Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
Meet Garner Holt
The clincher was a visit to Disneyland. Garner Holt had always been fascinated with figures and motion; he made his first animated show — a carrot and a cucumber — when he was six years old. Then he found the August, 1963 edition of National Geographic magazine with a picture of Walt Disney showed his
Another Reason to Become a Vegan
Have you ever thought about egg production? Only female chickens — hens — can lay eggs. So if you are breeding chickens for egg production, what do you do with the males, or roosters? The sad fact is that the roosters have no use, so they are usually put to death very quickly after hatching.
Can a Video Game Make You Cry?
There are all kinds of video games. Yet normally they are pretty devoid of emotion. But there is a new genre of games that tries to tap into our most primal feelings. The best example is That Dragon, Cancer, created by Ryan & Amy Green and Josh Larson, and published by Numinous Games. (The cover
Original Poem — Who Knew? A Teacher’s Lament
Here is an original poem about teaching from my book Some Poems About Life. Who Knew? A Teacher’s Lament She appeared upon the stage as if by magic, confident, radiant, playing her part with joy and self-assurance, her singing voice clear as a bell. The next day she entered the classroom and dutifully took
Vilfredo Pareto’s Big Contribution
Economists have a different way of viewing the world. Take the Italian economist, engineer and philosopher Vilfredo Pareto, who lived from 1848 to 1923. Among his other accomplishments, he discovered what is known today as Pareto’s Principle, or Pareto’s Rule. He realized that 20 percent of the people controlled 80 percent of the wealth in
Why Zebras Have Stripes
Have you ever wondered why zebras have stripes? I was catching up on my reading during my recent trip to California, and I ran across a blurb in the July 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine entitled “Patterns Puzzle Predators”. It begins by saying — “If a zebra zigs, with its stripes make a predator
How to Get Into Trouble Through Technology
I am back from a week in Southern California and the Disneyana Fan Club’s annual convention. (I never announce when I’m traveling for security reasons.) I’m still unpacking and trying to resume my usual routine, but I do have time to tell you a quick story. One of the club’s fundraising strategies is to have
Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla
July 10 was the birthday of Nikola Tesla, born in 1856 in what is now Croatia. You may have heard of the Tesla coil, but he also was responsible for alternating current. Unfortunately, his business ventures weren’t always successful, and he died alone and impoverished in 1943. The PBS Newshour website has a feature “8
How to Clean Up the Oceans
According to Science magazine, (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768), eight million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year. The ocean now has at least 700 pieces of plastic for every person on earth. Is there any way we could ever clean up this mess? A twenty-one-year-old man from the Netherlands has an idea. Realizing that plastic
Disneyana Fan Club Convention Flashback — Conserving Animation Art
This year’s Disneyana Fan Club DisneyanaMania Convention is now less than a week away, so today I’m excerpting parts of one of my favorite convention presentations. In 2006, Ron Stark of S/R Labs explained how to preserve and restore valuable collectibles, information that is always timely. For more information about this year’s convention, visit http://www.disneyanafanclub.org/content/disneyanamania-2016-wednesday-july-13-through-saturday-july-16-2016 This