Dialectics: An Old Way to Reach Agreement Somewhere there are people who want to kill us. What have we done to deserve this threat? Nothing, really. It could be no more than questioning something they were taught to believe.
In response, o...
Watching humans act like humans is great entertainment Sometimes I take myself too seriously. Then I get over it, and the world becomes wonderful entertainment, warts and all. That was, by the way, a conscious choice, helped by succinct advice last eve...
I find myself scared by an alphabet soup, and you might be too In the spring of 1945, everyone but Hitler knew the war was almost over. Both Russians and Americans offered new homes to German scientists. We called our offer Operation Paperclip.
Many went into...
What kind of writing should our schools be teaching? History is important to show us where we have been, so we can tell where we are going. Most of our correct decisions are made by applying the lessons of history, but history began as storytelling....
The Year 1918 Brought Us Much More Than a World War A newcomer to Louisiana, I learned hurricanes are like tornadoes had been in the Great Plains’ Tornado Alley I had moved from. Then Rita, Katrina and the National Weather Service taught me that t...
We will vote for a president, and get eight electors hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. Other truths are less self-...
Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France Bike Race In the early 20th century, a French publisher launched a magazine, “L’Auto.” To boost circulation, he started a bicycle race in 1903 to have something interesting to write about.
The bicycle race, ...
Regarding basic tools that everyone should have We and the primates are the only ones on this planet who use tools. According to scientists it’s a sign of intelligence. Except for us humans, the tools are basic, like a stick to poke something ed...
YouTube, you're fired. I have no more use for you. Unless... I’m tired of wasting my time on YouTube. I quit. Unless, of course, I don’t. Some videos are helpful and others are fun.
I like videos with new ways to do things. Other videos offer ways to fix or ...
Teddy Roosevelt, the fourth man at Mount Rushmore The 60-foot-tall carved images of four former United States Presidents, Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt look out from Mount Rushmore, carved there by the Danish American sculp...
Will money really buy politicians? Or maybe rent them? The part of American history that deals with our presidents inevitably leads to how they were chosen, and the forces in the background that finance them. Sometimes this unseen component is more imp...
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