sorry

While I was out of town this weekend, one of my friends lost her dog. As I read over the many caring comments on her Facebook page, it struck me how difficult it is to express condolences - especially on the loss of a pet. Like many others, I ended up simply saying "I'm sorry." The significance of the relationship between pet and person is often minimized, even though we know that the unconditional love supplied by a pet can do astonishing things for human mental and physical health. Personally, I don't believe animals have souls, but neither do I believe they are soulless automatons. Cats…
Dear Reader(s): This is Ethan, and I'm writing this to you to let you know that I owe you an apology. I have gotten so excited with the idea of bringing the story of the Universe to you -- to tell you how we got from the birth of the Universe to the present day, to tell you what the world, galaxy, and Universe is like and how it got to be that way -- that I've gotten carried away. You deserve the story, because it's wonderful and beautiful. You deserve the story, because it's something specialized and complicated, and it's something that I happen to have studied, hard, for the last seven…