Category: Personal Blog

  • Quote Of The Day

    It’s a great day during the civil rights and civil liberties unit to talk about the time that Supreme Court Justice Brandeis quotes Pericles’s funeral speech to be able to explain Thomas Jefferson’s ideas as to why he wrote Virginia’s bill on the independence and freedom of religion. Because at its core, all three men…

  • The World’s Game, America’s Gates: Foreign Policy, the World Cup, and Who Gets Left Outside

    Every four years, FIFA promises the same thing: football unites the world. It is a beautiful slogan, and it occasionally comes close to being true. Then the politics show up. The 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup (co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico) is supposed to be the largest sporting event in human history,…

  • Star Trek: First Contact at 30: A Teacher’s Journey Through Time, Memory, and the Borg

    Thirty years ago this year, Star Trek: First Contact premiered in theaters and fundamentally changed what Star Trek could be. Released on November 22, 1996, Jonathan Frakes’ directorial debut took the optimistic crew of the Enterprise-D into darker territory than the franchise had dared to explore on television; it gave us a Star Trek film…

  • Pretty Sure

    The Short Answer The word pretty does double duty in English; it works as an adjective (a pretty painting) and as an adverb meaning “fairly” or “somewhat” (pretty sure, pretty tired, pretty good). This second use has been part of English for hundreds of years, and it’s a great example of how language evolves in…

  • Cleveland Browns QBs

    The Short Answer This claim is mostly true and well-supported by evidence. The Cleveland Browns have indeed started a large number of quarterbacks since 1999, and documented cases of undocumented immigrants voting in federal elections are extremely rare; over 20 years, even a conservative organization that actively looks for fraud found only 25 prosecuted cases…

  • Dan Jones’ Power and Thrones: Rediscovering the Middle Ages

    Book Review: Power and Thrones by Dan Jones Book Reviewed: Power and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages Author: Dan Jones Genre: Medieval History / Popular History Reading Level: Grade 10 to Adult Recommended for: World History, European History, AP World History, History Methods Overview ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5) I will be honest with you:…