Random Learnings #13
John L. Stoddard was a lecturer who published ten volumes of his lectures, one of which I found at The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. The volume I purchased were…
Random Learnings #12
My wife and I attended a game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last Saturday. I've attended a handful of games over the years, it's an incredible venue: almost consistently…
40th High School Reunion
I graduated from my rural Iowa high school in 1983 with 48 others in a standard, uneventful, and completely forgettable ceremony, so - holy shit - I've now been a…
Random Learnings #11
Did you know that a German, and therefore a European Union, enclave within Switzerland? Neither did I. It turns out that the Basel Badischer Banhof in Basel, Switzerland - just…
Random Learnings #10
I'm not British and therefore haven't really understood the details about Windrush immigrants, though it's been front-and-center in the news for both its 75th anniversary and the attempts by the…
The Return of Futurama…Yet Again
My daughter gave me this Futurama Planet Express sweatshirt for Father's Day 2022. Besides being fashionable - in a geeky way - it's also extremely soft and comfortable. I wore…
My Six Degrees of Separation
The premise behind Six Degrees of Separation is that a connection between any two people exists through six or fewer social connections. Though originally from a 1929 short story, it…
England Premier League Demographics
Question: aside from truly niche sports, what sports have mass appeal in a single country and nowhere else? Baseball and world football (soccer to us Americans) expanded far and wide…
Random Learnings #9
Yesterday (July 28, 2023), a threatening storm went through Central Iowa. The storm had everything: winds, lightening, ominous clouds, rain potential, and storm warnings. Coralville was hosting fifty thousand RAGBRAI…
The Russians Remains The Same
From very earlier in the Ukrainian-Russian war, there have been many reports of Russian soldiers looting Ukraine, including tractors that were remotely disabled. This is the same as seen in…