history inspires the best fantasies
There’s an idea floating around that roads, aqueducts, and other large-scale civil engineering projects required Roman-era engineering. This is a false narrative. A fantasy world doesn’t need iron-age technology to...
In trying to come up with a fictional example of prison, I was reminded of a discussion I had with one of my professors in college. The topic was determinism...
Henry Olsen wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post about removing monuments in which he claimed: Knocking down or defacing statues of national founders or heroes not only displays ignorance...
I recently started reading The Rogue Retrieval by Dan Koboldt, creator of the wonderful Science in Sci-Fi, Fact in Fantasy blog series. The protagonist is a Vegas magician strong-armed into accompany...
Sometimes I like to do a little research on holidays, not only to discover interesting things I didn’t know already about the reason for the celebration, but also to see...
The search for a word that means “this fulfills the prophecy” or “a prophecy has been fulfilled.” With the help of several experts and crowdsourced input from Mastodon, I investigate related Greek, Arabic Hebrew, and English terms and their implications for each culture.
I usually write about academic topics; history, politics, folklore — that sort of thing. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about people’s implicit acceptance of friends and associates’ sexual assault,...
A defense of the 6th Grade Social Studies Curriculum. Why Africa matters — even to young, small-town Americans still learning to understand their world.
Republicans voted the 115th United States Congress into office, and should write their congressmen and explain their priorities. If you’re against racism, write in and say so! Your voice matters.
Humanity has created a huge volume of stories over the last few millennia… some truer than others. We pass down these tales through the generations, for a variety of reasons:...
