Author Archives: Bob Welbaum

Gulliver’s Travels

Continuing with my investigation of classic stories I’ve heard about all of my life and have become curious about the originals, I’ve recently finished reading Gulliver’s Travels.  Every pop-culture version of this work I have ever seen describes Gulliver among the Lulliputians.  But this adventure is only one part of four.  Gulliver also travels to

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Would You Like a Third Arm?

Have you ever wished for a third arm?  How much easier would that make your life? Believe it or not, technology is advancing to give you that wish.  Researchers in Japan recently announced they have built a device that will allow people to perform a second task with a robot arm.  The wearer of the

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Coming To America

We hear a lot of talk about immigration, but it’s almost always from our viewpoint.  Have you ever wondered how immigrating looks from the other side?  Say, you want to come here from Somalia? Then you should listen to “Abdi and the Golden Ticket” about a young Somali who wanted to escape the turmoil of

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Who Was Nike?

I was teaching yesterday, helping another teacher in a high school English class discussing mythological literature.  Then one of the girls asked a question that made me curious — who was Nike? The brand name we all know as the shoe and apparel company really did exist, at least in mythology.  Nike was the Greek

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Making a Better World, One Brain At a Time

There is a shortage of brains. No, this has nothing to do with politics.  It’s about medical research. Neuroscientists require all kinds of brain tissue to study diseases that affect at least 15 percent of people around the world.  I’m sure you’re well-versed with the concept of organ donation.  Unfortunately, simply filling out an organ-donor

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What Is A Smog Free Ring?

An amazing story jumped out of the newspaper at me recently.  A young man gave his fiancee a smog free engagement ring ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/fashion/weddings/a-wedding-ring-with-a-dirty-little-secret.html ). A what? Four years ago, Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist and technologist, was visiting Beijing, China, a city notorious for its air pollution.  When he returned home, Roosegaarde decided to design

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Restaurants Have Secrets, Too

When I lived in Southern California from 1982 to 1986, I took an afternoon course about restaurants at the local community college.  I learned such useful tidbits as to avoid the “Chef’s Special” — usually some forgotten meat they’d found in the back of the freezer, scraped the mold off, cooked it well, hid it

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Our Diet Is Not Even Good For Animals?

You’ve probably heard plenty of talk about how our diet has changed over the years.  Specifically, reliance on processed foods have given us a disposition towards obesity.  I believe this, because I’ve been reading food labels and I always find some type of sugar somewhere in the ingredients of almost everything. Or am I being

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