Roger Meyer

"Did you hear about so-and-so?" Ears perk up, heads turn and attention is grabbed when we hear those words. We know we are about to hear something private and scandalous about someone we know. Psychologists say gossip has evolutionary origins with our prehistoric ancestors and enabled cavemen, and even their supposed primate ancestors, to survive. What are the real facts about gossip?

Only recently have astrophysicists been able to offer a substantial hypothesis as to what it is that holds the universe together and keeps it from flying apart. Yet you do not have to be a physicist to know the simple answer!

As a little boy was walking to school with his mother, he kept turning around and looking back. His mother asked him what he was doing. He said he was looking for “Shirley Goodness and Murphy, who would follow him all the days of his life.” The little boy had not quite understood the words of Psalms 23, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

Throughout history, many millions of people have lived in nations where a state religion was enforced. Some of these religions have been relatively mild in their influence, while others have been severe. Even today, despite the trend toward secularism, dozens of nations have at least a nominal state religion. Modern generations have grown up during a period of secularism in Western nations, and many may be tempted to think that the country in which they live will never be under a state religion.

The news media buzzed with excitement in 1967 about a revolutionary operation that had just taken place in Cape Town, South Africa. This was the date of the first human heart transplant in history. Millions have heart problems. Sometimes, our hearts simply wear out. Is a heart replacement the answer?