I'm reading The Impossible Fortress (check out a review here). It's a throwback to the glorious 80s. The neighborhood gang. Vanna White (apparently, she still rakes in eight million annually on Wheel of Fortune). Commodore computers. And text based games. It made me think back to those Choose Your Own Adventure style games. You had […]
Recently, I wrote a quick post on the lunar landings. Despite the evidence, a significant portion of the population still believes it didn’t happen. With a modern lens, it’s hard to contemplate how NASA landed on the moon, grabbed a few moon rocks, and then returned home using less computer horse power than an iPhone. […]
Not all online courses are created equal. It’s hard for an open classroom to make the jump to a different medium. For me, it was headphones, moonlight on the sidewalks, sweat, and Joanne Freeman’s voice. History 116: The American Revolution pulls it off. It took me a few weeks to wade through the material, but the […]
I came across an article on the last great American treasure this week, the Forrest Fenn Treasure Chest. As a child, I loved researching for lost cities (Cortez), anything related to the Ark of the Covenant, and Confederate troves of gold. I haven’t really thought about these Indiana Jones type of quests for years. There […]
A complex system of checks and balances can produce elegant and meaningful legislation: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities […]
This is the famous ad Ernest Shackleton placed in the newspaper to pull together a crew for his Endurance voyage: “Men Wanted for Dangerous Expedition: Low Wages for Long Hours of Arduous Labour under Brutal Conditions; Months of Continual Darkness and Extreme Cold; Great Risk to Life and Limb from Disease, Accidents and Other Hazards; […]