General

Baseball-Reference’s Career Leaders for Wins Above Replacement list is a great starting place for ranking the best baseball players in history.  While there are some things I would change about this method of determining players’ greatness, it is one of the best approximations of player strength out there.  Here’s a glance at the greatest 25 […]

Procrastination comes naturally and instinctively.  It is seductive because it offers instant gratification.  You have a choice between doing what you like, or doing what is tedious or painful.  Why would someone rush into doing something tedious or painful?  It’s easy to choose to do what you like, but many times we must face the […]

Oil paints have been the de facto standard for painters for centuries.  But the costs and learning curve required for painting with oil may be prohibitive. A better choice for beginning painters is acrylic paint.  Acrylic paints are cheaper, easier to work with, easier to clean up, and dry faster than oil paints.  I can’t think of […]

Talk to many homeowners, and they’ll say that their lawn is their pride and joy.  Speak to them some more, and you’ll learn that most of them don’t even maintain it themselves. Grass lawns have become an American status symbol.  Many homeowners’ associations have stipulations for the maintenance of an attractive lawn as a condition […]

Humans are social creatures.  We enjoy the feeling of belonging to a community.  One way we find meaning in our lives is to help others. Over the years, we try things.  We make mistakes.  We learn from the mistakes.  And we try not to repeat the mistakes.  Life is a progression of doing things and […]

I read a lot of books.  Most of the books I read don’t do much to change my life.  Some of them, however, change everything. Everyone needs to have a Bible in their life.  Whether it’s The Bible, some other religious text or a secular book doesn’t matter.  Everyone needs a book to live their life […]

There is a saying that says everybody gets 15 seconds of fame in their lives.  Talk to an elderly person and ask what his or her most famous moment was, and you might be surprised.  Time forgets everything eventually.  Even the person with the lowliest appearance in old age was mighty once… for 15 seconds. […]

Time seems to fly faster as we age.  It’s hard to believe that it has been 12 years since the Virginia Tech shooting.  Forty-nine people were shot by Seung-hui Cho, including one of my friends who was shot in the face and was lucky to survive.  I had already graduated two years prior and was working […]

62 people have the wealth of half the world’s population, according to a report by Oxfam International.  The number has been shrinking since at least 2010, when 388 individuals had the wealth of half the world’s population.  What is shocking is despite the recent progress of the world’s poorest countries, the gap between the richest and […]

Baseball’s 3,000 hit club is as sacred as its 500 home run club. Only 31 players have ever reached 3,000 hits in Major League Baseball. The most recent were Adrián Beltré and Ichiro Suzuki. Let me talk about Ichiro for a moment. What makes Ichiro’s accomplishment more impressive is that he did it all after age […]