I’m sure you’ve heard of some people being described as “swimming like a fish.” It might surprise you to learn that some fish don’t swim well at all. Why would some fish be poor swimmers? The simple answer is they don’t need to swim well. For example, if the pufferfish (also called blowfish) is chased, it
About 20 years ago, author Dan Buettner, working for National Geographic and with a grant from the National Institute on Aging, started studying the world’s longest-lived people. They’re the ones who reside in the so-called Blue Zones of longevity. Basically, his goal was to reverse-engineer longevity. Since an estimated 20% of a person’s life span is
Many slaveholders, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, knew slavery was wrong, they just didn’t know how to move beyond it. As Jefferson wrote in 1820, “As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in
In the 2015 Pixar animated feature Inside Out, Riley had five emotions — Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. Cute, but is that all? How many emotions do we really have? According to “The Benefits of Emodiversity” by David Brooks in The Atlantic (www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/benefits-emotional-diversity/620629/?), there are more. A lot more. For example, the Japanese have age-otori,
Of all the messages about climate change, perhaps the most original is the dinosaur who addresses the United Nations. Yes, in a recent YouTube video, a dinosaur walks into the UN’s General Assembly and delivers an impassioned speech to stunned delegates. The bottom line: Don’t choose extinction. “I know a thing or two about extinction,
This Saturday, December 18, 2021, I will be appearing at Antiques Village, 651 Lyons Rd, Washington Township in Montgomery County, Ohio (Centerville) with all my books (https://www.antiquesvillage.net/). I plan to stay from the 10 am opening until at least 5 pm. This really is a fun place with some unique antiques, plus lots of second-hand
If you are looking for a Christmas book for a child, I would like to offer The Cactus Who Wanted to Be a Christmas Tree, available on this website (https://www.bobwelbaum-author.com/the-cactus-who-wanted-to-be-a-christmas-tree/) and Amazon.com in paperback and downloadable forms. Its Amazon rating is 4.4 out of 5 (https://www.amazon.com/Cactus-Who-Wanted-Christmas-Tree/dp/1938768507/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Bob+Welbaum&qid=1638648358&sr=8-1).
As part of the annual end-of-the-year recapitulations the media is so fond of, the November 22/29 issue of Time magazine lists the 100 best inventions of 2021. The complete list is at https://time.com/collection/best-inventions-2021/, but here are some that caught my eye. A Public Health Breakthrough — Thanks mostly to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The city of Baltimore has more than 16,000 vacant buildings. Also, the percentage of Black households who own their own homes lags white households by 29%. Put those facts together, and you have an opportunity. As a carpenter by trade, Shelley Halstead saw that opportunity. She founded, and is now executive director of, Black Women
There about a billion dogs on this planet. Over the past several thousand years, they have become our helpmates and companions. Which brings up the question — what would happen to our furry companions if we were to suddenly disappear? A new book, A Dog’s World by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691196183/a-dogs-world), considers two