Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
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
How to Get a Reader’s Attention
What’s the most eye-catching opening line of anything you have ever read? I like to pick a work at random and just read the first line to see how interesting it sounds. “Once upon a time…” just doesn’t cut it anymore. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was
New Word Alert
In a earlier post, I had asked if English had enough words. This week I found a new word that has been newly invented. What do you call people who are more than friends? How about framily? That’s combining friends and family. I found this in the April 2015 issue of Runner’s World magazine
A Double Definition of Courage
Have you ever heard of Juli Windsor? She finished her first Boston Marathon in 2014. And she’s three feet nine inches tall. She and a friend a little bit taller, John Young, were in the in the 2013 Boston Marathon. You know, the year of the bombing, and they were halted a half mile short