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Winning, but before a true prize even existed

This year, 2024, marks the 42nd year (should be 43 years in a row since the tournament was canceled in 2020 due to COVID) that I have picked at least one NCAA men’s basketball bracket. I have copies of many of them, including the one from 1981, when I picked my Louisville Cardinals to win the championship. That was the year they lost their first game on a halfcourt shot. Some people might be deterred after that jarring experience, but not me! Then again, I was only 5 when it happened.

Figs are fun

figs are fun

It is really remarkable that after writing online stories for 25 years, I have a topic today that I’ve both never written about and something I know more about than almost anything else.

That thing is figs.

How did we get to this point? My uncle had a fig tree in his backyard, and we lived at his house 16 years ago. Coincidentally, my father-in-law also had fig trees, so when we bought a new house 14 years ago, we accepted a gift of a fig cutting and planted it in an auspicious backyard location.

Book review: "The Genesis Machine" by Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel

Great book that runs the gamut of synthetic biology

The term "natural" used to be substantially easier to apply to basic items like fruit and animals. It is both exhilarating and frightening to consider "improving" genetic material, but humans have a knack for putting their marks on everything imaginable.

Super Recognisers unite!

During high school and college, I worked at Kentucky Kingdom amusement park in Louisville, Ky. Besides battling racuous crowds and the blazing heat, one thing that was interesting to me was trying to keep track of the different people I was seeing throughout the day. As a games attendant (a.k.a. carnival barker), I would attempt to personally say things to people that I saw multiple times, whether at different games or at different parts of the park. This was mostly just a sales tactic, and I think the customers likely thought I was training to have my own magic show.

Knitting

I did this. It is fun.

From the Archive

MySpace looking to 'make a difference'

As people are constantly complaining about whether or not MySpace is a good community building site or detrimental to the youth of today, there's little doubt that a ridiculous number of people have created profiles on the popular social networking site.

Now, instead of just going to pimp your profile or watch videos of animals doing strange things, there's a legitimate reason to visit the site, or at least, MySpace Impact.

Grass cutting fun

In today's society, there are two groups of people — ones who get paid to cut grass and ones who cut grass only because it's their duty to the country. Actually there's a third, smaller group of people, composed mostly of apartment dwellers, kids and travel agents. But they, too, have either had to cut the grass or will in the future.

Moving on, but packing few regrets

Editor's Note: This was Ben's final column while writing for the Crawfordsville (Ind.) Journal Review.

This will be the last column I write for the Journal Review. I may start them again sometime in the future. I would like to. But for now, this will have to do.

If any of you have column ideas, please still tell them to me and send them. I will keep a list, and somewhere down the road, maybe they will let me do this again.

First book excerpt available

As you may or may not know, I'm in the process of writing a book. It was fun, but I'd like to finish it, get it published, sign some books and start working on the next one.

In the meantime, I'm going to provide you a few excerpts so you can see what I'm working on.

To set the stage for the first one, one of the book's main characters is meeting a blind date who happens to closely resemble her favorite celebrity.

Read the excerpt

Feature article in the New Albany (Ind.) paper

This is a couple of days late, but after waiting and realizing the New Albany, Ind., News-Tribune wasn't going to put the feature article about me online, I decided to type it myself. Here's the great article reporter Greg Gapsis wrote about the recent book signing I had at Destinations Booksellers in New Albany:

Self-made man

First-time author's novel embodies humor, energy

Greg Gapsis - 2/5/06

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