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Welcome to BenWoods.com
It is really remarkable that after writing online stories for 25 years, I have a topic today that I’ve both never written about and something I know more about than almost anything else.
That thing is figs.
How did we get to this point? My uncle had a fig tree in his backyard, and we lived at his house 16 years ago. Coincidentally, my father-in-law also had fig trees, so when we bought a new house 14 years ago, we accepted a gift of a fig cutting and planted it in an auspicious backyard location.
Great book that runs the gamut of synthetic biology
The term "natural" used to be substantially easier to apply to basic items like fruit and animals. It is both exhilarating and frightening to consider "improving" genetic material, but humans have a knack for putting their marks on everything imaginable.
During high school and college, I worked at Kentucky Kingdom amusement park in Louisville, Ky. Besides battling racuous crowds and the blazing heat, one thing that was interesting to me was trying to keep track of the different people I was seeing throughout the day. As a games attendant (a.k.a. carnival barker), I would attempt to personally say things to people that I saw multiple times, whether at different games or at different parts of the park. This was mostly just a sales tactic, and I think the customers likely thought I was training to have my own magic show.
Raymond and Damon are back to their shenanigans in "The Surprise Visit," the second book in the Caimans at Work series.
Raymond and Damon are busy with many orders these days. Their friend Clara stops by the shop with an urgent request. Will the caimans be able to help her before time runs out?
From the Archive
Finding a taxi in a large city can sometimes be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. Then again, there are usually very few haystacks in the city, and besides, why do people put needles in them anyway?
Google recently launched Ride Finder, which is a simple way to find a taxi in 10 of the largest U.S. cities (sorry L.A., Seattle and Las Vegas ... surely you'll be on Ride Finder soon).
We're having a blood drive at work today. I unfortunately will not be participating today, or ever again, because the American Red Cross refuses to stop calling me.
This is a strange predicament for me because I've been a fairly loyal donor for about 15 years. But due to the Red Cross' refusal to remove me from its calling list, I'm really not that interested in donating again.
I'm not going to lie, I'm short on time this week because, well, I'm on vacation. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't give all six of you something to ponder for at least the next eight minutes.
My brother, Chris, recently recounted a tulmultuous occurrence in our lives. Here's the text of that fateful day.
It's difficult to get a good read on the American public when trying to figure out how many people really care about the Olympics. But if any of these people want to explore the Internet looking for more information, they have plenty of options.