August 2024

Medical doctor Donald Unger cracked the knuckles of his left hand every day for more than sixty years, but he did not crack the knuckles of his right hand. No arthritis or other ailments formed in either hand, earning him the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine. The Ig Nobel Prize (/ˌɪɡnoʊˈbɛl/) is a satiric […]

Most people love a good movie. I know that I’ve been loving them my entire life.  I have a bagful of favorites that started early on.  The Wizard of Oz was a magical experience, once a year, every year, when I was a kid.  I never looked back.  The motion picture started a long time

Why should we care about a guy named Chongzhen?  Who lived some 400 years ago in China.Well. Here is his story. Chongzhen was the 16th and final emperor of the Ming dynasty in China. This little dude ruled from 1627 until his death in 1644. But here is the thing.  His reign saw the collapse

I’ve been thinking about mushrooms. They seem to just sort of “pop up” in places, without any help from us. Take this little group of mushrooms in this photo. These came up out of the mulch at the back of our house in our landscaping around the pool. We didn’t put down mushroom seeds. No.

Some insights for the day, from people smarter than I am.  But as always, I have a thought or two of my own. ~~ “The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.”— Jean Paul You would think this would be true of everyone.  And

We know it.  The Earth is more than 4.5 billion years old. Then, about 3.8 billion years ago, single-cell organisms were born. About 230 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the Earth until they died and were replaced by early humans about 200,000 years ago. That’s a lot of history, and we humans have only been

Supply Chain By Linda Stowe Maybe it’s just me, but I think people are more aware of how the price of goods and services works ever since the toilet paper shortage during the Covid-19 epidemic. I’m certainly noticing more stories about this in the media. Some time ago, after that cargo ship took down the

The Earth has changed. When it first started out, this planet looked much differently than it does today. Scientists estimate that the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old.  They also state this “figure” with a margin of error of about 50 million years. This means it could be anywhere from 4.49 billion to 4.59