Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
Happy Birthday Scotch Tape
On September 8, 1930, the 3M Company in St. Paul Minnesota began selling Scotch tape. The product began with an employee, Richard Drew, who thought up a way to coat strips of cellophane with adhesive. It started as “Cellophane Tape,” but then during testing as a masking tape, a strip popped off an automobile at
What To Say When You Don’t Know What To Say
Communication is so important, but there are times when it can be difficult. So what do you say when your significant other doesn’t want to talk about it? How can you establish a dialogue? Yesterday I ran across one solution. It’s something of a self-help book entitled Please Read This for Me: How to Tell
A Novel Way To Reduce Stress
Did you ever wish you were someone else? There is new evidence that such wishes may be the key to reducing stress in your life. An article “To De-stress, Try Talking About Yourself in the Third Person” by Breena Kerr reports on some new research into this area. In a study recently published in the
Happy Birthday — Supermarket
Picture grocery shopping about a hundred years ago. A customer handed a list of wanted items to a clerk, who disappeared to find everything, then came back to calculate the bill. There must be a better way. A former clerk named Clarence Saunders thought so, too. On September 6, 1916, he opened the first self-service
History Repeats Itself Again
I’ve been following the recent news about the so-called “Dreamer” program, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative that President Obama created by executive order late in his administration, and the actions the Trump administration are taking to undo the program. As such, I ran across an item that suggests this is not the
Original Poem — My Most Important Rule
This is a poem I wrote three years ago. My Most Important Rule I’ve been visiting the Old Folks Home, (excuse me, “assisted living”) to see my mother. In the process, I’m getting to know the other residents. There is the woman who talks to me every day except I can’t understand a
Science On A Budget
Like many college professors, my brother gets involved in scientific research. When I’ve visited him and toured one of his university’s laboratories, I’m always confronted by delicate and expensive scientific equipment. If such a lab is necessary for science, how does a third-world country keep current and compete? How about with “frugal science”? Manu Prakash
The First Radical Abolitionist?
If I mention Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman, you probably think abolitionist. But have you ever heard about Benjamin Lay? Benjamin Lay was a most unusual radical. He stood just over four feet tall and had an extreme curvature of the spine (kyphosis). Born in 1682 in Colchester, England, he was a third-generation Quaker. As
Can You Really Learn In Your Sleep?
Just like electricity, we humans always look to take the path of least resistance. For example, there must be an easier way to learn besides studying. Like listening to tapes while we sleep. There’s actually a term for it — hypnopedia, or sleep learning. Unfortunately, the thought that we could learn something substantive while we
Why Do We Lie?
You may remember the 2009 movie The Invention of Lying starring Ricky Gervais. It was an ironic commentary on human behavior. But it does beg the question of why people lie in the first place. The June 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine addresses that subject in its cover story, “Why We Lie” by Yudhijit