It’s the last day of a spring break that wasn’t nearly as productive or as restorative as I wanted it to be. I spent a big chunk of it working with my daughter on a science experiment project. It’s a good, ambitious project that unfolds over a long period of time. But it is also […]
I’ve loved epic stories for as long as I can remember. As a first grader I would race home from school so that I could get to the TV in time for Star Blazers, an English version of a Japanese series that featured a desperate starship crew trying to find a way to rescue Earth […]
My daughter and I both enjoy playing board games, and Ticket to Ride is one of our favorites. Recently she got the iPad version, and we play that sometimes because by adding computer opponents, the game actually gets a little easier. The game has a rules tweak when you go from 2 or 3 to […]
Jonathan Chait had a brief post today at New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer blog, commenting on President Obama’s speech calling on Congress to vote on gun control measures. After citing the institutional roadblocks that are thwarting efforts to enact legislation that polls well, Chait says, Basically, everything is more powerful than millions of voices calling […]
Yesterday I asked the question, “What is it that makes trying to learn about and understand the world so unappealing to so many people?†While I was writing the post I thought about a lot of things. For example, I thought about what I’ve learned about human beings’ tendency to value the present over the […]
At my school we have a couple of senior teachers whose job it is to help guide and direct us to make sure we’re all moving in the right direction. One is a math teacher, the other is an English teacher. I doubt that it is a coincidence that math and reading are the two […]
In high school and college I had an ambition to become a writer. I liked putting words together to create stories and share ideas. I was pretty good at it, too . . . not brilliant, and I needed a lot of practice, but I felt like I had potential. But as I went through […]