Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol

You may have already seen some variant or snippet of the video clip below in which Ander Christensen, a resident of Lincoln, Nebraska, asks his local city council to ban the misleading and deceptive term “boneless chicken wings.” Although Mr … Continue reading →

Will the interstate highway system be the last major public works project to be built in the United States, or should we re-start the Cross Florida Barge Canal or the Big Cypress Swamp Jetport? I first learned about these two … Continue reading →

I am totally serious. In honor of the upcoming Labor Day Holiday Weekend, allow me to pose the following (non-rhetorical) question: Why do we still allow the federal government (and many State governments) to tax our physical and mental labor, … Continue reading →

“I am so sorry, but …” Although the “random excuse generator” pictured below (play around with it here for yourself; hat tip: @pickover) is quite crude–awkward even–it does a fairly decent job of coming up with good excuses! Maybe if … Continue reading →

As you may or may not recall, Peter Thiel–the crypto-libertarian tech billionaire who made his massive fortune via PayPal, Facebook, and other startup ventures–publicly supported candidate Donald J. Trump during the previous presidential election cycle. (See, for example, these remarks … Continue reading →

Via Kottke: “MIT’s biology department is offering a new online class this fall called COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 and the Pandemic. The class will be led by Richard Young and Facundo Batista and will include guest lectures by several leading authorities on … Continue reading →

A colleague recently brought to my attention this impressive list of 39 medieval universities founded before the year 1500 (hat tip: Dr Paul Jarley), though some of these venerable institutions have been closed for brief periods; for example, the University … Continue reading →

Check out these artworks by IndieTheIntrovert, including the one pictured below, which is titled “Escher’s Other Dogs.” FYI: M. C. Escher, one of the major inspirations of Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach, was a Dutch graphic artist who … Continue reading →

Here it is! (Pictured below are the first two pages of my new syllabus.)

Thinkers as diverse as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, and Umberto Eco have used the concept of “family resemblance” to describe similarities among different objects/activities, so why not apply this concept to flags as well, such as those of Cuba 🇨🇺 … Continue reading →