I hate corporal punishment. I was fortunate to have parents who did not believe in it and have never used it on my own children. I did go to a private boys school in Sri Lanka that allowed its principal and vice-principal to cane students and there were some teachers who also hit students with …
Category Archive: Other
Mar 25 2013
Solving three Rubik’s cubes while juggling them
You may recall that I posted a video of Ravi Fernando solving a Rubik’s cube while juggling it along with two balls.
Mar 17 2013
Wisdom and rules
Some time ago I wrote about the tragic situation in which a school nurse would not let a student use his asthma inhaler, even though he had collapsed in front of her, because the school did not have a medical release form on file. I later discussed a study about how these kinds of situations …
Mar 13 2013
Humanists raising money for charity and Greta Christina honored
I am pleased to pass along news from the Foundation Beyond Belief (FBB) and the Stiefel Freethought Foundation that their “Light The Night Walk Team raised $430,000 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society last year, the largest amount ever raised by a first year non-corporate team and the 4th largest amount raised by any team …
Mar 12 2013
Social networks and me
As I have mentioned before, I am not a very sociable person. It is not that I am anti-social, shunning all human contact. It is that I am better described as asocial, someone who can interact with others on occasion and when necessary, but am perfectly comfortable being alone with my books, my thoughts, and …
Mar 11 2013
Netball
Netball is a game played the world over (including Sri Lanka) but as far as I am aware, only by women. It is superficially similar to basketball in that the goal is to throw the ball though an elevated hoop. The main difference is that you cannot move while you have possession of the ball …
Mar 08 2013
The differential treatment of women and men in the public sphere
I am not a natty dresser. I almost never wear a tie or jacket. My hair is usually ruffled. My clothes are inexpensive and off-the-rack from department stores that aim at the mass market. I never iron my clothes so they frequently look rumpled and I often wear them until they are so worn and …
Mar 01 2013
Solving Rubik’s cube while juggling
This is pretty impressive. Incidentally Ravi Fernando, the person doing this trick, is the son of one of my oldest friends, going all the way back to middle school days in Sri Lanka, and so I was really pleased to stumble across this video on a news site quite by accident.
Feb 23 2013
It is wrong to abuse the kindness of strangers
Yesterday morning we had a mixture of rain and sleet that resulted in the streets and sidewalks having the kind of icy slush that makes walking tricky. As I was making my way across campus for a seminar, I slipped and fell. It occurred at almost exactly the same time as a plane slid off …
Feb 19 2013
Some fun tricks
These tricks do not involve skilled sleight-of-hand but are the kinds of things any one can do with friends or at parties, and are kind of fun.
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