Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
What is a Benefit Corporation?
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
My Nemesis: The Touchscreen
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
Lightening Strikes Again!
“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
Death of the Universe?
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
Happy Pi Day!
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
Happy Friday the 13th
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
Why Many Disney Characters Don’t Have Moms
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
Another Reminder of How Women’s Roles Have Changed
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).
One Day in Dance Class
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
“Every Child Deserves a Quality Education”
I’ve been doing a lot of substitute teaching lately, which has led to some reflection. Everyone is in favor of a quality education for all our children, but what exactly does that mean? It means a deaf child gets a sign-language interpreter, a child with a seizure disorder has an aide, and a child confined