Category: Writing
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Scholars Ponder Top Gun
The movie Top Gun: Maverick is breaking box office records. Here are some questions that online scholars may ponder to develop their understanding of the film. Mathematics. How do the box office receipts compare to other movies? What does it mean to adjust the receipts for inflation? Physics. Which flying maneuvers generate forces on the…
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Words and Things
Humanity can be characterized as a tool-using and tool-creating species. The tools we create or borrow can obviously give us enormous power, for good or ill: they will, however, always do so at a cost. We sometimes mark that cost ahead of time and choose to pay it; at other times, we don’t fully appreciate…
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The Sherlock Holmes Law
I rather like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I should also admit that I’m not a hard-core devotee of mysteries in general. If I were, I probably would find the frequent plot holes in the Holmes corpus more annoying than I do. I enjoy them mostly for the period atmosphere, the prickly character of…