One of my frequent complaints about us as Americans is that we have no real sense of history. We are very focused on the recent past and pay little mind to things that happened even forty or fifty years ago. This leads to some odd gaps in understanding and knowledge. People don’t grok how we …
As I re-adjust to writing at Folded Space once more, I’m struggling to know what qualifies as “worth sharing” and what doesn’t. In the olden days, I’d simply sit down and jot a note about whatever was going on in my life — or whatever silly things was tickling my brain at the moment. But …
For better or worse — I’m not going to argue this point right now — the United States has become a country in which racial and gender “quotas” are important. By that I mean that people pay a lot of attention to the demographics of any particular group, show, or organization. I’m frequently curious about …
Several years ago, our book group read American Nations by Colin Woodard. The book has a fascinating premise: While the United States is nominally a single unified country, it’s actually a conglomerate of eleven smaller “nations”, each with its own unique history, culture, and attitudes. The U.S. is more like the E.U. than we think. …
It’s not often I discover something profound on Digg (a social networking site seemingly inhabited by every freshman boy on a college campus in the U.S.), but it does happen. Today somebody quoted a piece of the transcript in which Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President: I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain …
Last fall at Animal Intelligence, I shared a two-minute video of a cat who was raised by a crow. A reader recently pointed me to a longer video with a more complete story on this unlikely friendship: There is nothing I like more than stories of interspecies friendship. I love the idea that different kinds …
As you know, I don’t do a great job of keeping up with the news. Kris often shakes her head and mutters to herself when I reveal my ignorance about current events. This has especially been apparent during the primary election season. Fortunately, Slate has produced a great nine minute video that summarzies the events …
Somebody — David Hatch? — sent me a link to a great video presentation a couple weeks ago. In this lecture, Patrick Winston of M.I.T. offers tips on how to give an effective talk. Winston’s remarks are geared specifically toward new teachers, training them how to give collegiate lectures. But I think they’re applicable to …