This is a blog about rubber. You’ll notice there’s no “s” on the end, though I thought it ironic or at least coincidental that the night I sat down to wax eloquent on the topic of rubber I rode to work and rolled over an empty industrial-sized box of condoms. It was in the middle of ...

I read an interesting article the other day. A three-year British study found that more people would commute by bike if only it didn’t lead to the dreaded helmet hair. They also cited fear of reporting for duty dripping in sweat and the considerably less specific fear of being considered ...

I’m going to go ahead and call it: It’s going to be a long, cold winter. I’m not basing this brash prediction on my intensive study of NexRad Radar or my knowledge of El Niño or La Niña or even my slavish devotion to The Weather Channel. No, I’m calling for a brutal winter because ...

I’m all the time inventing cool stuff. Once, when I was a sophomore in college, I was tossing a football around with a roommate. We took a break so he could smoke a cigarette, and he lamented his nicotine addiction. He explained he wanted to quit, but he couldn’t. He went on a rather ...

For all of about the first dozen hours of my life, I was Brian. Then my mom changed her mind, my dad returned to work and explained his bouncing baby-boy Brian really was Andrew, the nurses brushed the Wite-Out over my birth certificate, and “Andrew” lasted until it came time to write my ...

I tend to do some of my best thinking when I’m mowing the lawn, which, now that I think about it, means I’m exercising my mental midgetry only once every week or so in the growing season, and far less often ever since a long, hot summer made the Sahara look lush by comparison. But ...