Obituary: Jurgen Habermas, 96, Thinker Who Heralded ‘Public Sphere,’ Is Dead – Last weekend different online sources I follow mourned the death of Jurgen Habermas with great affection and respect. While I was vaguely familiar with the name, I had no idea who he was, so when his obituary showed up in the March 16, 2026, New York Times, I read it with interest. Habermas was born in Germany in 1929 so grew up under the Nazi regime and its aftermath. He earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy and became a professor and author. In the early 1960s, he introduced the idea of the ‘public sphere,’ a place beyond the control of government where the free exchange of ideas could occur. The model he envisioned were the coffee shops of 18th century England and France where people could congregate to discuss politics and reach an understanding of issues that were of common concern. He also warned of the rise of nationalism and any attempt to forget or diminish the Holocaust. He said Germans had a responsibility to keep alive the memories of the suffering of so many by German hands.

Op-Ed: Social Media Is Hazardous by Tim Wu in the March 15, 2026, New York Times. A law professor and one of the foremost thinkers in the country about the role of the internet in our society, Tim Wu argues that social media companies hide behind the shield of free speech when they are instead a threat to public health. He does this in the context in the in-progress lawsuit against Meta (operator of Facebook and Instagram). The plaintiff’s theory in that case is that social media is intentionally designed to create compulsions and over use, regardless of the content provided. Wu suggests that even if this case goes in favor of the social media companies, it’s just a matter of time before someone holds them accountable for all the hard that they have done.

Blog Post: Living Madly: What Time Is It? – In her monthly Living Madly column on richardhowe.com last week, Emilie-Noelle Provost took on Daylight Savings Time, giving the history of where it came from and all the harmful consequences it has for people. I agree with Emilie. When I was younger, my daily habits, including when I woke up and went to bed, were more random. But as I got older, routines became more important. I get up and go to bed at the same time each day and turning the clock back or ahead messes with that. I’m not alone in feeling the disruption. Each morning I take our dog out for a predawn walk through the neighborhood. It’s always peaceful but in the weeks before the time change, we’d encounter other walkers, a good number of cars driving past, and lights on in most of the houses in the neighborhood. Since the clocks “sprung ahead” those things are mostly absent even though we’re out at the same time according to the clock. 

Earlier in life, I had a couple of memorable run ins with the time change. From May through October 1980, I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, for army training. For whatever reason, Arizona did not follow Daylight Savings Time. So part of the time I was there, we were three hours ahead of the east coast and the rest of the time we were four hours ahead. 

The second story also comes from my time in the Army only this happened in Germany. One Saturday I took the train to Munich with some friends. We had a great day and evening and were on a late train home when about halfway through the trip the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. It just stayed stationary for exactly and hour and then resumed the trip. Later I learned that was because our trip straddled the time change and, given the Germanic devotion to good order, the train could not arrive at its destination and hour early which it would have had we not stopped. Yet for those of us aboard, it made for a long journey.

The final story was from my time as register of deeds. In 2001, I was on a subcommittee investigating new computer systems for the registries of deeds throughout Massachusetts. It would be a big contract and we had to get it right, so part of the process was to visit registries around the country that were using the systems offered by the top bidders for our project. One destination was the Cook County Registry of Deeds in Chicago. Coincidentally, the night we would be there the Chicago Black Hawks had a home hockey game and one of my colleagues had bought two tickets and invited me to go. I asked him what time. He said the game was on ESPN at 8pm so we should meet in the lobby at 7:30 and walk to the game. We did, but when we arrived at the United Center, the first period had just ended. It turned out that the 8pm start time for ESPN was for the east coast but the came was in Chicago on Central Standard Time so there was an hour time difference with the game starting at 7pm local time. I assume our tickets had the correct start time but I didn’t see mine until we got to the arena. I enjoyed the rest of the game and the opportunity to visit a famous sports venue, but one local practice I didn’t like was that fans were permitted to smoke in the concourse of the arena and many did, so if you went to get a hot dog, you were engulfed in cigarette smoke. I remember going to the old Boston Garden as a kid and sitting high up in a balcony. Back then, smoking was permitted in the seats. By the fourth quarter, I could barely see the court (or breath) because of the cigarette smoke haze that filled the place.