General

The 2012 London Olympic games open this week. The Olympics is a celebration of international sporting competition featuring over 10,000 athletes from 205 countries competing in 302 events across 26 Olympic sports. These athletes are at the top of their game and in great physical condition. They stand in stark contrast to the average couch…

One morning earlier this month, I woke up with a severe tooth ache. I could not understand why this was happening, since my dentist has always told me that I take good care of my teeth. Upon visiting the endodontist, I found out there was a crack in my tooth that was imperceptible to x-rays.…

Many consider Pickett’s Charge to be the fulcrum of the civil war. For most of the war, Lee’s Confederate army successfully played defense against the Union army. However, when Lee shifted from defense to offense it changed the tide of the war. The offensive campaign came to a head at Gettysburg, where the Union army…

From 1975 to 2000, the U.S. dropped from 3rd to 17th worldwide rank in the number of engineers it produces. The Wall Street Journal reports continuous concern over this decrease in engineers. A number of tech executives warn that this trend will have a significant impact on the United States’ long-term competitiveness. In an interesting…

In 1983 the secretary of education under President Reagan released a report entitled, “A Nation at Risk.” A famous line from that report conjectured that if a foreign nation had imposed upon us this mediocre system of schooling, the U.S. would consider it an act of war. At that time, the major threat was the…

When I graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in education and computer programming, I was invited to interview with Microsoft in Redmond, WA. I interviewed with members of the MS Word and Encarta development teams. Each of the developers that interviewed me posed interesting programming challenges and asked me to sketch proposed algorithms on…