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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.
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.
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.
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.
From the Archive
Maybe it's nice to be the wealthiest person in the world. I guess it would be nice to have a full-time maid or someone to butter a piece of toast for me, if that's what rich people do these days. But you may want to think again about being rich when you hear the number of spam messages that Bill Gates gets every day.
It's official: The Developers has an official distributor. Biblio Distribution, out of Lanham, Md., will handle all distribution of The Developers, effective immediately. OK, it's sort of effective immediately because right now, Biblio doesn't have any books. But I've just ordered a third printing, and the company should have the books at the beginning of March.
In a previous column, I mentioned that I might try to make the world's largest waffle, and an observant reader wondered what the record actually was.
Of course, I had no idea, so I attempted to look it up. Here's what I found:
For those of you who are unfortunate enough to be up ridiculously early Sunday morning, I will be appearing on WHAS-11 in Louisville, Ky., sometime around 7:10 a.m. to discuss "The Developers." I'm not sure what I'll say about it, but maybe I'll juggle, since it's silly to juggle while on the radio.
I have one simple request for Christmas -- that someone, ANYONE, will finally be named president. Yes, we have George W. and Al, but if they name Al W. George out of Minot, N.D., instead, that would be fine.
What caused this whole problem? The people of the United States, of course, always trying to stir up trouble, whether it's at the local moose lodge or bingo hall. Can't people fill in the correct circles? Can't people count votes right? Can't people use turning signals when changing lanes?