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Our daughter in Capetown recently sent me an article by Omar Najjarine published on Substack called, Of course you can't focus. You live a life of permanent interruption with a subheading of Why we can't think clearly anymore. If you subscribe to Substack, I urge you to check out the entire article because I won't be able to do it justice in a short blog post. The original article is over 3,800 words. It has been said that the average attention span of a person today is abo

More True Facts and Trivia adapted from various sources including That's a Fact, Jack! and True Facts that Sound Like Bull$#*t You asked for more trivia and true facts so happy to continue this series. Thank you for the comments and suggestions. One reader in particular asked for some historical trivia, so some is included here. Without further ado: Bran Castle in Transylvania is called Dracula's Castle. In Romania, a storybook castle once held Vlad III, better known as Vlad

Cool Cover Songs Part 2 Here's some more songs that were covered by other artists and some feel are better than the original - Let me know what you think: Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen redone by Jeff Buckley All Along the Watchtower by Bob Dylan redone by Jimi Hendrix Hurt by Nine Inch Nails redone by Johnny Cash Africa by Toto redone by Weezer Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits redone by Leo Moracchioli and featuring Mary Spender. (Leo is a personal favorite of mine and does a L

Nothing like a cool cover song Several years ago, we had a few friends over and played our version of "Name that Tune" where you'd play a few seconds of a song and have them guess the name of the song and the artist. One guy at the party was incredibly talented at it and could often name the song in like 5 seconds of hearing the intro. It started a second discussion about bands that do cover versions of other people's songs and that some of the remakes are better than the or

Fanciest Data Room I've ever seen Nerd Alert - Yes, it's going to be one of those posts - run away if you don't like technology blogs. But I'm going to make this one seem interesting even if you're a total technophobe. You pick up your phone to look for a photo, turn on your computer to search the web, surf Netflix to pick a movie, or perhaps check your email. Does the Internet Fairy bring you this information? While there's always that possibility, your request is probably

The crew of Artemis II Friday was a proud day for America. The crew of Artemis II, Reid Wiseman : Commander, Victor Glover : Pilot, Christina Koch : Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen : Mission Specialist successfully returned to earth on Friday April 10th, 2026, at 8:07PM. The Artemis II mission was our first foray into space with a crewed flight around the Moon in over 50 years. The trip's nearly ten-day mission started on April 1st at Kennedy Space Center and concluded whe

Michael Jackson released a song in January 1988 called Man in the Mirror that appeared on his "Bad" album. Part of the lyrics are: I'm starting with the man in the mirror I'm asking him to change his ways And no message could have been any clearer If you want to make the world a better place Take a look at yourself, and then make a change This past winter, I was going through photo albums and came across a photograph of my oldest son as a toddler sitting in the bathroom with

More True Facts and Trivia adapted from various sources including That's a Fact, Jack! and True Facts that Sound Like Bull$#*t You asked for more trivia and true facts so happy to continue this series. Thank you for the comments and suggestions. Without further ado: Despite not existing, the Unicorn is the "National Animal" of Scotland. Venus spins clock forward and no one knows why. The rest of the planets in our solar system spin counterclockwise. We almost nuked the moon.

Thinking about cutting the cord? My grandfather had a little Zenith 10-inch television on his back patio where we used to watch Phillies games during the summer. It was my job to adjust the rabbit ear antenna to get the clearest picture possible. Somewhere along the way, we added aluminum foil to the top of the little antenna ears to make it better. Eventually, he got a house antenna mounted on the roof and we ran coax cable down to the back porch. Despite my grandmother c

Resurrection Sunday Wishing all my readers a Happy Easter Sunday on this holiest of days.

Artemis 2 - We have liftoff! For the first time since 1972, the United States of America has launched a crewed space journey to go around the moon. At 1835 hours (6:35 p.m.) on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, a crew of three American and one Canadian astronaut lifted off from 39B launch site at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Orion spacecraft sitting atop the SLS (Space Launch System). This rocket system stands 322 feet tall and generates 8.8 MILLION pounds of t

Rock-Ola Bubbler Harley-Davidson Digital Music Center Jukebox Some people collect stamps. Other people like old coins. My wife and I have always been fans of music and have transitioned over the years from albums, cassettes and 8-tracks to hundreds of CDs and now MP3 and streaming services. Several years ago, we commissioned Rock-ola in California to build the Bubbler Harley-Davidson Digital Music Center jukebox pictured above. Each jukebox is built by hand and if you were

Cranberry anyone? Left to right, Jeff Aulich, Jimmy Dormire, Randy Threet, Henry Paul IV, Henry Paul. Not pictured, Mike Bailey and Dave Robbins Penns Peak hosted the American Southern rock band, the Outlaws this past Friday night. The Outlaws are from Tampa, Florida and have been around for more than 50 years with various band members coming and going during their tours. I saw them in 1976 at the Scope in Norfolk Virginia and again in 1979 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.

What has 8 legs and looks like Mr. Potato Head? You're probably wondering why a post on Octopuses? Part of the creative nonfiction class that I'm taking at LCCC is required reading of a book by Sy Montgomery entitled The Soul of an Octopus. I read quite a variety of different genres but have never come across this New York Times bestseller before and quite frankly, I'm intrigued by the content. Montgomery's book explores how surprisingly intelligent octopuses are and goes int

Photo from thereviewgeek.com What do Yellowstone, 1923, 1883, Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, Lioness, Landman, The Road, U.S. Marshalls, The Madison, Wind River, Sicario, Hell or High Water among others have in common? They're all created, produced or written by Taylor Sheridan. I've been accused of being a fanboy for a few things in my life - Apple products, Harley Davidson, Veteran's rights, live music, Buddhism, Fender Guitars, Blues Music, Grateful D

What are you looking at? Chuck Norris passed away suddenly on Thursday at the age of 86. He was surrounded by family and was in a Hawaiian hospital for days prior to his passing due to an undisclosed medical emergency. No cause of death has been released at the families' request, but they did say he was at peace. Carlos Ray Norris was an American martial artist, military veteran, actor, screenwriter, and author. He held black belts in karate, taekwondo, Tang Soo Do, Brazi

I worked for 18+ years at Lehigh Valley Health Network and would hear about the new batch of resident doctors that would be coming to our network each year without really understanding the process of how they got there. It became "real" to us when our daughter-in-law, Ali, who will be graduating in May from med school and went through the Match Day process. Ali and our son, Rob, have given us permission to tell their story. Ali has been a med student at Penn State College of

Excerpts from That's a Fact Jack! Here's some more fun facts and trivia for you: If you put a mirror one light year away from Earth and looked at it through a telescope, you would see two years into the past. (This one confused me a little, I'll admit) Potatoes have more chromosomes than humans do - 48 verses 46! The steam rising from a cup of coffee contains the same amount of antioxidants as three oranges! The largest human cell is the female ovum. The smallest is the male

Green Beer Our family is Irish and German, and we take our Saint Patrick's Day celebration seriously! Let's get one thing out of the way - It's ALWAYS Saint Patrick's Day and NEVER Saint PATTY'S day! Our uncle Pat would be rolling in the grave to hear it called anything other than Saint Patrick's Day... Like most good traditions, Saint Patrick's Day origins come from our ancestors and the old country. Compiled from a Copilot search on the subject: Saint Patrick's Day, celeb

What??? Another article on Drones? Didn't he just do one? For those of you that have been reading my posts since Roberts Reader started last fall, you may know that I write all the articles myself but research a ton of websites before sitting down to pen a story. I initially started writing a general article on drone technology a few weeks ago but because of the operations in Iran, I kept running into news cycles that talked about how drones were being used in battle. I made

3.14 is Pi Day Today is 3-14, internationally known as Pi Day! Pi Day originated in 1988 as a playful celebration of a math theme by Larry Shaw. Larry is a physicist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco who started the tradition to mark the date 3/14 as Pi Day because it matches the first three digits of Pi (3.14). Here's LARRY! Originally, the activities involved: Marching around in a circular space Eating fruit pies Reciting digits of Pi Celebrating Albert Einstein's Bir

$500 Backpack sized Kamikaze Shahed Drone VS $4,000,000 Patriot Missile The geek in me has become fascinated by drones over the past few years. I'm researching another post about drones in more general terms but wanted to talk about an issue that's been dominating the news lately. We've been hearing a lot about drones being utilized in Operation Epic Storm. While the United States has been dominating against Iran, it comes at a real financial cost when the enemy uses chea

Sugar Mountain, a Neil Young Tribute band played at Penn's Peak on Friday night with a new leader singer and guitarist, Geoff Doubleday, replacing John Hathaway. This was only Geoff's second performance since joining the band. They were tight, authentic and true to the magic of Neil Young's music. Geoff is a multi-instrumentalist, singer and song writer from Sparta, New Jersey. He has been playing guitar since he was three years old and professionally since he was thirteen.

Dad Jokes never get old The following Dad jokes are from various sources and are specifically designed to make you laugh, groan or shake your head. But I bet you repeat at least one of them to someone else! Enjoy! What do you call a cow that can play a musical instrument? A moo-sician. What is a UPS driver's favorite sport? Boxing. How do amoebas make calls? On a cell phone! What car always breaks the rules? A Nissan Rogue What kind of watch does Bigfoot have? A Sasquat