When it comes to college athletics, I’ve always thought the tail tends to wag the dog. Many schools have become known more for athletes than academics, at least to the general public. So maybe a reality check is in order. On January 2nd, Time.com published a list of top football universities ranked by academic achievement
It’s one of those things we take for granted — why the New Year begins on January 1st. It would seem more logical to begin a year at the winter solstice, the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere, the perfect time to begin anew. But no seasonal or natural event occurs on January 1. So
“Show me your cemeteries, and I will tell you what kind of people you have.” –Benjamin Franklin If you’d like to start the new year in a light-hearted way, today I heard of a cemetery in Key West, Florida that’s famous for funny and quirky epitaphs. There is the oft-quoted “I told You I was
When I was in high school, I remember reading a short story entitled “Clothes Make the Man” by Henri Duvernois. (It can be found at http://www.valorchristian.org/devnet/data/databases/valorteachweb_01/widgets/class_resource_documents/00/00/01/65/pdf/original.pdf .) The story relates how a gang of thieves is burglarizing a house, and they put their muscle man in a policeman’s uniform to patrol the sidewalk so as
I can’t resist bring this up again this year. The fun part of the internet is when the creative meets the whimsical. An excellent example is the website “Is it Christmas?” at https://isitchristmas.com/. I’ve known about this site for several years now, and it is still active. Be sure to check it tomorrow (although you
Looking for an unusual gift, especially if money is no object? There are plenty of them around. Here are some ideas. The Neiman Marcus department store has always been famous for luxury gifts. Their website has a “Fantasy Gifts” section, http://www.neimanmarcus.com/Gifts/Fantasy-Gifts/cat48140738_cat000672_cat000000/c.cat, which includes — For the fantasy thespian, there’s walk-on role in the Broadway musical Waitress
Some people claim to be able to talk to animals (or at least communicate with them), but talking to a plant? There may now be a way to break through the human-plant communication barrier. A team of scientists has embedded living spinach plants with carbon nanotubes designed to detect the kinds of compounds found in
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.
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