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Several months ago I read a story, probably on the Yahoo news, about a planet that doesn’t orbit any sun.  It’s just out there, moving through the darkness of outer space all by itself.  They’ve termed it an “orphan” planet.  That’s a good term.  It must be lonely out there.  No sun, no light whatsoever, except from…

Two terms about people in North America, one coined recently and one that’s been around for a while, have caught my eye and ear over the years and I’ve come to the conclusion that they aren’t all that accurate.  In both cases they don’t adequately or properly describe the groups they represent and should be changed. …

This blog post may be a little different from the ones I usually write.  Mostly I write about science or writing or the environment.  This time I want to get somewhat more philosophical than I usually do, and not about science or writing.  This time I want to write about something that has been on…

About a month and a half ago I finished reading the Star Wars book, Kenobi, by John Jackson Miller.  This book, part of the long-running Star Wars saga, tells the story of what happened to Obi-Wan Kenobi after he went to Tatooine to watch over Luke Skywalker.  It sits between the third and fourth episodes of the…

Writing is a form of daydreaming.  Actually, I like to daydream.  I could spend my whole life thinking up and thinking about stories, fictional as well as non-fictional.  Of course, it would be ultimately self-defeating because I’d never get anything else done, and there are necessities that have to be taken care of in order…

Astronomers like to project.  Now that sky studies have demonstrated that many other stars out there in our galaxy have planets orbiting around them, the race is on to find the first planet outside our solar system that can support life.  Not necessarily life that includes intelligent, sophisticated, sentient beings like us, but any type…

If you’ve read much fiction, (or even written some of it), you may have noticed a common thread among all those stories.  If there is any sort of crime committed, usually murder, but also robbery or treason or some such despicable act, or even something as minor as telling a white lie or a tiny fib, the bad…

If you watch TV or movies at all, even just a little bit, you’ve almost certainly come across an acting cliché that has bothered me for almost as long as I myself have been watching those mediums of entertainment.  This is what I call the “one strike and you’re out” cliché.  This occurs when one person strikes…

On December 30, 2012, I wrote a posting on this blog about a merging of two words to form a weird or unusual combination, a mixture that isn’t present in either word alone.  I called them juxtapositions, partly because I couldn’t think of a better term, but partly to emphasize the fact that the two words…

If you could be a character in a novel or TV show or movie, what book or show would you pick? In this case, I’m suggesting that you insert yourself into the story line of a show or book as yourself, not as a character who already exists in the story.  If you could enter a…

Perhaps you’ve heard, out in the Pacific Ocean somewhere between the US and Japan is a large accumulation of plastic items from all over the world.  From Asia as well as North America.  Plastic doesn’t disintegrate or decay very fast, and that gives it time to accumulate in one place.  A scientist would say its…

Actually, the heading of this post is a little misleading because I got my flu shot about two weeks ago, but it makes a catchy title.  But it does reflect a subject I’d like to talk about because of recent events, especially posts on Facebook and articles in the news.  Vaccines have come under fire…