Author Archives: Bob Welbaum

What is a Successful Failure?

I don’t mean to brag, but I’m something of an expert on failure.  The fact that many of you have never heard of me until you read this supports my point.  But I’m not going for pity here, because I’m getting by pretty well.  It’s just that I’ve never been able to accomplish something really

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How to Stop a Hurricane

We seem so powerless as compared to Mother Nature.  Earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes always put us at the mercy of the elements.  And yet… Could there be a way to stop hurricanes from forming?  After all, these monster storms are basically huge heat engines.  They appear toward the end of summer, when the top layer

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Real Fake News

With all the talk recently about which news is fake and which is real, I’ve found a real example of how fake news was used to win World War II.  Call it “real fake news.” If you were a German citizen during the period 1941 to 1943, you might have heard some very realistic-sounding shortwave

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Happy April Fool’s Day!

  From the I-Wish-I’d-Written-That Department, this is the Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation (http://www.poetryfoundation.org.) —   April Fool by Myra Cohn Livingston The maple syrup’s full of ants.                                     A mouse is creeping on the

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Running While Female

Running is my recreational sport.  When I run, I never think about running alone, or at night, or in the country.  But then, I’m a man. I remember when I lived in California, almost every weekday I used to run after work on the Santa Ana River trail with some coworkers, including a young lady. 

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Happy Birthday Fannie Farmer

There is a lot we take for granted in our modern world.  Like cookbooks, for example. March 23 is kind of a milestone anniversary in home economics.  On that day in 1857,  Fannie Merritt Farmer was born in Boston.  According The Writers’ Almanac, Fannie is remembered for publishing the first cookbook in American history.  Up

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The Answer to Fake News?

Talk about change, President Trump certainly has stirred up a debate about the press’s role in our society.  As one might predict, members of the Fourth Estate are very much engaged.  In the recent past, I’ve seen the following — The Christian Science Monitor’s March 13, 2017 cover story, “Trump vs. The Media: The War

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