When you were a child, if your mom pretended to have a disability, went to a faith healer show, and jumped up yelling about being healed — and she she staged the whole thing as a practical joke — what do you think you might grow up to become? In the case of James Thurber,… Continue reading

Avram Noam Chomsky celebrates his 96th birthday today. You may know his name from his political activism, writing, and speaking, but he’s also a founder of a whole scientific field: cognitive science. He’s also a major figure in analytic philosophy and is known as “the father of modern linguistics.” He’s an institute professor emeritus at… Continue reading

It takes time to become a writer. Until they manage to begin making money from their work, and often even afterward, writers often take jobs that seem almost random. They probably are random, at least partly. Teaching, selling records and tapes, working as an aide in a hospital, and even doing manual labor on an… Continue reading

In these days of readily available AI chatbots, it’s not unusual to find speculation about whether artificial intelligence is going to “take over” the world in some usually unspecified way. This concern is older than you might expect. The Press newspaper in New Zealand published a letter in 1863 captioned Darwin among the Machines. Darwin’s… Continue reading

Today is the birthday of two authors whose birth names you don’t know. Well, you probably don’t. The first, born December 3, 1857, is Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. You may recognize him as Joseph Conrad. The second, born December 3, 1937, is Sally Snyder, who is celebrating her 87th birthday today. You can imagine her… Continue reading

Empires have historically been more common than you might think. Even in the western hemisphere, we’ve had the empires of the Inca, the Maya, and Brazil. Yep, Brazil. And as it happens, the last emperor of Brazil, Pedro II, was born December 2, 1825. His full name was just a bit longer than Pedro II:… Continue reading

It’s November 26, and there have been some interesting events today. I said it’s November 26, and there have been some interesting events today. One of them, all though not the most interesting, is that Tony Verna was born on this date in 1933. For a closer look, that’s this date in 1933. Why am… Continue reading

Mary Ann Evans was born on November 22, 1819, and you’ve very likely heard of her. That’s the case even if you’re now saying “Mary Ann Evans? Who the heck is Mary Ann Evans?” And you probably are saying that, because you don’t know Mary Ann Evans by her real name; you know her pen… Continue reading

You’ve probably seen a painting of a pipe made for smoking tobacco, with the label, in the painting itself, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“this is not a pipe.”) The artist was Rene Magritte, who was born November 21, 1892 in Belgium. Magritte never said much about his childhood, but we do know he began… Continue reading

If you live anywhere near a navigable — even barely navigable — body of water, today would be a good day to get your canoe out of the shed and try to see just how fast you can paddle it. Why do that today? Because by coincidence, two Olympic champion canoe sprinters were born on… Continue reading