of caring, it’s the pressure to “do wellness right” while already managing a full day and a pet’s needs. That all-or-nothing mindset can leave both body and brain running on fumes, even when life looks fine from the outside. Simple, holistic well-being strategies and realistic daily wellness routines can support energy, mood, and focus in ways that fit real pet-owner lifestyle considerations.
Build a Pet-Owner-Friendly Wellness Rhythm
This quick routine helps you care for your body and mind without competing with walks, feeding, and playtime. You’ll stack tiny actions at the same times each day so wellness feels automatic, not like another chore.
Anchor a 3-minute morning stretch to your first pet task Start with gentle neck rolls, shoulder circles, and a slow forward fold right after you let your pet out or set down breakfast. Keep it easy and pain-free, aiming for “looser” not “sweaty.” This wakes up stiff joints and sets a calm tone before the day speeds up.
Add a short walk upgrade you can repeat During your usual walk, choose one tiny change: walk for a few more minutes or take one extra lap around the block. Keeping the change small makes it far more likely you will stick with it, and your pet still gets their normal routine.
Use a 60-second mindfulness reset at pet “pause points” Pick two moments you already stop, like waiting for the kettle, brushing your pet, or standing by the door before a walk. Breathe in for four counts, out for six, and relax your jaw and shoulders. This tiny pattern interrupts stress spirals without needing a quiet room or extra time.
Set a realistic bedtime “shut-down” that protects sleep Choose a consistent lights-out window, then build a 10-minute wind-down: dim lights, silence notifications, and do one calm activity (stretch, shower, or light reading). Treat it as non-negotiable because making sleep a priority supports your mood, focus, and patience for tomorrow’s pet care.
Review once a week and adjust, not restart On the same day each week, ask: What felt easy, what felt hard, and what can I shrink by half? Keep the parts that work and tweak one thing, like shifting your stretch to right after feeding. Small adjustments beat starting over.
Build Career Satisfaction That Supports Your Health—and Your Pet’s
When your days have a steadier rhythm, it’s easier to notice whether work is supporting your well-being or quietly draining it. Career fulfillment matters because it shapes your stress levels, energy, and sense of purpose, things that spill over into how present and patient you feel at home with your pet. If you’re feeling stuck, going back to school can be a meaningful way to strengthen your career trajectory, open new doors, and build longer-term stability that supports the life you want.
You can choose from an array of accredited online programs; for example, if you’re drawn to a behind-the-scenes role in care, a health administration master’s can help you move toward healthcare administration. Whatever path you choose, online programs are ideal for working professionals because they let you keep earning and keep up with your current responsibilities.
Daily Wellness Habits That Fit Pet-Owner Life
When you repeat a few basics, wellness stops feeling like another task and starts feeling automatic. These habits build a simple baseline you can stick with even on busy, pet-centered days.
Why it helps: Steadier hydration supports energy, digestion, and clearer hunger cues.
Brush and Floss Pairing
What it is: Brush for two minutes, then floss before you start evening pet routines.
How often: Daily
Why it helps: It reduces plaque buildup and keeps gums less irritated.
Dental Calendar Anchor
What it is: Put your next dental cleaning on the calendar when you book it.
How often: Every 6 months
Why it helps: It prevents small issues from becoming painful, expensive surprises.
Sunscreen Before the Leash
What it is: Apply broad-spectrum SPF 30+ to face, ears, neck, and hands.
How often: Daily, before outdoor time
Why it helps: It protects skin from UV damage during walks and yard breaks.
Moisturize After Washing
What it is: Apply moisturizer within two minutes of bathing or face washing.
How often: Daily
Why it helps: It seals in moisture and supports your skin barrier.
Wellness With Pets: Common Questions Answered
Q: What if my pet wakes me up and I miss sleep again? A: Keep your goal tiny: one steady habit the next morning, like a full glass of water or sunscreen before the first outing. If nights are chaotic, try a short wind-down cue you can repeat even at 2 a.m., like two slow breaths while your pet settles. Consistency beats perfection when sleep is choppy.
Q: How can I calm a stress spike without losing my whole day? A: Use your pet as a reset, not a distraction. Many pet parents rely on their pet for stress relief, so take 60 seconds to pet them slowly and unclench your jaw. Then do one next right thing, like brushing your teeth or refilling your water.
Q: When I’m rushed, what’s the minimum routine that still counts? A: Pick a two-minute combo: drink water while your pet eats, then wash your face and moisturize. Tie it to something that already happens every day, like the first leash grab or filling the bowl. If you do only that, you still reinforce the habit loop.
Q: How do I stop being inconsistent with self-care? A: Make it automatic by choosing one anchor time and one location, like floss at the sink before evening feeding. Lower friction by keeping essentials where you use them, such as sunscreen by the door. Track streaks weekly, not daily, so one off day does not derail you.
Q: Can I fit planning in when pet care takes over my evenings? A: Yes, keep it to 90 seconds. Plan out the next day by writing down three must-dos, then stop. Waking up with a simple plan makes follow-through easier, even with surprise messes.
Start One Small Pet-and-You Routine for Lasting Wellness
It’s easy for pet care to crowd out personal care, especially when sleep slips, stress flares, and the day fills up fast. The steady way forward is the mindset of small, repeatable routines, sustainable self-care habits that support both of you and build long-term health maintenance without relying on perfect days. Over time, that approach brings more motivation for wellness routines, fewer restarts, and a calmer path toward achieving balanced well-being. Small daily habits keep both ends of the leash healthy.
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Like all things that are important, developing a routine is crucial. Making it a habit is vital.
Penny has offered a grand analysis of what one needs to do to keep your pets healthy and happy.
The phone rings, and it’s your grandson’s shaken voice. There’s been an accident, he says, and he needs money before anyone finds out. Except it isn’t him. It’s software that learned his voice from a clip posted online, run by a stranger working through a list of phone numbers.
For years, warnings about artificial intelligence and cybersecurity have focused on corporate networks and government systems. Those threats are real. But if you follow the money in the FBI’s fraud data, a different picture emerges: Staggering sums are flowing out of household accounts.
In its 2025 annual report, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center began tracking complaints with an AI connection for the first time. Americans filed more than 22,000 such cases and reported roughly US$893 million in losses. Investment fraud accounted for $632 million of that, and people over 60 accounted for $352 million of the losses.
Those figures include only victims who reported to the FBI, and only cases where AI’s role could be identified. The consulting firm Deloitte projects that the actual hit from AI will be much bigger and help push U.S. fraud losses overall to $40 billion by 2027, up from $12.3 billion in 2023.
None of these scams are new. What AI changed is the cost and the quality of the cons.
Cloning a voice now takes a few seconds of audio and cheap consumer tools. In one study, listeners were able to identify an AI-generated voice only about 60% of the time. Video is heading the same way. In 2024, a finance employee at the architecture and design firm Arup was tricked into wiring about $25 million to fraudsters after they set up a video meeting “staffed” by deepfakes of the chief financial officer and several colleagues.
Phishing has improved, too. Clumsy wording and odd formatting used to give fraudulent emails away. Language models now write clean, fluent messages and can personalize them at scale using details scraped from social media. Deepfake videos of well-known business figures pitch bogus trading platforms.
The same pressure is visible in business losses. The cyber insurer Resilience reported that more than 85% of the losses in its claims portfolio in the first half of 2026 stemmed from attacks aimed at people rather than systems.
Why careful people fall for it
We’d like to believe that only careless people get taken. Research in behavioral finance says otherwise.
These scams are engineered around fear and urgency: a panicked grandchild, a boss demanding a same-day transfer, an investment window that closes tonight. Stress narrows attention and pushes people toward fast, intuitive judgments at the very moment they need slow, deliberate ones. Fraudsters also strike a pose of authority, whether a CFO’s face or a government agency’s letterhead, because most people defer to it.
Fluency matters as well. My own research examines how the smoothness of AI-generated communication leads people to trust it. A message with no typos, in a voice that sounds exactly right, sails past defenses that a clumsy fake would have tripped.
Nobody plans to make a major financial decision mid-panic. That’s exactly why scammers manufacture the panic.
The quiet version of the attack
AI-enabled theft doesn’t necessarily involve talking to the victim. Stolen personal data sells for a few dollars on dark web markets. Criminals then feed it to automated AI agents that probe bank and fintech systems around the clock, testing credentials and hunting for weak points at a speed no human crew could match. Last fall, the AI company Anthropic disrupted an espionage campaign in which an AI agent performed 80% to 90% of the intrusion work against roughly 30 targets, including financial institutions.
When an attacker gets into a customer account, the takeover can be over in minutes. Instant payment platforms like Zelle, built for speed and convenience, become the getaway car. The money typically moves within minutes, and getting it back is almost impossible.
How to protect you and your loved ones
Banks defend their own wire rooms with procedures, not vigilance. Households can borrow those procedures.
Check by calling back. When you get a suspicious call, hang up and dial a number you already know – like your bank’s fraud hotline – and never one the caller or message supplies. The point is to leave the channel the scammer controls. A cloned voice can’t answer your grandson’s real phone.
Trust and verify. You should agree on a robust family code word for emergencies and treat any request for money that lacks it as fake. Require two people in your household to sign off on any large transfer, so nobody moves serious money alone and under pressure. And build in a delay, such as a self-imposed 24-hour wait, before any big payment. Urgency is the scammer’s tool. Slowness is yours.
Add layers of protection. Protect the accounts themselves, too. Turn on two-factor login for financial accounts, and never share a verification code with someone who contacts you. That code is the second lock on your door, and the only reason a caller wants it is to get in.
You should also switch on your bank’s transaction alerts so a takeover announces itself in minutes, and consider a credit freeze, which is free and blocks thieves from opening new accounts with data bought on the dark web.
Protect older people. With $352 million of reported AI-related losses coming from Americans over 60, conversations with older family members are key. Walk through the callback rule and the code word, and ask their bank or brokerage about adding a trusted contact they can call. It costs nothing, and it gives the institution a way to raise an alarm before the money moves.
If money has already moved, you should call your bank immediately, ask it to attempt a recovery, then report the scam to the Federal Trade Commission.
Where habits end, rules should begin
Good habits raise the cost of every one of these scams, but they can’t do it all. This is where the U.S. regulations have fallen behind the technology.
Federal law is supposed to protect consumers from unauthorized electronic transfers, and regulators have said that a transfer set in motion by a fraudster counts as unauthorized even when the victim was tricked into handing over account credentials.
In practice, though, victims of instant-payment fraud often recover little. Banks frequently classify losses as “authorized” when a customer was deceived into approving the payment, and even obvious victims of such takeovers can face long fights over reimbursement.
For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Zelle’s operator and three of the country’s largest banks over their response to alleged fraud in late 2024, then dropped the case in March 2025. New York’s attorney general has since filed her own lawsuit, which a judge allowed to proceed in July. Zelle’s operator denies the allegations and says it will appeal.
The payment platform Zelle has become a favorite tool for scammers because stolen money is so hard to retrieve. AP Photo/Patrick Sison
The U.K. has taken a different path. Since late 2024, U.K. banks have been required to reimburse most scam victims up to £85,000, roughly $115,000, with the cost split between the sending and receiving institutions. The logic is that banks are best equipped to fight fraud, since they run security teams and networkwide analytics that can spot suspicious patterns across millions of transactions. What they had lacked was a strong financial reason to deploy them fully, and the reimbursement rule supplied it.
The regulator’s own dashboard shows that 88% of the money lost to eligible scams has been returned to victims since the rules took effect. More telling: An independent evaluation found that scam losses fell by roughly a fifth in the rule’s first year. That shows that when banks bear the losses, they find ways to prevent them.
I believe American regulators and Congress should study that model closely. When payments are instant and irreversible, the risk cannot rest almost entirely on the customer, who is the least-equipped party in the chain.
A reminder of the tips explained above: Check by calling back., Trust and verify., Add layers of protection., Banking protections,. Protect older people.
They are excellent tips.
And I need to learn this advice and take action, not just republish it and forget it!
Over last weekend I finished reading Jared Huffman’s book. To say is was good would be an understatement. It was excellent.
I will print the last paragraph of the last chapter.
CONCLUSION
We don’t need to agree on everything, but right now we must come together as fellow Americans who agree on the most important thing: Our beleaguered democracy remains the best system of government the world has ever seen, and it belongs to all of us. Let us be worthy of it by confronting the myths, defending the facts, and honouring the Enlightenment inheritance that made pluralistic democracy possible. And as we do, let us remember Thomas Paine’s words that echo across the centuries: “The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.” (My emboldening.)
