How Mario Got His Mustache
Super Mario Bros. is one of the most successful video game franchises of all time. For people of a certain age, Mario and other Nintendo characters are better known than old-school cartoon characters like...
Category: Nonfiction
America and the Metric System
When I was a kid, we watched films about the metric system. (And when I say films, I mean actual reels of film. Most of these movies were made well before I was born.)...
DVD Special Features
DVDs aren’t as popular as they used to be, but despite competition from online video streams, we still watch a lot of movies on DVD and BluRay. We also watch a lot of DVD...
An Intro to Dozenal Numerals
Our number system is based on the number ten, which makes sense, since we have ten fingers to count on. The decimal system is the base behind metric measurements, and our whole system of...
Jack of All Trades
“Jack” is the best word in the English language. It is the most versatile word we have, even more than the f-word, which is limited to R-rated conversations. The word “jack”, on the other...
Campaign Philanthropy
The 2012 Presidential Campaign broke just about every fundraising record out there. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling, candidates at every level of government were able to raise unprecedented mounds of cash....
Fun with Esperanto
Back in my high school days, I spent a lot of time in the public library. One day I discovered an old red book that was an introduction to Esperanto. For those of you...
No Downside to Mass Transit
There’s no downside to more mass transit. Yeah, it costs money to build in the short term, but it’s an investment worth making. Despite the sluggish economy, America would benefit from more trains and...
Ranch Dressing and Other Modern Inventions
There are many things in this world that are older than you might think. For example, the Pope’s title of “Pontiff” predates Christianity by almost a millennium. The mouse driven computer with a mouse,...
The Fall of Roman Numerals
Have you noticed that no one uses Roman Numerals anymore? Copyrights and Clocks If you watch a movie from the mid-20th century, at the end of the credits, you’ll see something like “© MCMLXIII”....
