Today I Learned

So, it’s HER fault! :) I recently wrote about why Y2K was such a big deal. To summarize, one major reason was the cost of computer...

“Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth” “δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω” Archimedes is described as a mathematician,...

Who’d have thought that music could be political? Or that musicians might have political views? Let’s take the song Killing in the Name...

“Why can’t we all just get along?” This was the question asked by the incomparable Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks! Nicholson’s...

M. C. Escher has always been one of my favourite artists. From the moment I first saw his work (I think it might have been Waterfall), I...

When I write, I sometimes have a topic in mind, and look for an interesting way to introduce it. This time, I ended up going down an...

Recently, I was listening to an old episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, (actually, episode 803, dated 28-Nov-2020), in which...

In the late 1980’s I liked to collect “taglines” to include in my interactions with people. While these included many “pithy” statements...

I’ve heard a number of people say that they “don’t like X”, only to discover that their only exposure has been some “pop culture” version...

You need to come up with something, so keep it simple. Even if it starts out with only six words, you can always add more later....

Everyone knows what a jerk is. And everyone knows someone who is a jerk. But why? Why are some people jerks? Or rather, why do we...

Recently, after I described the way I was approaching a project and its “ultimate goal”, a colleague laughed, and called me a dreamer. ...