“In the 1960s, Clemson professors typically posted their final grades outside their offices, so anxious students could attend to their grades instead of waiting for the post office to deliver them. A couple…

“I finally appeared on stage as a chorus member in a production of Euripides’ Hippolytus. The school critics thought I’d made a creditable Horatio in Hamlet but, in Twelfth Night, they were expecting…

“Arthur Koestler compared intuition to an underwater chain whose ends are visible on opposite sides of the ocean. As my title indicates, I prefer the image of a submerged cable, for today it…

“Other acquaintances have cheated before my eyes to win a penny-ante pot, filled a purse lined with aluminum foil at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, and confessed to routinely shortchanging customers. I didn’t actually witness…

“Before humans devised atomic clocks, a network of Earth-orbit satellites, and the Global Positioning System, we suffered a directional disadvantage compared to our scaly, furry, and feathered kin. But even with the best…

“My German-American parents were similarly afflicted with what the Germans call Zungensalat or ‘tongue salad.’ Mother was forever yelling at me to shut the scream door, and Father worried I wasn’t getting enough…

“So, exactly how do humans reproduce if we don’t bifurcate, pupate, or molt? I’m glad the answer to the overwhelming question of my adolescence was not left entirely to my parents.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip…

“In 1910, many in this country would have lynched heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson for not ‘knowing his place.’ When ‘the Big Smoke’ was stopped for speeding in rural Georgia, he told the…

“In 2013, the visual absurd seems to be losing its impact since its origins in Europe during World War II. Perhaps the best known work by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte is his…

  “I was born in 1941, so I cannot blame my ‘rage for order’ on the Depression. I’m a clean-desk man, certifiably neat, who orders the same thing every time he enters McDonald’s.…