Continued Thoughts from One Year of Blogging What I Learned and What I’ll Do Next I started this blog for me. It gives me a reason to chase ideas, put thoughts in order, and—on good days—make sense of the world out loud. I figured that if I published steadily and let posts ripple to Facebook, LinkedIn, Nextdoor, and X, a small circle of steady readers would form on its own. It didn’t—at least not yet. I’ve done the social-media hustle before Years ago, when I ran an online retail store, I did build an audience the hard way. It took 10–15 hours a week, every week—posting, replying, and feeding each channel with content tailored to its community (and sometimes to small groups or even one…

Even with the right ingredients, you still need the right kitchen. For early Earth, that could mean a hot, seething deep-sea vent… a quiet, shallow pool warmed by the sun… or a frozen landscape where reactions happened in slow motion. Here are the top contenders: Deep-Sea Vents Found along mid-ocean ridges, these underwater chimneys spew mineral-rich water heated by Earth’s interior. They offer stable energy, abundant chemistry, and protection from surface impacts and radiation. And we know vents can support life — since the late 1970s, scientists have found entire ecosystems down there: giant tube worms, shrimp, and bacteria living without sunlight, powered entirely by chemical energy from the vents. Proof that even in total darkness, the right “kitchen” can cook up a thriving community….

Where did life come from? It’s the biggest question in science — and one we still can’t answer with certainty. In this three-part series, we’ll explore the leading ideas about how life began: from its possible birthplace, to the essential “ingredients” it needed, to the environments that may have been the first kitchens for biology. Each post poses a question, shares the best scientific guesses, and leaves room for you to weigh in with your own take. Did Life Start Here… or Somewhere Else? Life Showed Up Picture Earth about 4 billion years ago. No trees. No oceans as we know them. No hummingbirds, no humans. Just a rocky, volatile planet with volcanoes belching gas, meteors slamming into the surface, and chemical soup simmering in…

This post may give you the suggestion that I am running out of things to write about. Not the case! I am in Alaska this week so I decided to do some easier things. Living in Reno, you get used to certain sights — snow on the mountains, casino lights downtown, and, every summer, a team of hard-working goats chewing through our hillsides like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. We have heard stories about them for a few years now. These aren’t random goats out for a stroll. They’re city-hired specialists, brought in with their wranglers, portable fencing, guard dogs and a work ethic that would put some contractors to shame. Their mission? Munch down the weeds and brush that fuel wildfires. And they do it…

How the Rise of Sports Wagers Is Supercharging NFL Superstitions I’ve long accepted that NFL fans (really all sports fans) are a superstitious bunch. There are the lucky hats, the pregame snacks, and the “don’t you dare change the channel” or other behavior rules. My wife, for example, has a “lucky T-shirt” for her team. The track record? Let’s just say it’s more “statistically insignificant” than “proven winner.” But if it’s game day, she’s wearing it. Superstitions in football are nothing new — they’ve been around since before the forward pass. But lately, I’ve noticed something different. The rise of sports betting, especially all the in-game, micro-betting opportunities, seems to be turning up the volume on these rituals. Now, it’s not just about helping your…

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that the movies being delivered by the traditional Hollywood studios are mostly a rehash of well-worn themes — superhero reboots, mega-franchise sequels, and blockbuster special-effects extravaganzas. Whatever happened to originality and innovation in movies? It’s hard to get excited about Fast & Furious 65 or Superman 34 or any other film that needs a number after its title. And yet, you can almost see them on the release calendar already. For decades, Hollywood has been in a creative rut, stuck on sequels, remakes, and the safest of safe bets. But it wasn’t always this way. In the early decades of film, something new hit the screens every week — low-budget crime stories, heartfelt dramas, oddball…

Modern Writers Who Prove They Don’t Need a Dead Man’s Name I am off on a week’s vacation next week and then again in September. So, I am searching for books to load up my Kindle for those two weeks (should take about six new books for my collection). But there’s a special kind of frustration that comes from picking up a new book with a beloved author’s name splashed across the cover—only to remember halfway through that the original author has been dead for years. It’s happened to me more times than I care to admit. The packaging is convincing, the title sounds right, the cover art has the same feel. But the voice—the thing that makes an author them—isn’t quite there. And that’s…

—and Remembering When We Saw It Before A fan’s reflection on Scottie Scheffler, the legends before him, and what greatness really means There’s a moment in every sports fan’s life when you realize: you’re watching greatness happen in real time. You’ve seen it before—maybe in flashes, maybe stretched over seasons—and now, here it is again. Not a replay, not a documentary, but right now, week after week, tournament after tournament. That’s what watching Scottie Scheffler has started to feel like. He’s calm. Grounded. Ruthlessly consistent. He doesn’t scream for attention, and he doesn’t play for the crowd. But make no mistake: he’s dominating the game in a way we’ve only seen a handful of times before. So what does this kind of greatness look like—and…

How Older Adults Are Rewriting the Script on Aging Forget the stereotypes. The golden years aren’t all early bird dinners and endless television reruns. Across the world, older adults are pushing back against isolation not by retreating into passive routines, but by creating, connecting, and contributing. When I was born, the average life expectancy in the U.S. was about 67. Today, it’s closer to 77—and for those who make it to 70, many will live well into their 90s or beyond. That shift isn’t just demographic; it’s existential. It means we need new models for aging—ones that recognize not just how long we live, but how much life we want to pack into those extra years. In Buenos Aires, a group of retirees has turned…