When I was a little, my mom would read me a story every night after dinner. I always had a stack of my favorite titles ready to go, but it’s probably safe to say that I never asked her to read me a bedtime math problem. However, a recent study suggests that doing bedtime math problems can be beneficial for developing a child’s [...]
In late 2014, a 12-part podcast focusing on a high school murder case called Serial became mainstream news. Serial reached 5 million downloads faster than any podcast before it. But it wasn’t just radio and podcast fanatics who tuned in. English teacher Michael Godsey decided to use Serial in his tenth and eleventh grade classes. Students were instantly hooked on the murder mystery. They held mock debates, examined evidence gathered [...]
Ever since the creation of automated machines, the fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) takeover (or cybernetic revolt, as more professional futurists call it) have been growing. From the minds of science fiction greats Isaac Asimov and Aldous Huxley to 2015’s blockbuster films Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ex Machina, culture shows that people are fascinated with what machines could someday be. This potential future has long [...]
What does have six arms and two legs and a brain in each one? An octopus! Three-fifths of an octopus’s brain is found in its eight appendages. The largest octopus on record, a giant Pacific octopus, reportedly weighed 600 pounds and was nearly 30 feet wide. Think of all that brain room! As if the brains-in-their-appendages fact weren’t strange enough, octopuses have additional unique characteristics that make them truly amazing [...]
Neuschwanstein Castle is nestled into a mountainside in Bavaria (not too far from Munich) and even from far away it looks like it belongs on the pages of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. In fact, it was the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland. On a high school trip to Germany, I was lucky enough to visit Neuschwanstein Castle and the whole experience was [...]
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft is the stuff of legends around Boston, but I only learned the full story when I visited the museum a couple months ago. On March 18, 1990, two thieves disguised as Boston police officers entered the museum and stole 13 priceless works of art. They managed it by tricking the security guards into moving away from any alarms, and [...]
At some point, someone told me the schedule for summer vacation in schools was because the farmers had needed their kids home to help with planting and harvesting crops. It wasn’t until I was older that the northern Minnesota tradition of garden planting over Memorial Day weekend began to poke little seed–sized holes in that “fact.” We planted in the spring and harvested [...]
Whenever I took the T (the subway system in Boston), I always tried to sneak a peek at what other commuters were reading. I’d try to read the books’ spines without the other passengers catching me. However, I’ve come to notice that more and more commuters (myself included) are on their phones these days, whether they’re listening to music, texting or updating social [...]
Caves around the world hold untold secrets, and there is much we still do not know. However, intrepid spelunkers, divers and scientists are making great strides in exploring these dark depths, yielding fascinating results. Underwater and underground rivers have been found in caves and beneath the deep, and more information is being found every day. In 2007, British diver Stephen Bogaerts and German [...]
In 2010, Brandon Stanton decided to create a map of New York neighborhoods by photographing 10,000 people and plotting their locations. This project became Humans of New York (HONY). Stanton began to collect quotes and stories from the people he photographed and included them with the pictures. It took HONY eight months to get its first 1,000 likes on Facebook, but by 2012 it was getting about [...]