Suppose you were walking in your hometown and you came across a bundle of cash lying on the sidewalk. What would you think? For the past six or so years, residents of Blackhall Colliery, England haven’t known what to think. They have been finding neat packages of 20-pound notes, worth as much as $2,600, in
I’ve seen several warnings — when you write this year in a date, don’t abbreviate it. Sometimes it takes me a while to catch on, but now I understand. Simply writing “20” is an invitation to tampering. For example, you’ve just borrowed money. On the contract, you wrote the date as 1/8/20. If you miss
We are a mobile society. In fact, some would say we are addicted to our cars. Our interstate highway system is one of the engineering marvels of the modern age. And yet… Controlled-access multi-lane, and especially elevated, roadways cause serious collateral damage. They split neighborhoods and upend property values. But as our highways are getting
From the “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” department — last year I leased a hybrid car. My original motivation was because it has all the latest safety features, an important consideration as I age and my reflexes decline. But the nicest advantage is the fuel economy; I got over 57 miles to the gallon on
Not only is this a new year, this is a new decade. Speaking of new decades, I’ve been surprised at the number of news articles revisiting the Year 2000 problem at the turn of the century, otherwise known as Y2K (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem) . In case you don’t remember or are very young, as we approached the
Tomorrow is the start of another year, in fact, another decade. Since this is a good time to reflect upon our lives, not to mention a good excuse to party, many traditions have arisen over the millennia to stimulate our celebrations. If you’ve ever wondered how some of these traditions have originated, The Writer’s Almanac
Assume you’re an astronaut flying to Mars sometime in the near future. When you finally arrive (after a trip of anywhere from 150 to 300 days), where will you stay? Someone is working on that. Suppose a robot with a 3D printer went first, gathered local materials, and printed the Martian base’s infrastructure before any
The world continues to change in ways I never see coming. This year I had a pretty good holiday season (for me) selling my books. Consequently, I had some cash to deposit in my checking account. It wasn’t a lot (lower three figures), and I decided the easiest way to handle it would be to
If you have trouble with dates and are not quite sure if this really is Christmas, remember you can always check the Is It Christmas? website (https://isitchristmas.com/). This site has been around for years now, and is the simplest website I’ve ever found. Merry Christmas, and no matter what day it is, have a good
Students at the middle school where I substitute teach have been studying A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. This classic tale, first published December 19, 1843, captures the spirit of the season better than any other I have read and has been adapted for TV and cinema many times. But as someone trying to be
