Pi is the world’s most famous irrational number. It can also prompt people to do some pretty irrational things. February 6, 1897, was not the brightest hour for my home state of Indiana. That was the day our House of Representatives approved Bill 246, which declared the legal value of pi to be 3.2. Incredibly, the proposition was titled “A… Read more »
It was a sign of the times. Almost 20 years ago, former Major League Baseball star Dale Murphy – one of the “high integrity” players of the 1980s – urged the creation of a patch that could be worn by participants in the annual Little League World Series. Every August, 16 teams of 10-12-year-old boys from around the United States… Read more »
Mary Ann Bird grew up feeling unlovely, unpresentable, unloved. From birth she had been afflicted with a variety of disfiguring features. She recounts her feelings – and the moment in which everything changed – in her book The Whisper Test: I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when… Read more »
I have never learned to drive a standard transmission car. Since futurists keep insisting that the age of autonomous (“driverless”) vehicles is just around the corner, the window to address this gap in my life is rapidly closing. My associations with standard transmissions are comically traumatic. Shortly after my 16th birthday, my father insisted one Sunday afternoon that I join… Read more »
In the Bible’s four biographies of Jesus – the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – exactly one person declines his invitation to “follow me.” What could possibly be so powerful or insidious that it would compel someone to walk away from the chance of a lifetime? That would be money. We should pay close attention. The Gospels describe… Read more »
“We have fallen upon evil times, and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents.” Those despairing words weren’t posted for the first time on Facebook last week. Archeologists found them chiseled onto a stone from ancient Chaldea that dates to 3,800 B.C. Virtually every generation has cherished… Read more »
Earlier this month the world lost an incomparable storyteller. Walter Wangerin Jr., who had been a professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana since 1991, was the author of more than 30 novels. He also wrote numerous children’s stories, essays and plays, not to mention scores of sermons from his days as a Lutheran pastor. Wangerin was especially focused on the… Read more »
Throughout the 1950s Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospel, sang to packed-out church sanctuaries and public auditoriums. Numerous agents and producers beckoned her to do what is now called crossing over: She ought to go secular. She could be big. She could become the most powerful musical presence in America. She could make a fortune. But Jackson answered only to… Read more »
“There’s no crying in baseball!” That’s the most frequently quoted line from A League of Their Own, the 1992 feature film about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which opened the door for women to play pro ball when World War II sent numerous MLB players into combat. But the film’s most compelling conversation takes place between Dottie Hinson, the… Read more »
I was a student in college when affordable handheld calculators first hit the market. A manufacturer’s rep came to one of our classrooms and demonstrated his product’s dazzling array of bells and whistles. Were there any questions? A student asked why he should buy this brand of calculator over one that was priced a few dollars less. Without saying a… Read more »