BAD, BAD CRIMINALS, part II– CHINA by Leigh Lundin This week we bring you criminal briefs from China and Singapore. Peking Boilers Sichuan Province.  Sichuan cuisine and folklore came together recently. Apparently a few in southern China believe the cure for brain problems is, well, more brains. Human brains. A mother with a mentally ill […]

RULES for ALL STORYTELLERS by Deborah Elliott-Upton Playing on the Internet is often rewarding, sometimes great fun, and sometimes, a waste of time. I can’t imagine going back to a time where we didn’t have the World Wide Web as a playground and information highway. While hitting some Internet backroads, I stumbled on a poster […]

BAD, BAD CRIMINALS, part I by Leigh Lundin This week, we bring you criminal briefs from North America. Why aren’t you out writing speeding tickets? Hanceville, AL.  Billy Floyd Norris, being an upstanding citizen, phoned police he’d been robbed by his two roommates. Once police arrived, they found an operating meth lab. That’s a big […]

A FARRAGO FOURTH (or FIFTH) by Leigh Lundin Some days articles are hard to write. The ideas float by, but latching onto one occasionally proves difficult. Hey, I’m ADD– it says so above. Surfin’ Safari The new Safari browser interface looks cool. I had written my own personal portal home page loaded with links I […]

DARK JUSTICE by Leigh Lundin This week, the Supreme Court reached a mind-boggling decision, an opinion more indicative of, say Iran, than a democratic people, a judgment that should offend conservatives and liberals alike. Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court held convicted prisoners do not have the right to DNA testing, even […]

SCHOOL’s OUT NEWS by Leigh Lundin Little newsy items are like little snacks between the big headline issues. Sometimes they provide ideas for stories… and sometimes they provide stories for articles. Like much of the rest of the nation from Florida to Maine, kids have been graduating high school. Florida has its embarrassments and bad speeches. […]

NUMB3RS, Part 3: MYSTERY GIFT by Leigh Lundin Friends Claire, Judy, and Sharon sent along a magic trick and wondered how it worked. In previous columns (here and here), I revealed the mysteries of a couple of puzzling tricks, so I tackled today’s with interest. Many similar tricks use mathematical properties, but today’s problem uses […]