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Bugs better than bears

My new favorite animal: Termites Why? They never sleep. While almost all animals sleep, termites do not. In fact, not only are they able to avoid the stupidity of sleep, but they can constantly work without rest. While other animals, like bullfrogs, don’t sleep, they also spend enormous portions of every day doing nothing. Termites…

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To read or not to read

I’ll be speaking this evening at the Lucy Robbins Welles Library in my hometown of Newington at 7:00.  Topics for the evening will likely include my first novel, SOMETHING MISSING, my upcoming book (UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO), the writing process, and publishing in general, but since I never plan ahead and am often as surprised as my…

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It’s a room

When did the word room get replaced with the utterly pretentious and overblown word space? A substitute teacher entered my classroom a couple days ago and said, “This is a great space. Your students are a lucky bunch.” “It’s not a space,” I said. “It’s a classroom.” Someone came to our house for the first…

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Witticisms or lacking wit?

There’s an iPhone application called iQuote which is essentially a database of thousands of quotations from famous and intelligent people, and one by Angelina Jolie which I am surprisingly fond of: If I think more about death than some other people, it’s probably because I love life more than they do. I think about death…

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Fuzzy time tables

Earlier this year, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which are still sending images back from Mars, celebrated their sixth anniversary on the red planet. The mission was slated to last only three months. In 1997 the Mars Pathfinder mission lasted more than three months when it was originally expected to cease functioning in a week…

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Longing for happier days

Am I the only one who finds it tragic that the number of people in the world who can define the Malachi Crunch diminishes daily? Rocco and Count Mulachi. Pinky Tuscadero and the Pinkettes. Please tell me that you remember. This is a vital part of Americana that will be lost before long.

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Asked and answered

Thanks to podcasting, I don’t listen to much talk radio anymore, which was once a staple of my media consumption. Granted, I listen to a string of NPR podcasts pulled right off the radio, and I listen to one or two ESPN radio shows that are re-aired as podcasts, but gone are the days of…

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I’m saved!

While my wife and I were serving brunch today, two Jehovah Witnesses knocked on our door. I am grateful to the Jehovah Witnesses.  There was a time in my life when I was homeless, living in my car, and a family of Jehovah Witnesses took me into their home and gave me a room off…

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Ten Word Wiki

Ten Word Wiki is a spinoff of Wikipedia with one important distinction:  All entries must consist of exactly ten letters.  The results are often amusing and sometimes quite profound.  The site has become my newest time-waster, so click at your own risk.  I’m completely obsessed with it.  And I’ve even submitted my own 10 Word…

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Plan A

I was listening to Ira Glass of This American Life discussing the concept of a Plan B for an episode of the same name. He said that in a room of one hundred people, he asked the audience to raise their hand if they were still on the path to their Plan A: the one…

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