On Monday I was called on to substitute for a French teacher. I’ve never studied French, but I’ve visited the country five times, so I’ve picked up some spoken tourist French. It’s not much — I joke with my European friends that I’ve learned enough French to ask a question, but not enough to understand
I got home yesterday after a long day of substitute school teaching (middle school French, that’s all you need to know), turned on the faucet at the kitchen sink and… Nothing. Panicked, I tried the hall bathroom. Nothing there either. A broken line? There were no puddles in the yard. Forgot to pay the water
Today I received the following email — Congratulations! You are among the 32 contributors in prose and poetry represented in Bewildering Stories’ First Quarterly Review of 2015, now officially on line. We like to think of the Quarterly Reviews as offering safe harbour on the chaotic sea of the Internet. The Review Editors are very
Awhile back I found the book Leaders by Richard Nixon in a second-hand bookstore (Warner Books). I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s turning into an interesting read. I always wonder about celebrity books — did the celebrity really do the writing? There are other names in the Author’s Note, but there are enough personal
We’ve started the fourth quarter of the school year, so one would expect all the seniors would have plans. Early this week I was talking to a senior I had first worked with in middle school, and unfortunately he doesn’t know what he’s going to do after graduation. Some kids just seem to be clueless
My Rite of Spring I consider myself a peaceable soul. I value all manner of livable things. Insects and mice, spiders and voles. Just about anything Mom Nature brings. But I do have my standards. I will draw the line. I have to set limits someday and sometime. Weeds in the yard — a depressing
Today I found a term I’d never seen before — benefit corporation. There’s an interesting article about them in Briefing: Small Business in Time magazine, March 21, 2015. And it has to be important, because there’s also a Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation). Yes, a benefit corporation is out to make a profit, but is also trying
Does anyone else have trouble with touchscreens? I’m finding they’re pretty much everywhere — my phone, my iPod, my netbook computer… I once got a notebook computer and had to take it back; either I would touch it and nothing would happen (multiple times!) or it would open windows when my finger was still a
“The Joy in Forgotten Objects” The good folks at Bewildering Stories have posted another of my stories. Usually they want multiple rewrites or reject them outright, but this one went right to the publication schedule. http://www.bewilderingstories.com/is…/forgotten_objects.html
Which scientific ideas should die? Science is always investigating new ideas and disproving old ones. If we are to continue to move forward, which of the current scientific ideas about our world are obsolete and should be discarded? How about the universe as we know it? That’s the premise of a Science Friday program, which was broadcast