Author Archives: Bob Welbaum

Happy Birthday, Pencil Eraser

Something I ran across last week — March 30 was the birthday of the pencil eraser! According to a Writers’ Almanac entry on that date — “On this day in 1858, Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia patented the first pencil to have an attached eraser.  The eraser-tipped pencil is still something of an American phenomenon; most European pencils

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Are You Ready For Some Good News?

If the world seems especially grim right now, let me report some good news. You may have heard of the Guinea worm, a particularly painful parasite with an unusual lifecycle.   It’s responsible for the disease dracunculiasis, which historically has sickened about 3.5 million people a year across 20 African and Asian countries. For the

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What is a Superbloom?

Think Death Valley and you think desert, with an average rainfall less than two inches per year.   Yet the ecosystem is surprisingly diverse, even including wildflowers.  And in a year of above-average rainfall, the desert can spring to life with such a profusion of flowers it’s known as a superbloom. Seeds can lie dormant for long periods.

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Getting Enough to Eat

The world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.  That’s 2 billion more than we have today.  How will we feed them?  National Geographic magazine ran an eight-month series of articles on this subject beginning in May 2014.  With some people going hungry now, it’s going to take some creative thinking to accommodate

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How Many Slaves Tried to Run Away?

I was in the classroom earlier this week as an aide in some middle school social studies classes, and they were studying the Underground Railroad.  All this week they were watching a movie entitled Race to Freedom about slaves trying to make it to Canada.  We hear so much about the Underground Railroad, and movies

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Einstein Was Right Again

Scientists still talk about gravity as a theory because they can’t explain exactly how it works.  Albert Einstein hypothesized gravity waves, but there was no way to confirm they existed… until recently. Granted, the science is a bit hard to comprehend because all the numbers are extreme one way or another, but basically, over a billion years ago

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Happy Early Easter!

On March 20, I had written about our early spring.   Today I learned (from the same source, EarthSky News) that this is the earliest Easter until 2035.  This is their explanation — Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon in a Northern Hemisphere spring. By ecclesiastical rules, which fixes the

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Short Story — Combat Fatigue

This is an original short story that first appeared on  the Bewildering Stories website, issue #585, in August, 2014  (http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue585/combat_fatigue.html)   Combat Fatigue by Bob Welbaum   “First, let me verify your information. You are Staff Sergeant Stuart B. Jamison, United States Army. You are 24 years old, single, and have completed two tours in

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The Carbon-Negative Country

I guess this falls under the category of Every Little Bit Helps. The odds are few people can find Bhutan on the map.  A small country between China and India astride the Himalaya Mountains, it’s strictly third world with an economy of only around $2 billion.  But thanks to some enlightened leadership, it’s taking a first-world

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