It’s a mysterious thing, how people can so easily understand maps. You can unfold a map, show it to a very small child, and it won’t take them long to “get it.” They’ll even understand the limitations of maps (or possibly the limitations of paper); if you try to tell them they can peer  very… Continue reading

March is Women’s History Month, so I think it’s a good time to have a brief look at some of the women in the history of March 4, specifically. It was March 4, 1917 that Jeannette Rankin became the first female member of the US House of Representatives. She was actually the first woman to… Continue reading

March 2 has boasted some impressive engineering accomplishments over the years. There’s nothing particularly special about the date, at least as far as I know. It’s just a coincidence that various huge engineering projects have reached milestones on the same day of the year.  For instance, it was March 2, 1969 that the Concorde supersonic… Continue reading

March 1 Being afraid is a bad experience. I’m not talking about nervousness, worry, or mild anxiety; I’m talking about real fear. The kind that shuts down your ability to think clearly. The kind that leads people to do things that, later, even they themselves can’t fathom. And more often than not, they feel regret.… Continue reading

There are two different kinds of discoveries in science. One kind of discovery emerges over years of work, and if the work involves experimentation, there are probably many, many experiments involved. The other sort of discovery happens in a moment, when somebody with the right expertise and instrumentation observes something unexpected or even unprecedented. Of… Continue reading

Here’s a little thought experiment. Let’s set the scene. You are a leader in an organization that produces good that are largely handmade. Not completely — the makers in your organization use machinery, but their end product requires a lot of skill as well. It doesn’t matter for our experiment what the product is. It… Continue reading

In light of the new European war, instigated by Russian aggression, there are some eerie coincidences in the history of February 25. Have a look at some of them. With the Treaty of Moscow in May, 1920, Russia formally recognized the Democratic Republic of Georgia. That part of the world had in the past been… Continue reading

If you visit the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City, home of the Hayden Planetarium, you might also be interested in the exhibit called The Cosmic Pathway. It’s a very long (360 feet) spiral with signs and points of interest that represent the entire history of the universe, which is about… Continue reading

There are a lot of ways to take, exert, and maintain power over others. A disheartening number of those ways have nothing to do with getting the people you want to lead to agree that they want you to lead them. When they don’t, and you nevertheless insist on being in charge anyway, you can… Continue reading