By JIM NICHOLS It was raining at recess time for the second day in a row. Yesterday the fourth-graders had to play some sort of inside game in the room and now, it appeared, that was going to happen again. The teacher proposed the same game as yesterday and added an alternate. There was brief class discussion of the options

By JIM NICHOLS I taught a biology majors seminar class for many semesters targeted at students in their senior year of college. One of my favorite questions to ask them was to identify the person most responsible for determining their academic major and direction. That is, “Why are you a biology major? What or who slanted you here?” As one

By JIM NICHOLS It was a conference organized like many other conferences. A parade of speakers came to the podium to present papers dealing with a particular area of interest to the participants. The conference organizers had supplied a meeting room, a screen and projector, and a computer connected to the projector. Each new presenter inserted his or her flash

By JIM NICHOLS Perhaps this might make more sense if I write it out; sometimes that seems to help. I am thinking about how it is possible to be by yourself even though you are surrounded by humanity. My scientific background combines with my social consciousness to cause me to recycle physical material when possible. My current community has not

By JIM NICHOLS This is not really a sports story, although a sports comment was the stimulus for it. As I am writing this, it is the college football “bowl season.”  Teams have played their regular season games and the supposedly best teams now have a bonus game, a bowl game. When I was younger, there were just a few

By JIM NICHOLS Every family has a set of Christmas traditions; they might not make sense to anyone else, but they are important to the family. The traditions are often accompanied by memories that reach outside the family itself. In this case I am thinking of my friends Neal and Bill, folks no longer in my life nor the life

By JIM NICHOLS It is important that we not miss repeated stories and illustrations in scripture. Good pedagogy emphasizes repetition and Jesus certainly knew that. Collectively, many of his parables or descriptions also indicate that he had a different view of mathematics and, in fact, economy, than we do. We would do well to notice how far our views are

By JIM NICHOLS You probably have several of these in your purse or your pants pocket. They are small metal pieces with notches cut out in some pattern along one side. There is a hole in the wider end of the piece, and you probably have them connected by some type of attachment. These pieces can be inserted into the

By JIM NICHOLS It seems as if the political season never ends in our country. We just had a presidential election and already the 2024 hopefuls are beginning to make a case for themselves. Assuming that some of these individuals are nice and capable people, it is already tiring to see them make plays for what some might consider the