Yesterday I received an email from The Planetary Society about Asteroid Day. Beginning at the beginning, The Planetary Society is an organization for people interested in anything involving space — “We create. We educate. We advocate.” One of their latest activities has been to support the LightSail experiment — using the solar wind for
I’ve been very fortunate in my life to have been able to do quite a bit of foreign travel. So much of history never makes it into your average history book, and you don’t appreciate this until you actually visit some of the places you read about to see for yourself. Foreign travel also exposes
From The Writer’s Almanac, June 23, 2015: “The typewriter was patented on this date in 1868, by Christopher Latham Sholes of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sholes was a newspaperman, and he was driven to invention out of necessity: His printers went on strike. He and two colleagues set out to invent a machine to print letters on
I think there is a technical term for everything. I’m sure you’re familiar with this symbol: ¶ If (unlike me) you’ve ever wondered what it is, it’s a pilcrow and it has a long history. According to Wikipedia, it can be used as an indent for separate paragraphs or to designate a new paragraph in one
Cavalry was still the glamorous branch of the army during the American Civil War. In the first half of this tragic conflict, the most dashing, most charismatic — and most successful — cavalry commanders were on the Confederate side. You probably have already heard of General James Ewell Brown (JEB) Stuart, the eyes and ears
We as a species don’t like mysteries. We’re always trying to explain what we see, even when we don’t have enough information to understand. For example, have you ever seen an elephant skull? An elephant doesn’t have a bone between its eyes; there’s just one huge hole in the upper middle of the skull where
I had some workmen at my house last week. A venerable ash tree by the garage had been attacked by the dreaded ash borer and had to be removed before it died completely and fell onto the roof. But that’s another story. When they came into my house at the end of the job to
Dreams We start out in our lives young, unlearned, naïve. As we learn, make friends, and grow, in dreams we must believe. We mold them for ourselves, we see a future bright. We follow life’s long path, working with all our might. And then one day we realize our future is not the key. It’s
So much of history never makes it into your standard textbooks. For example, we know there are prisoners in every war. Yet unless something catastrophic happens, like the high death rate at Andersonville, Georgia in the American Civil War or “brainwashing” in the Korean War, these stories are usually forgotten. That’s why a podcast about World
I run as a sport, and I have since 1980. I can’t really explain why, except to say it fills a need in my life. What I’ve discovered about running is its individuality — there are many different reasons to run. Yes, it’s fun to win awards, but most of the time meeting individual goals, from