Author Archives: Bob Welbaum

The City Where College is Free

It’s called “The Promise”.   Any high school graduate in Kalamazoo, Michigan  gets to go to college for free. The website Kalamazoo Promise lays it out clearly — 1. The Kalamazoo Promise is for ALL students of the Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS). 2. You must reside within the boundaries of KPS. 3. You must have at

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Where History Comes From, Part 2385

How much of history can you trust?  As a history nerd, I’ve thought about this often (at least 2384 previous times).   I usually end up pondering some of my favorite quotes — “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it”  —  Sir Winston Churchill “History is the version of past events

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How Trees Talk to Each Other

There are many things in this world I don’t understand.  How women can walk in high-heeled shoes, for example.  Now I can add tree communication to the list. Recently I ran across a TED Talk by a forest ecologist named  Suzanne Simard.  She has been researching Canadian forests for thirty years, and she’s concluded that

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Meet Garner Holt

The clincher was a visit to Disneyland.  Garner Holt had always been fascinated with figures and motion; he made his first animated show — a carrot and a cucumber — when he was six years old.  Then he found the August, 1963 edition of National Geographic magazine with a picture of Walt Disney showed his

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Another Reason to Become a Vegan

Have you ever thought about egg production? Only female chickens — hens — can lay eggs.  So if you are breeding chickens for egg production, what do you do with the males, or roosters? The sad fact is that the roosters have no use, so they are usually put to death very quickly after hatching. 

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Can a Video Game Make You Cry?

There are all kinds of video games.  Yet normally they are pretty devoid of emotion.  But there is a new genre of games that tries to tap into our most primal feelings. The best example is That Dragon, Cancer, created by Ryan & Amy Green and Josh Larson, and published by Numinous Games.  (The cover

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