Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
How to Stop a Hurricane
We seem so powerless as compared to Mother Nature. Earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes always put us at the mercy of the elements. And yet… Could there be a way to stop hurricanes from forming? After all, these monster storms are basically huge heat engines. They appear toward the end of summer, when the top layer
Real Fake News
With all the talk recently about which news is fake and which is real, I’ve found a real example of how fake news was used to win World War II. Call it “real fake news.” If you were a German citizen during the period 1941 to 1943, you might have heard some very realistic-sounding shortwave
Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
No, this is not a joke, as one of my friends surmised. A banker in England realized the best way to fight terrorism is to identify likely terror suspects before they can strike. He began to identify all the characteristics and behaviors of a terrorist from his bank’s database, like they tended to make one
Happy April Fool’s Day!
From the I-Wish-I’d-Written-That Department, this is the Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation (http://www.poetryfoundation.org.) — April Fool by Myra Cohn Livingston The maple syrup’s full of ants. A mouse is creeping on the
Running While Female
Running is my recreational sport. When I run, I never think about running alone, or at night, or in the country. But then, I’m a man. I remember when I lived in California, almost every weekday I used to run after work on the Santa Ana River trail with some coworkers, including a young lady.
The Nutrition News You Probably Don’t Want To Hear
Everyone probably knows eating fruits and veggies are good for you, but how good? Just what you’ve been waiting to hear — a new study suggests that eating even more produce can prevent millions of deaths each year. In case you don’t believe me, my source is Time magazine’s daily newsletter brief of March 30th.
Happy Birthday Fannie Farmer
There is a lot we take for granted in our modern world. Like cookbooks, for example. March 23 is kind of a milestone anniversary in home economics. On that day in 1857, Fannie Merritt Farmer was born in Boston. According The Writers’ Almanac, Fannie is remembered for publishing the first cookbook in American history. Up
The Answer to Fake News?
Talk about change, President Trump certainly has stirred up a debate about the press’s role in our society. As one might predict, members of the Fourth Estate are very much engaged. In the recent past, I’ve seen the following — The Christian Science Monitor’s March 13, 2017 cover story, “Trump vs. The Media: The War
Original Story — A Special Child
I’ve been working on this story a long time. I think it has merit, but no one else seems to like it. Any comments? Every Mother Thinks Her Child is Special (But Mine Really Is) By Bob Welbaum March 6, 1989 Dear Diary, Finally, some good news! I’m pregnant!! After all the
Presidents Who Change Their Minds
I am a history nerd, and politics is a fascinating subject, so an article entitled “The Presidents Who Changed Course in Office” really piqued my curiosity. Certainly a lot can happen over the course of four to eight years — nationally, internationally, and in a president’s personal life. As the article’s author Sean Braswell states,