First Act: The Disappearing Trick READERS SEND me bizarre researching tips all the time. Had they not, I suppose articles like this would not be possible. For example, I was sitting here staring at the swamp water outside my window, just minding my own...
THE RAIN wet our faces like every other day in Scotland and Ireland or practically anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Such were the weekly weather reports. Rain. Rain. Chances of rain. Probable rain. Definite rain. Keep your boots on rain. So I guess you could say I...
Eyewitness His-Story: New Madrid 1812 WAS a very strange year. The thought first occurred to me while listening to the 1812 Overture the other day. The part where they blow the lid off a dozen or two trash cans just makes you want to salute something—anything...
A GOOD example of this is the Back to the Future trilogy, and who hasn't seen that? Pick any movie in the series. They tell you how the deception is done. You can dial forwards or backwards in the narrative, say thirty—or if we're especially loaded with gigawatts,...
Missing Books: A Probable Introduction "History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history." — Clarence Darrow AND THEN one day it finally occurred to me. The Vatican has never been raided. In the sort of imaginary world where nobody...
MISSING BOOKS have long bothered me. Name a person. Name practically anybody worth mentioning and there's likely a lost work attributed to them. Homer. Shakespeare. Aristotle. Pythagoras. Plato. Julius Caesar. Caesar Augustus. Euclid. Pliny the Elder. Tertullian....
THE FIRST lesson of the Donner Party is to never take a short cut. Stay off the grass. Follow the leader. Do as you're told. Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong. Keep as far away from Antarctica as is humanly possible. It's cold and miserable and there's...
SOME SAY the dark ages began that very day. On the streets of Alexandria a mob of Christian zealots led by Peter the Lector apprehended a woman as she boarded her chariot—having only finished the days lecture at the University—and dragged her into a nearby church,...