To find essays on a particular topic, please use the search box to the left, or type "www.oftwominds.com + (your topic)" in a search engine, or scan the archives below.

The Healthiest Cold Cereal: Surprise!
This rigorously factual (but slightly tongue-in-cheek) nutritional analysis of cold cereals draws hundreds of search visits a month.

Light-As-Air Pancake Recipe
Readers still ask for the link to Chris H.'s pancake recipe which is buried in a camping-related entry from 2006.

Chinese courtyard Design
This "Designing Minds" column I wrote for the S.F. Examiner in 2000 attracts numerous search-result hits.

Can 4% of Homeowners Sink the Entire Market?
Housing's Stairstep Descent: the "39 Steps"
Homeowners, Defective Houses and Big Builders: Justice Is Not Blind
Am I Crazy, or Is America Crazy?
The Great Fall: How Suburbs De-gentrify to Ghettos
A semi-random selection of the numerous housing-bubble-related entries on the site. Do a search for "housing bubble" and you'll see a fuller list.

Dear Aspiring Writer: The Worst Advice You'll Ever Read
My semi-humorous, semi-depressing account of the travails awaiting aspiring writers shows up every month on the server logs.

China: An Interim Report
Trade with China: Making Out Like a Bandit
Shanghai Postcard
Several of the site's many Asia-related entries.

The New Disease We Just Know You've Got (satire)
You suffer from Zombiestra, my friend; fortunately, there's a medication for the malady, but it has some nasty side-effects.

900 Miles to the Gallon
This essay on the amount of energy required to burn a pound of human fat drew a wonderful response from knowledgeable correspondent Brian Jewell:

I am a retired physiologist, living in Yorkshire in the UK.

I run a course in Human Physiology for our local branch of University of the Third Age (i.e retired people who want to keep on learning) and in the course of searching around on the internet for some figures for human energy consumption, I came across your website.

Your figure for how far a man might cycle on a gallon of fat is different from my estimate, which was about 1100 miles. My calculation was based on the assumption that the energy content of a pound of fat was 4095 kilocalories - i.e. 455 g x 9 kcal per gram.

My figure for kilocalories per pound translates into 36855 kilocalories per gallon (assuming fat has a density of 0.9 kg/l), and if we assume 500 kilocalories per hour for cycling at 15 mph, that would mean about 1100 miles per gallon of fat.

The Hockey Stick Breaks (Global Warming Data refuted) by Protagoras (6/26/07)

Essayist Protagoras' analysis of global warming data drew this high praise from a top climate researcher, Geoff Sherrington; Michael Goodfellow's essay on the same topic is also excellent. Both are from the Readers Journal archives.

There is so much material on this topic that it is only now, while conducting a search on the Net, that I came across your article in oftwominds.com some several months after it was posted.

I am the Sherrington referenced in relation to correspondence with Prof Phil Jones on global temperatures. Therefore, I have a special interest in reading such material.

Simply, I wish to say that your essay is one of the cleanest, clearest expositions of this complicated subject that it has been my pleasure to read. Indeed, I wish that I had your communication skills. Unless you indicate otherwise, I would like to use this article in several forums, mostly related to Inquiries afoot in my home country of Australia.

Congratulations on a job well done.

Geoff Sherrington, Scientist

The C.I.A., Threat Assessment and Oil: The Wisdom of Crowds?

Is This A Nation At War? (Sept. 2004)

My Own Family: The World Mixed in America

A Culture of Deception and Fantasy

Health, Healthcare and Bankruptcy

The End of Entitlements

Ugetsu: Greed Is Not Good

Lies, Corruption and Deception in the Global Village

A New Inflation Measure: The Grateful Dead Inflation Index

Brittleness

Are Our Cities Making Us Fat?

When an Old Friend Takes Her Own Life


On occasion I can't resist extended silliness:

Welcome to the Kroika Cookie and Biscuit Company


There are a number of short stories on the site; these have drawn reader appreciation/hits on the server:

How I Fell in Love with a Homeless Woman

The Adventures of Daz and Alex


Over the years I've played rhythm and lead guitar on a number of jams which were recorded for our amusement, as well as on Mike Dakota's witty send-up of President George Bush, "King George Is Back." The tunes will play in Windows Media Player (or your default player). My leads have the "fat" sound of my 1976 Les Paul Deluxe; the other players are working the distinctive vibe of Fender Stratocasters.

King George Is Back (studio)

All Along the Watchtower (jam)

Under My Thumb (jam)