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!
If you’re trying to lose weight, take heart. There is new evidence that the best strategy is to increase the intensity of your workouts for short periods, rather than have longer but easier sessions. It’s called “high intensity interval training” (Hiit). The technique is getting attention because recent research, published in the British Journal of
It’s true. According to the latest CDC figures, the average American woman will live to age 81, while the average man will only live to 76. In addition, those extra years also tend to be healthier. And it’s not just this country. “This gender gap in life expectancy is true for all societies, and it
One thing I quickly learned as a teacher is that it’s almost impossible to treat all your students objectively. It shouldn’t be any surprise that you feel more empathy toward some, while others are simply easier to remember. I once got a marriage proposal from a student (she was a high school freshman, I was
The Clock on the Wall Keeps Ticking It’s 8 am and I should arise. The day is announced by a robin’s cries. Into the room the sunlight streams and abruptly jolts me from my dreams. And the clock on the wall is ticking. But soft is the bed and warm are the covers. and I’d
Some headlines simply can’t be ignored. Like “Do You Actually Swallow a Bunch of Spiders When You Sleep?” There is an urban legend that the average person will ingest about eight spiders a year while sleeping. Presumably the spiders are active enough and most people sleep with their mouths open enough that, well, accidents will
When I was in the Air Force, during training a superior would occasionally ask “tell me a little-known but interesting fact.” To me, some of the most interesting facts are about the world above us. The Earth’s atmosphere actually extends beyond the moon. The outermost part of the atmosphere is the geocorona, and it extends
After work Friday, I went downtown to the Dayton Auto Show. Not that I need a new car; mine is only five years old with 33,000 miles. I don’t get a new car that often — I’ve only owned six in 54 years of driving, but I couldn’t resist seeing what was new. Also, I’m
I’ve read so much about the unreliability of eyewitnesses. (For example, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/.) But can you trust your own memory? Ada JoAnn Taylor confessed to suffocating a sixty-eight-year-old widow in 1989 and for two decades believed she was guilty. As a result, she served more than nineteen years in prison before being pardoned when DNA evidence
What animal do you see in this picture? I have a special reason for asking. I’ve seen several examples like this on Facebook (and for me they get old in a hurry), but this particular picture is famous in psychology circles. It’s an original illustration by psychologist Joseph Jastrow (photo by him) that was used
If you’re like me, you’ve been reading a lot recently about how much plastic is piling up in the environment. About how plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050, and bits of plastic debris smaller than 5mm, called microplastics, are being found in our water, our air, even in our bodies. The
