Today I Learned

Cover Art, Astounding Science Fiction, October 1941, via Wikipedia.org One of my favourite stories by Robert A Heinlein , was actually written by Anson MacDonald. Early in his career, Heinlein wrote under several pseudonyms , but only one of them was “obvious”. I’m not aware of any way to link the names Lyle Monroe, John Riverside, Caleb Saunders, or Simon York to Heinlein. In contrast, knowing that Robert Anson Heinlein was, at that time, married to Leslyn MacDonald made “An

Stg Schultz, Hogan’s Heroes, via YouTube For those who don’t immediately hear the words “I know nothing. NOTHING!”, this is Sgt Schultz ,...

Karunakar Rayker, CC BY 2.0 < https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 >, via Wikimedia Commons Seashells  are really quite amazing,...

elconomeno@email.com , CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Once upon a time, there was a hacker called “XXXX”. Really! Well, sorta. This is a...

Generated by RG, via Microsoft Designer, 2025 “Trust everybody, but cut the cards.” Finley Peter Dunne Trust is a strange thing. I knew I...

Ferrari 166 S, via Wikipedia I was trying to think of a song about a car, and bounced around a bit before realizing the truth. Red...

Jimi Hendrix Castles Made of Sand  is a classic, by one of the truly great musicians. If you are not familiar with it, go find it and...

Duane Allman, Fillmore East, 6-Jun-1971, via Wikimedia Commons It’s amazing what you can find if you look. All I did was search for songs...

Skeptical Science, John Cook, via Wikimedia Commons Words are fun! Today, let’s ask whether the words “equivalence” and “equivalency” are...

WarGames, 1983: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXzNo0vR_dU I can only hear that question in the voice of the computer Joshua, from the...

Thomas Bayes (maybe), via Wikipedia The portrait above might be that of Thomas Bayes ... but probably not. Perfect! I wanted to talk...

So, it’s HER fault! :) I recently wrote about why Y2K was such a big deal. To summarize, one major reason was the cost of computer...

The exception that proves the rule . We’ve all heard the phrase, but I think most people use it without understanding it or knowing where...

Artificial Intelligence is- Hey! Come on! I haven’t even said anything yet! Ahem. As I was saying, Artificial Intelligence is a term that...

Let’s talk about the end of the world, shall we? Or maybe not. Fortunately, some stories of impending doom are overestimated, and some...

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” George Orwell,...

One of my all-time favourite songs is Welcome to the Machine , by Pink Floyd. While the song appeared on the 1975 album Wish You Were...

It’s been more than two years since I last posted, so I’m trying to remember which buttons to press to make this happen. Life has a...

When the COVID-19 pandemic began (need to be specific here, to avoid confusion ...), I recall a lot of people emphasizing the need to...

“Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth” “δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω” Archimedes is described as a...