Bruce's blog

In the 18th and 19th centuries, as the legislative bodies of the United States and Great Britain debated whether to end the institution of slavery, advocates of both sides turned to the Bible to bolster their case.

The pro-slavery side started with Genesis 9:24-27.

The key to a meaningful, powerful life is week-by-week

Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. But this chart helps to emphasize that it’s most certainly finite. Those are your weeks and they’re all you’ve got.

Hey Denver: Give Chick-fil-A a Break

Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard was fond of saying that nobody ever got rich writing science fiction. The real money, according to Hubbard, was in starting one's own religion. Hubbard would later write Dianetics and found the Church of Scientology.

But Hubbard had nothing on the prosperity preachers highlighted in this John Oliver exposé.

Is 2015 The Year Baseball’s Projections Failed?

Although KC won 89 games and went to the World Series in 2014, a consensus average of betting over/unders and other statistical systems would have pegged the Royals for 76 wins this year, a number that will likely end up at least 15 games low. Any projection system tied to the Royals’ comparatively weak preseason forecast would have been similarly bearish on their future record.

Somebody Get Katie Ledecky A Time Machine

As she keeps improving her times and lowering her records, I like to think of each new milestone as her advancing through time, knocking down legend after legend as they pop up. It isn’t just a new record — it’s another period of history in which no one could beat her. How far can she get?

In a recent article for the Wall Street Journal, John Steele Gordon asserts that climate science is a "veritable conucopia of unanswered questions". Gordon offers a sample of these questions:

A public marketplace for hackers—what could possibly go wrong?

Donald Trump is running for President. His catchphrase is "Make America great again." When fellow candidate Ted Cruz used that phrase in a speech back in March, Trump responded by making vague threats about copyright infringement. But the reality is, you can't copyright a phrase, even if you're Donald Trump.

It’s not who he is, it’s who he hates: The secret to Donald Trump’s toxic appeal

a retelling of a Taoist parable

In a village in ancient China there were two wide streets running parallel to each other, and a narrow but heavily-used alley between them.