I am a devout agnostic. I have been carrying on an electronic conversation with a devout Christian, in fact an evangelist, for about two years. It was not my intention to challenge her faith, but rather to seek answers to questions that underlie my agnosticism.

This is n...

I used to speak Swahili. I don’t anymore, but at one time I was nearly fluent. This is because in the mid-1960s I spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching mathematics and physics in Tanzania (East Africa).

When I mention this episode of my life, I usua...

I love racist jokes.

If you are shocked by this declaration, you shouldn’t be because what I mean by the term is not those disgusting, brutal — and generally false — observations designed to cause offense and injury. These do not qualify as jokes, because there is...

I recently did an Internet search to find out why polygamy is banned in some places in the world and is not, and even encouraged, in others. Why? Because a few years ago I did a similar search and came up with essentially nothing.

Those sites that talked about the...

Ever since I joined Toastmasters International several years ago, people have been telling me that I am a “natural-born speaker.”

If you don’t already know, Toastmasters is a worldwide club (250,000 members) of people helping each other improve their presentation ...

I know that what I am about to say may seem to be somewhat off the wall. However, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that a major reason most people write so poorly is the chaotic state of English spelling.

It seem evident that the more you must co...

I have recently been reading and hearing comments that bullet points for slide presentations are dead, as evidenced by the rapidly-becoming-legendary presentations of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc.

There are three things wrong with this notion.

1. ...

It is often said that what distinguishes true science fiction from space horse operas is its ability to examine fundamental questions of ethics, philosophy, and sociology in situations so remote from contemporary life that they can be considered with greater acuity and less...

How often have you gone to see the film that won the Oscar for best picture of the year, only to be disappointed? Probably more than once. Did this mean that there was something wrong with you or something wrong with the judges who voted for the film? Actually, neither. ...

As a collector of quotations, I occasionally wonder if some of my favorite specimens are actually correct. In many cases, they seem too good to be true.

I recently researched the subject on the Internet and came up with a number of quotations that indeed seemed t...