I was raised in a house on the far South Side of Chicago, in a development erected on a landfill made from slag and other industrial by-products a few years after World War II.
One of the ways a landfill engineer anywhere in the world earns bragging rights is if he can pour himself a glass of the leachate from his landfill and drink it.
In Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the government in a matter of years has put a lot of energy behind recycling food waste as livestock feed. It's environmentally friendly, it provides cheap livestock feed for the farmers in those parts of the world, and it avoids sending the food waste to landfill.
God's role in superintending our world and our lives is neither absentee landlord nor micromanager.
And, unlike the earlier bombing on the World Trade Center, a major landmark and symbol of the strength of the financial world was, not just damaged but, totally destroyed.
America's space program has been the envy and inspiration of the world. It has made landmark scientific discoveries that are a lasting legacy of this nation's greatness. It has studied Earth in ways no other nation can match.
I wouldn't mind spending six months a year having a private jet take me around the world to visit natural and historical landmarks like the Egyptian pyramids, Mount Kilimanjaro or the Taj Mahal.
When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
The fact that television and tourism have made the whole world accessible has created the illusion that we enjoy intimate knowledge of other places, when we barely scratch their surface. For the vast majority, the knowledge of Thailand or Sri Lanka acquired through tourism consists of little more than the whereabouts of the beach.
The best feeling in the world is when you child just comes up to you and lays their head in your lap, for no other reason but just because.
It's great to see so many women grab the world by its lapel, push their limits, and shine through it all.
I was 15 when Chernobyl happened, I've been vaguely thinking about it for most of my life. But somewhere around 2015, it occurred to me that I didn't know how it happened, which seemed like a pretty bizarre lapse in my understanding of the world and how it functions.
California is responsible for selling, trading and distributing large amounts of shark fins that come from all over the world.
I lived in a small village outside the city and grew up in a large family, so my world was very much centred around that. I used to sing in the local church, and I would also occasionally sing in the local pubs for which I used to get a few bob. That, for me, was the start of my interest in music, which has obviously expanded since then.
Among them, there were Muslims, Christians, and Jews living together. But then violent organizations came, bringing with them many large groups of people from various parts of the world to Palestine.
I liked Columbia, but it was like high school in that there was this big social world that I was not part of. I existed on the side, far away. That might be temperamental, my own fear of large groups, more than anything else. But I had a handful of professors who meant a lot to me.
As the sixth largest economy in the world, the economic engine of the nation, and provider of a large percentage of the federal budget, California carries a lot of weight.
People have different relationships with power. I suppose a large portion of the 'Homeland' audience aligns with the U.S., sort of against the enemies. We certainly have the CIA viewpoint on the world - and it's their job.
In the charitable world, I find myself giving to large projects that I think can make a large-scale impact.
