Mike Pilewski writes about life, politics and culture in the United States
Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. It’s shocking to see how so many people still believe that he did. The real inventor was in fact James Bowman Lindsay, almost 50 years earlier. Edison is generally thought of as the inventor because he experimented and found a longer-lasting filament. And Edison, it must be said, invented or developed all … >>
Last Sunday, March 14, a friend called me from Boston. It was Pi Day. David happily reported that the local bakeries and pizza parlors were openly celebrating the occasion — something the two of us had started after math class 30 years ago as a kind of joke. Our phone call, which we’d scheduled for 3:14 p.m., almost didn’t happen, … >>
When we were schoolkids, our teachers loved to tell us a little white lie: that anybody in America could grow up to be president. We didn’t believe them, because they couldn’t name any female or black presidents. However, we did believe George W. Bush in 2001, when he told students graduating from Yale University: “To those of you who received … >>