Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, storytelling, Thoughts, writing on May 31, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Super productive morning, semi-lazy afternoon. With books!
The Science of Storytelling: How can reading books change our brains?
What happens inside our brains when we read? How does the science of storytelling explain the power of narratives to shape our minds? In what ways do stories make us uniquely human?
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts on May 30, 2025| 1 Comment »
“Do. Not. Forget. how special and bizarre it is to get to live a human life. It took 3 billion years for the Earth to go from single-celled life forms to you. That’s more than a quarter of the life of the entire universe. Something very special and strange is happening on this planet and it is you.”
— Hank Green, 2025 Commencement address, MIT
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, inspiration, traditional craft on May 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »
It’s overcast and rainy today, and the kind of quiet that lends itself to creative thinking, at least for me. The perfect sort of day to learn about a new art, like kumiko and mageki.
What, you may ask, are those? A kind of magic balancing geometry and nature.
Kumiko Woodworking and Mageki Woodbending
Thin pieces of Japanese cedar or cypress wood are shaved and shaped precisely before fitting into delicate patterns. No nails are required. The art of Kumiko woodworking blossomed during Japan’s Asuka Era (600-700 AD) and “has since been refined and passed down through generations of craftsmen who are passionate about the tradition…”
(This sort of thing appeals to me on a lot of levels. Not only is it an amazing craft, but it gets my creative mind thinking about interesting story ideas.)
No nails. No glue!
Just precision and symmetry in perfect balance.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, change, inspiration, Thoughts on May 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?”
— Thích Nhất Hạnh
I’m not arguing that we should ignore the many bad things currently happening in the world, especially not when we have the power to change them. But balancing the bad with the recognition of what’s good?
I’m in.
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Posted in Other, Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, censorship, creativity, future, graphic novels, history, inspiration, space, Thoughts, Writers on May 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »
A couple of years ago I wrote about NASA’s excellent graphic novel encouraging folks to imagine themselves on the moon: First Woman: Dream to Reality.
There was a second issue, too, called First Woman: Expanding Our Universe. Both were free and available to the public on NASA’s site. (Which makes sense, because NASA is paid for by US tax dollars, including mine.) Sadly, both have now been removed.
But good news, aspiring explorers! As highlighted over at Space.com, both issues are still available via that bastion of awesome, The Wayback Machine:
Issue #1: Dream to Reality follows Callie’s trailblazing path as the first woman on the Moon. Callie and her robot sidekick, RT, overcome setbacks, disappointment, and tragedy along the way. From her childhood dreams of space travel to being selected as an astronaut candidate, Callie takes us on her journey to the Moon.
I don’t always take the time to update older links, but I thought this one was important.
Because if humanity stops inspiring the next generation, humanity stops.
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Posted in Other, Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, good things, history, infrastructure, society, systems, Thoughts on May 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I attended a wedding once where I was seated next to a civil engineer. Being me, I wanted to know all about how things in his world worked. He was nearing retirement and had Opinions. It was a good conversation, but what I remember most was his advice: “If you want to understand a place, first find out where your water comes from, and then where it goes.”
Water and sewage, two of the most essential components of a functional modern society.
I thought of that dinner when I ran across this essay by Charles C. Mann. In it, he kicks off a series called “How the System Works” that touches on many of the ways in which humanity has built “the hidden mechanisms that support modern life.”
I find conversations like this fascinating because for so many of us, the process of supplying clean water, electricity, food systems and more might as well be magic.
We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It — The New Atlantis
This is not a statement about Kids These Days so much as about Most People These Days. Too many of us know next to nothing about the systems that undergird our lives. Which is what put me in mind of Thomas Jefferson and his ink.
Jefferson was one of the richest men in the new United States…. But despite his wealth and status his home was so cold in winter that the ink in his pen sometimes froze, making it difficult for him to write to complain about the chill.
And if this is magic, consider this series an introductory spell book:)
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, inspiration, life, Thoughts, Writers, writing on May 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Holidays, Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, calendar fun, not exactly a holiday but, Thoughts on May 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Good news, people who enjoy fun trivia and temporally specific facts, today is a palindrome day. That’s when the date (as written American style, at least) reads the same forwards as well as backwards.
I’ve mentioned this before in A Minor Mystery, but this week, we’re actually in the middle of what I’m going to call a Deluge of Palindromes, because all dates between 5/21/25 and 5/29/25 qualify.
Fun, right?
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Posted in Other, Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, physics, science, space, star wars, tests, Thoughts on May 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »
We’re heading into the end of the week and I don’t know about you, but I’m usually looking at my to do lists and wondering where the time has gone. (Also? I’m now convinced that meetings exist primarily to spawn more meetings.)
So, fine, maybe I haven’t accomplished everything I wanted to, but it’s not like I haven’t earned a little time for fun.
You too? Then consider taking a few minutes off to read about why The Phony Physics of Star Wars Are a Blast.
You can also read more about the Science Behind Science Fiction: The Physics of Star Wars from the Connecticut Science Center.
An extra bit of fun: And if you’ve always wondered how quickly you’d react to a lightsaber in the dark, or a TIE fighter arrowing out from behind a canyon wall, maybe you should try testing your Reaction Time. (That big blue bar at the top? Click that:)
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, problems, solutions, Thoughts on May 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
― Dr. Seuss
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