You are a fifth-grade girl who comes home from school to find a doll on your front porch. The doll looks like you, is dressed like you, and there is something about the eyes. Who left it? Why is it here? And what makes this doll so special?
Jim Jenkins is an ace detective who solves the most difficult crimes. Yet he always works alone. Or does he?
Learning how to wiggle your ears is really hard. But you can do it if you keep trying. And if you learn to keep trying, no problem is too big. So if you can wiggle your ears, you can do anything!
My Rite of Spring I consider myself a peaceable soul. I value all manner of livable things. Insects and mice, spiders and voles. Just about anything Mom Nature brings. But I do have my standards. I will draw the line. I have to set limits someday and sometime. Weeds in the yard — a depressing
Today I found a term I’d never seen before — benefit corporation. There’s an interesting article about them in Briefing: Small Business in Time magazine, March 21, 2015. And it has to be important, because there’s also a Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation). Yes, a benefit corporation is out to make a profit, but is also trying
Does anyone else have trouble with touchscreens? I’m finding they’re pretty much everywhere — my phone, my iPod, my netbook computer… I once got a notebook computer and had to take it back; either I would touch it and nothing would happen (multiple times!) or it would open windows when my finger was still a
“The Joy in Forgotten Objects” The good folks at Bewildering Stories have posted another of my stories. Usually they want multiple rewrites or reject them outright, but this one went right to the publication schedule. http://www.bewilderingstories.com/is…/forgotten_objects.html
Which scientific ideas should die? Science is always investigating new ideas and disproving old ones. If we are to continue to move forward, which of the current scientific ideas about our world are obsolete and should be discarded? How about the universe as we know it? That’s the premise of a Science Friday program, which was broadcast
March 14 is always a special day for math geeks. The numeric date — the third month, 14th day, matches pi to two decimal places: 3.14. (The Greek letter pi being the symbol for the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle). This year’s pi day is very special. If you add
This is an unfortunate year for people who suffer from triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13). We have two Friday the 13ths this year. Recently I found an interesting book, An Uncommon History of Common Things. It claims up to $900 million is lost every Friday the 13th because of people who refuse to fly
Two essential ingredients of any good movie are a tightly written, compelling story and believable, empathetic characters. Many of the Disney animated classics are perfect examples. But one glaring omission in many of these is the lack of one or both parents, usually the mother. How could this be? Creative arts don’t normally beget statistical
I have been reading The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin about Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. I’ve still got a ways to go (and will have more comments later), but during my last reading session I ran across another example of how women’s roles have changed (as if we needed any more examples).
Being a substitute teacher has given me the chance to see how others teach. One of my favorite memories was escorting a special-needs student to his dance class. He was taking dance as an enrichment and they were working him into one of their routines. Of course, he really stood out in a room full
