One measure of influence is how much people have to say about something. There are many books and films about Jesus, World War II, and computers. That’s because these are influential topics that people care passionately about. Keeping this definition of influence in mind, an objective measure of influence for any topic can be how […]
It’s Finally Time to Burn All Your Books
Until recently, the surest way to erase history and destroy knowledge was to burn all the books. Thousands of years of human knowledge have been lost by fire and violence. The Library of Alexandria. Gone. Hundreds of thousands of books at the University of Louvain. Burned to ashes. Ancient Confucian teachings. Wiped out of history. […]
Use Body Mass Index (BMI) to Set Goals
Body Mass Index (BMI) is a simple calculation used to determine if you are underweight, normal, or overweight. It takes into account your height and your weight. You can calculate your BMI at this NIH website. Disclaimer: In this article, I discuss my own opinions and observations on health topics. I am not a doctor. […]
The Holy Grail of Password Management
The average Briton has 26 accounts online that require passwords, and uses 5 unique passwords to get through each day. While that study was done on Internet-users in the UK, I think it holds true for much of the online community. Each person simply has too many online accounts and too many passwords to remember. And […]
Ideas: The Perfect Human Diet?
If you had to eat the same meals each day for the rest of your life, what would you eat? Many have tackled this question, but there is still no definitive answer. Each proposed diet either has deficiencies when followed long-term, is not suitable for everybody, or is so unappealing that it cannot be sustained. […]
Top 12 Vintage Movies
Usually, when I look for good movies to watch, I have a bias towards films released within the past couple of years. Those are simply the films I would most likely enjoy. It’s hard to find time to watch a lot of movies while raising three small kids and holding a full-time job, so […]
Will Potatoes Really Blow up If You Don’t Poke Them?
The conventional wisdom about baking potatoes passed down through generations of cooks is that if you don’t poke them, they’ll blow up. As a busy parent, I’m always looking for shortcuts in the kitchen. Poking potatoes before baking them was such a tedious chore that I eventually stopped doing it. What that a wise […]
Gopher’s Honey Cakes
When my daughter was three years old, she was a little obsessed with the book Bear Wants More, by Karma Wilson. She began taking an interest in the “honey cakes” that Gopher baked for Bear in the story. She started saying, “I want some honey cakes too!”. It was an interesting proposition, so I agreed to bake […]
Cooking with Books: Just Four Ingredients Fast!
While established cooks might scoff, cooking with recipes is the best way you can learn how to cook. All you have to do is find a recipe and follow the directions. Yes, you will make mistakes, but each time you work your way through a recipe, you learn more about cooking. It is a […]
Ideas: Rooftop Electricity Generation
Most people today have come to rely on their local power company to provide electricity to their homes. While this form of electricity distribution is highly efficient and stable, most people have no backup plan for when the local power company fails. Moving from the current grid power model to a more distributed model […]