I’ve never liked coffee. My mother made a cup for me when I was about ten years old, and I hated it. But I could be missing out. First, is coffee bad for you? Today most researchers say no. In fact, a recent study published in the journal Nature Medicine found that older people with
I was catching up on reading while traveling and I ran across the story of artist/sculptor Vinnie Ream. You’ve never heard of her? Ms. Ream went to work at the age of 15 as a Dead Letter clerk in the Washington, D.C. post office during the Civil War. According to How the Post Office Created
This is too good a story not to repeat. You know there is a lot of gambling around major sporting events, including high-profile and fun wagers between politicians and cities. For this year’s Super Bowl, the zoos of Atlanta and Roger Williams Park in Rhode Island took things a step farther. They bet with each
One of the pitfalls of modern life is depression. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, “depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States. In 2014, around 15.7 million adults age 18 or older in the U.S. had experienced at least one major depressive episode in the last
This is a poor way to start, but I apologize to all the health-care professionals for this post. I know there are many competent and dedicated people in the field (and I certainly have benefited from them), but the truth is throughout medical history, there have been many erroneous conceptions and outright mistakes. As a
A question for today — Is alcohol a happy byproduct of civilization? Or is it one of the reasons for our civilization? The February, 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine explores this in an article entitled “A 9000-Year Love Affair”. It explains how alcohol is one of the most universally produced substances in history. In
“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” If you’ve ever heard of this saying, forget it. It just isn’t true. Everything depends on marketing and promotion… and luck. I was reminded of this recently when I heard a radio interview with Derek Thompson, a senior editor at Atlantic
From the Tests-Don’t-Always-Measure-What-They’re-Supposed-To-Measure Department — Those nice people at BewilderingStories.com have published another short story of mine. It’s entitled “The Personality Test” and can be accessed here: http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue701/blurb.html . (That link will take you to the “Issue #701 Readers’ Guide” so you can see what else is in this edition.) This the seventh story of
My nieces have an iPhone and they delight in asking the digital assistant Siri questions. But maybe the key question is “Who is Siri?” (Have you ever asked her?) The March 2017 issue of Consumer Reports magazine discusses smartphones, and in a sidebar on page 50 they expose “The Real Voice Behind Siri”. In 2005,
From the Now-I’ve-Heard-Everything department — Mythology likes to rhapsodize about the lost continent of Atlantis, but there may be another loss we’ve completely overlooked. It’s in the Indian Ocean beneath the island of Mauritius. Although Mauritius is only 790 square miles, it has long interested scientists because of an unusually strong gravitational pull. You may