During the cold war, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists became famous for its Doomsday Clock. The position of the hands on the clock showed how close the world was, in the judgment of the publication’s board of directors, to the midnight of mass nuclear annihilation. Every time the directors mo

In a speech at the Joint Forces Command headquarters in Norfolk, Va., on Feb. 13, President George W. Bush warned that national security can be endangered in two new ways. We must confront the threats that come on a missile, he saidpresumably referring to possible attacks from hostile nations like N

Hopkins seems to think the whole universe is wonderful. I have a friend who just told me yesterday he has brain cancer. What does Hopkins have to say to him? A student at Loyola University Chicago asked this question recently in a class on Victorian literature, during a discussion of the English Jes

Several years ago, while I sat at my desk one morning at Continuum, an AIDS agency in San Francisco where I served as executive director, the phone rang. The caller identified herself as a secretary to the First Lady and asked if I would come to the White House for a community leaders’ forum l

People tend to look back and read history including their personal stories as inevitable Historians particularly those willing to ask What if can occasionally help us see the way that certain events might have been otherwise how much they depended on a gossamer tissue of contingencies not on

Ron Hansen has established himself as a significant contemporary American writer with five novels and a collection of stories that have earned him numerous awards and fellowships as well as an endowed chair at Santa Clara University in California He has now collected 14 essays variously published

Youth Ministers, Chaplains Offer Comfort to Shooting VictimsIn an outpouring of faith in the midst of tragedy, Catholic youth ministers, priests, chaplains, parents and teens ministered to one another following the shooting on March 5 of 15 people at Santana High School in Santee, Calif. Five youth

Some day medical science may be able to heal or alleviate ailments like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, spinal cord injuries, heart disease and cancer by giving patients new cells that have been guided to act as replacements for their own damaged tissue. Sometimes the

Pope Presides Over Biggest Consistory in HistoryOn Feb. 21 John Paul II created 44 new cardinals, bringing to 166 the number of cardinals he has appointed—more than any other pope in history. Of the 184 living cardinals, 160 were appointed by John Paul. Forty of the new cardinals are under the

God would have saved the city of Sodom, we are told in Gen. 18:22-33, if Abraham had only been able to find 10 just people. With all the bad news pouring out of Israel these daysdaily Palestinian and Jewish body counts, rising hysteria on both sides and a hardening of attitudesone finds oneself desp