“Actuarial tables show that far more pedestrians die in a crosswalk than jaywalking. Risk takers often cite those tables as justification for the chances they take. Of course, far more people cross city…

“The purest fooling is neither stupid nor ignorant; it’s wit, and it often strikes like lightning turning sand to glass.”—Skip Eisiminger Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger “Ignorance, the lost part of ‘virginal,’/is…

“I grew up in a military family that moved 17 times in 17 years. Yet, like Huck, I always felt that our apartment, duplex, or house was a home because I was loved…

“Having flown over Treblinka and snatched a few grapes from the Warsaw grapevine, he strongly suspected but could not confirm the horror. Occupying his mind were two brothers at two fronts, and a…

“Born in the Great Depression, John and his six brothers grew up at the base of ‘Eitel Mountain,’ a few miles east of and downhill from Boone, NC. A hillock in reality, the…

“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…