Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
A Better Polling Method
There’s been a lot of soul-searching among polling professionals since the 2016 election — why was President Trump’s win such a surprise? Since then, political pundits have been looking for better polling methods. They may have found one — social circle polling. Basically, instead of asking how someone plans to vote, people are asked how
Our Surprising Solar System
What do you really know about our galactic neighborhood? An article entitled “10 surprises about our solar system” by Larry Sessions on the EarthSky website lists some thing you probably haven’t realized. For instance, The hottest planet isn’t the closest one to the sun. Mercury is closest, of course. But the hottest planet is actually
How Much of You is Human?
This was a surprise to me — in an article entitled “More than half your body is not human,” James Gallagher writes that there is a “hidden half” to all of us. It’s our microbiome, and it makes up 57% of our total cell count. In other words, only 43% of our body’s cells are
Communicating From The Other Side
How would you like to wish your grandchild a happy 50th birthday? Not in person, of course, but by email? There is a way. Go to the website FutureMe: Write a Letter to the Future and start composing (https://www.futureme.org/). You can send a letter to yourself, to be delivered in one, three, or five years,
Guest Author — Stephanie Welbaum’s Feghoot
This was written by my niece Stephanie. Once there was a fisherman who lived next to the sea. He loathed his job and longed to move far away to a big city, but was too poor and could barely afford the shack in which he lived. Day after day, he would leave at the crack
Celebrating Failure
“Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.” — William Saroyan Nobody likes failure. Yet we learn so much more from our failures than our successes. Failure is what shows the path forward. I remember a Japanese businessman saying a failed part is a wonderful opportunity to make a product better. I
Why Rainbows Are Curved
Something you may not have thought about recently — why are rainbows curved? I’ve never considered this until I saw an explanation on the EarthSky website (http://earthsky.org/earth/what-gives-rainbows-their-curved-shape?). This explanation does get a bit into physics. First, some basics — recall you can see rainbows when the sun is behind you and rain falls in front
The Best Fast Food
I generally try to ignore fast food (unless of course it’s given to me). I do like a good burger, but I usually shy away from the genre because of its unhealthy reputation. But I couldn’t resist telling you about this. Recently Money magazine published a rating of 25 fast-food restaurants. Their methodology was simple
Predicting the Future
What can we expect in 2018? It’s tough predicting the future, especially regarding new technology, but some can’t resist trying. The latest I’ve seen is a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Tech That Will Change Your Life in 2018” by Joanna Stern and Christopher Mims (https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-that-will-change-your-life-in-2018-1514394043? ). Some of what they’re predicting shouldn’t come as
The Prevalence of Fake News
President Trump has a point — there’s a lot of fake stuff out there. Of course, manipulative tools have been available for some time. I assume you’ve heard of the computer program Adobe Photoshop? The publishing business where I worked for 15 years displayed a photo of an older couple with the man’s head replaced