One thing I quickly learned as a teacher is that it’s almost impossible to treat all your students objectively. It shouldn’t be any surprise that you feel more empathy toward some, while others are simply easier to remember. I once got a marriage proposal from a student (she was a high school freshman, I was
The Clock on the Wall Keeps Ticking It’s 8 am and I should arise. The day is announced by a robin’s cries. Into the room the sunlight streams and abruptly jolts me from my dreams. And the clock on the wall is ticking. But soft is the bed and warm are the covers. and I’d
Some headlines simply can’t be ignored. Like “Do You Actually Swallow a Bunch of Spiders When You Sleep?” There is an urban legend that the average person will ingest about eight spiders a year while sleeping. Presumably the spiders are active enough and most people sleep with their mouths open enough that, well, accidents will
When I was in the Air Force, during training a superior would occasionally ask “tell me a little-known but interesting fact.” To me, some of the most interesting facts are about the world above us. The Earth’s atmosphere actually extends beyond the moon. The outermost part of the atmosphere is the geocorona, and it extends
After work Friday, I went downtown to the Dayton Auto Show. Not that I need a new car; mine is only five years old with 33,000 miles. I don’t get a new car that often — I’ve only owned six in 54 years of driving, but I couldn’t resist seeing what was new. Also, I’m
I’ve read so much about the unreliability of eyewitnesses. (For example, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/.) But can you trust your own memory? Ada JoAnn Taylor confessed to suffocating a sixty-eight-year-old widow in 1989 and for two decades believed she was guilty. As a result, she served more than nineteen years in prison before being pardoned when DNA evidence
What animal do you see in this picture? I have a special reason for asking. I’ve seen several examples like this on Facebook (and for me they get old in a hurry), but this particular picture is famous in psychology circles. It’s an original illustration by psychologist Joseph Jastrow (photo by him) that was used
If you’re like me, you’ve been reading a lot recently about how much plastic is piling up in the environment. About how plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050, and bits of plastic debris smaller than 5mm, called microplastics, are being found in our water, our air, even in our bodies. The
One of my favorite leisure activities is to watch TED talks. For the uninitiated, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The talks are posted online by a media organization, TED Conferences LLC under the slogan “ideas worth spreading.” Which ones are best is purely subjective, but Chris Anderson, the owner of TED Talks (through
If you are a zombie, I apologize — this is not what you think. What caught my eye was this headline — Brain donation is critically needed You read that correctly — someone wants you brain, but for legitimate scientific purposes. Here’s the sales pitch — One out of every six people is suffering from a