It’s snowing and the first serious winter weather is rolling in, so I’m reposting my poem on snowfall (which is in my book Some Poems About Life, available on this website). Perspective The son stood in the doorway, Behold a beautiful sight! As far as he could see, nothing but fluffy white! Today would
Have you ever heard of the legal case Batson vs. Kentucky? Few people have. Yet this was a major legal landmark in the legal system; this case determined that a prosecutor cannot use peremptory challenges to remove a juror from a jury pool based on race. A bit of explanation — potential jurors are examined
If you flip a coin and get heads three straight times, what do you think the fourth flip will be? The odds are still 50-50 you will get heads again because each flip is independent (and the coin can’t remember how it landed in the past). Yet that’s not what human nature wants to believe.
I think it’s close enough to the holidays to repost my annual Christmas story. Thanks, Santa I guess I shouldn’t complain. I live in a nice house on a street with nice houses. I think our house is the nicest, two stories with a pool in back and a garage with room for three
Today is December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, the “Day That Will Live in Infamy”. I’ve just learned of a new way to remember how we entered World War II. There is a virtual reality app, Remembering Pearl Harbor, being advertised by Life VR. My technical expertise is pretty limited, so all I can tell you
You may have read that last week the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced they had agreed to cut oil production by about 1.2 million barrels a day. For decades OPEC has been the organization we’ve all loved to hate. But who was the first to come up with the idea of limiting oil
Occasionally I run across something that just begs to be shared. According to today’s edition of The Writer’s Almanac, December 4 is the birthday of British essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle, who was born in Ecclefachan, Scotland (1795), and is best known for writing The French Revolution: A History (1837), which inspired Charles Dickens
I’m sure that you’ve been reading about how many people owe debt from their college educations, but here is a quick review. According to the Lendedu website, more than 43.3 million people owe over $1.35 trillion in student debt. That averages out to $28,400 per borrower, $16,033 per graduate, and $57, 600 per graduate student
If the Sun were somehow to disappear, we all know we’d be in big trouble. Life on Earth would swiftly become impossible. But for you science types, I’ve found a graphic that describes exactly what would happen and when. Of course, we’re far enough away that, even at the speed of light, nothing would happen
Sometimes language expresses concepts, and since different cultures develop in different circumstances, other languages have words that English-speakers have no need for. For example, I have always heard that Eskimo have many words for snow*. I’ve found an article that highlights more of these examples, like malu, an Indonesian word for “the sudden experience
