“The year is 1994. We are all living underground.” So begins a 1960s movie my friends and I howled about in the year 1996, watching a large cast of extras in metallic bell-bottoms surging purposefully through tunnels. I am re-posting this post from seven years ago because I can’t remember writing it. I absorbed not […]
It is a Gamble tradition that each child can select one present to open on Christmas Eve, ahead of the Christmas Day onslaught. On a nature ramble yesterday with my father and me, my son asked if he could open his when we got back to the house, around 2pm. “Christmas Eve,” says I. “The […]
I’ve always been fascinated by tales of postal heroism. Not the manufactured goodwill of a reply program for letters to Santa Claus, but the everyday challenge of figuring out what a sender intended and getting the letter into the right hands. It’s become a bit of a sport for snail-mail loving citizens, and the postal […]
I’ve been working lately to get a handle on where awe fits into our lives, especially the intersection of awe and science. In my journeys, I met someone who sheds light on the awe appeal of science fiction and how it has changed over the history of filmmaking. Michael Backes worked in Hollywood for decades. […]
Can I just tell you about something funny that happened/is happening? I’ve been working at a university, and one of the most appealing perks—given I’m not anywhere in the world of tenure or sabbaticals—is the free tuition on any course in the whole place. I could get an MBA…for free! I could become some crazy […]
On November 6, 2015, when this was originally published, I had just arrived back from the most bizarre trip my work has ever taken me on–and I’ve been on some pretty weird reporting expeditions. It was my first (and probably last) experience of being a royal guest in a place where royalty really runs the […]
Very occasionally, a post we write here is, unbeknownst to us, incomplete. It will only be concluded by our readers, who finish the job in the comments section. On August 28, 2015, I posed a mystery in the form of a very old document, and I thought I had more or less solved that riddle […]
According to Lev Vygotsky’s psychological development theory, children should be given experiences that are in their zone of proximal development. That is, things that are beyond their own independent capability, but that can be achieved or understood with the guidance of a “knowledgeable other.” The adult’s help provides scaffolding that can eventually be dismantled as […]