Math is not what you think Math is not what you think it is. I think that holds for everybody, even real mathematicians, whose understanding of it is vastly beyond what the rest of us can muster. Math is not just a different thing to different people; I think it’s even a different thing to… Continue reading

You feel intense rage. There isn’t anything you can do with it. It’s not directed at a particular person, although people are part of it. It’s not about any given company or organization or institution, although all of those contribute to it. You want—need—to express something. You imagine if you could just find the right… Continue reading

Does it seem to you like people are right about at their limit of annoyance lately? It sure seems that way to me. Screaming at one another, completely losing their composure on airplanes, in stores, and for that matter, nearly wherever they happen to be. Not to mention shooting one another, which is getting more… Continue reading

July 2022 Lawyers are not particularly popular people, I’ve heard. Maybe it all goes back to Shakespeare’s Henry VI, when Dick the Butcher said to Jack Cade, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” There’s a whole context around that, of course, and guess what? It had to do with an armed insurrection. It was… Continue reading

July 2022 “The American dream;” you hear about it all the time. I wonder if we’ve always taken it the wrong way. A dream can be an aspiration, sure. That’s how we generally think of “the American dream.” It’s what you can aim for, hope for, strive for, and maybe even reach. But dreams are… Continue reading

As an artifact of the 20th Century, the VW Beetle is many things — iconic, beloved, remembered, and weird. It started out as an idea sponsored by, of all people, Adolf Hitler (who is iconic and remembered but not beloved). It was a “car for the people”, which is even where the name “Volkswagen” comes… Continue reading

July 2022 Most glass beverage bottles nowadays are molded with screw threads so you can twist the metal cap off with your fingers. But some — particularly beer bottles — still come with metal caps crimped onto the top. Those caps have a name: they’re “crown corks.” They were invented in 1892 in Baltimore, and… Continue reading