You made it! Thanks for visiting.
Welcome to BenWoods.com
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.
Raymond and Damon are back to their shenanigans in "The Surprise Visit," the second book in the Caimans at Work series.
Raymond and Damon are busy with many orders these days. Their friend Clara stops by the shop with an urgent request. Will the caimans be able to help her before time runs out?
From the Archive
How many passwords did you have to enter before you
started reading this?
A. 0
B. 1
C. 2
D. I don't remember, but I love watching "Password"
on the Game Show Network.
I decided to open up the mailbag and answer some of the questions that readers
have asked me recently. Then I realized that I'm not Santa Claus, and people
don't send me letters. This isn't completely true, as I did portray Santa in
a third-grade Christmas play, even though I ripped part of the suit just before
the play began.
So I don't have any letters with questions, just comments about various columns.
But this will not stop me from answering some of those questions that people
Leading off, Green Day. Batting second, Snoop Dogg. Batting third, Tim McGraw. And the cleanup hitter, Britney Spears.
If you think this is a weird baseball lineup, you're right. On the other hand, if I were playing in the Fantasy Music League, I'd probably be in the World Series.
This is not a joke. The object of the FML, according to the website, is to create a label that generates the most revenue, based on the world music charts. Apparently the winners share in $25,000 cash and prizes.
I've finally launched the new BenWoods.com. Yes, it looks a lot like the old one. I upgraded to Drupal 8 (from Drupal 7). I managed to go all of 2019 without writing anything on this site. I hope to write a little more, especially as I launch a new book in the upcoming months. Thanks for reading!
I thought I had found some sort of glitch in the space-time continuum. One of the local rock stations plays songs from the band Rush as often as any classic or even current band. But after a trip to Chicago a week ago, where I managed to find myself in the middle of a Rush block one day and not being able to change the channel while "Tom Sawyer" played the next, I realized I wasn't alone.