Although I'm involved now with science and pre-med, I still love the NY Times magazine, and all its politics and culture.

2 Sundays ago...a great article on Obama and Kennedy. This photo is from the article

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/magazine/01fob-wwln-t.html?ref=magazine

Some worthwhile exceprts:

"But Obama has also demonstrated, not for the first time, two things about his emerging governing style that contrast sharply with that of his predecessor...The second is that he doesn’t seem especially bothered by the perception that he’s dithering. Bush often seemed to measure leadership by the number of seconds it took to make a decision. Obama displays a different kind of spine — the capacity to take his time, even when allies and critics are pounding at the door."

"...Obama is a leader who instinctively seeks the center lane of American politics. And in this way, more than any other, Obama is very much like the John Kennedy who emerges in historical accounts today, a self-confident president who governed at a time of heightened insecurity and proved himself insufficiently doctrinaire for both bellicose cold warriors and the new generation of liberals who considered him their own..."

I just happened to look up at a bookshelf at cabot science library last week, and saw a book called "imagined worlds," by Freeman Dyson, and for some reason it caught my eye. and i actually checked it out!

in the introduction, this strikes me as fascinating: "Two voices speak for the future, the voice of science and the voice of religion. Science and religion are two great human enterprises that endure through centuries and link us with our descendants...I do not claim that the voice of science speaks with unique authority. Religion has at least an equal claim to authority in defining human destiny. Religion lies closer to the heart of human nature and has a wider currency than science. Like the human nature it reflects, religion is often cruel and perverted. When science achieved the power of religion, science often became cruel and perverted, too." (page 7)

And here are some nice Fall photos--I'm a bit late and lots of leaves have already fallen off the trees!