Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
Why Many Villains Have British Accents
Here’s something I’m sure you’ve been wondering about for a long time. If you see a lot of movies, you may have noticed many villains have British accents, even when no one else in the cast is British. These range from Peter Ustinov’s Prince John in Disney’s animated Robin Hood (pictured) to Anthony Hopkins in
Memories of an Inauguration.
An email from a college classmate just jogged my memory. I was in an inaugural parade! It was in January 1969, and Richard Nixon was about to take office, being elected by promising to end the Vietnam War. I was in my third year at the US Air Force Academy (USAFA), and mine was one
A Lesson From The Lincoln Memorial
A thought for this inauguration day — Have you ever studied Abraham Lincoln’s pose at the Lincoln Memorial? Specifically, notice his hands. His left hand is a tightly clinched fist, while the right hand is resting relaxed on the chair arm. This suggests there are two equal components of American leadership — strength and compassion.
How Cats Have Adopted Us
Cats are among our closest animal companions. There are about 100 million cats in the U.S., a number that continues to grow. Yet there is a distinct downside in this relationship. Some consider them an environmental disaster; our feline friends kill an estimated 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds each year, and they’ve been blamed for
Original Poetry — I Wish I Had Met…
Today, in honor of the inauguration, I’m reprinting a poem from my book Some Poems About Life. I Wish I Had Met… I wish I had met Washington To see just how he led to risk his fortune and his life, To hear what’s in his head. I wish I had met Jefferson To
Equal Opportunity For Hatred
In the last century or so we’ve focused a great deal on equal opportunity. Sometimes in the conversation we tend to forget women, hence the rise of feminism. Recently I ran across an article that reminded me yet again that equal means just that — equality in all phases of life, only in this instance
What’s it Like to Work in the White House?
This Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Then the real work begins. So what’s it like to be a presidential staff member working in the White House? This week’s Time magazine (cover date Jan 23, 2017) has a twenty-page cover story entitled “Incoming:
How Do Blind People Dream?
From the “Something You Normally Don’t Think About” department — I was skimming through an informational email from the Smithsonian magazine and came across the following question — “Do people who were born without sight have visual elements in their dreams?” It’s an interesting question I’ve never thought about. This is how the Smithsonian experts
Diffusing Tensions in the Social-Media World
Speaking of fake news, how do you counter dangerous speech on social media? The best idea I’ve seen so far has come from Kenya. This country went through a very violent election cycle in 2007 with over 1000 people killed. It seems cellphones were just becoming very popular, and incendiary text messages helped fuel the
Can You Always Trust Your Eyes?
I am old enough to have been fooled many times by many things in my lifetime. But it’s not always my fault. Sometimes it’s the limits of our senses. This was demonstrated to me yet again by a clever video on the EarthSky website entitled “How Your Brain Plays Tricks On You”. Rather than try