Brad Mathews, Author

Category: Current Events

  • They’re All Going to Laugh at Us, and Maybe That’s the Point

    Do you remember those old PSA advertisements aimed at scaring youth from drugs? I remember one from the not-so-distant past where the narrator holds up an egg (these days he would have to auction off his house to do that) and says, “This is your brain.” In the next shot, we see a delicious egg…

  • Roaling on the River of Chocolate

    “Don’t gobblefunk around with words,” Roald Dahl once warned. This is advice some seem to have ignored. As usual, the debate has quickly boiled down to a few inaccurate or incoherent points made by “both sides,” accompanying the cries of “but what about…?” I will preface the rest of this article by saying I don’t…

  • CEOs, Hedge Funds, and Football Players, Oh My!

    If we can thank the COVID-19 pandemic for anything, it is that it has successfully laid bare the economic inequality that has always existed in America. Capitalism, it seems, has been converted from an economic system into a weapon used to punish anyone it deems ‘not worthy.’ We tout its virtues at every turn, yet…

  • The Responsibility of Freedom

    Due to the unprecedented national events of the last month, this blog has gone notably silent. Before I get to the meat of what I really want to say, let me explain the reason for my absence. First, it has been difficult to find the right words in a time when American citizens are so…

  • Surfing the Title Wave

    Motivational posters may be filled with flowery fluff and cheesy slogans, and they have become a meme in their own right. Every office has at least one. When I started work at the company I have loyally served since 2006, I marveled and chuckled at a few of these posters, which still adorn our walls…

  • Learn Like an Egyptian

    Science has given humanity many gifts over the centuries. Denying that fundamental truth is like cutting out a piece of our souls and banishing it to oblivion to suffer a tragic death, yet many continue to criticize it. I like to say that science isn’t what you know—it’s what you don’t. To put a finer…

  • A Flock Through the Eye of a Needle

    I am not a television enthusiast. I believe that the television may be one of the worst inventions in the history of mankind, though it may have been conceived with good intentions. I find that TV in general rots the brain and contributes to poor development of critical thinking skills. Truly, there is no substitute…

  • It Doesn’t Matter if You’re Zeroes or Ones

    Former football coach Chris Petersen, who coached for Boise State University and later, the University of Washington, became well known for analytical thinking when it came to studying footage of his and opposing players. It’s never as good as you think, Petersen claimed, nor is it ever as bad as you think. Petersen used this…

  • A Balm for Violence

    A nation besieged by violence is not an easy one in which to live. Syria has been struggling with civil war as millions flee the in hopes of a new start where they can feel safe. By nature, our species tends to seek comfort and safety wherever and by whatever means necessary in order to…

  • The Winter of Relativity

    In the early 20th Century, a physicist named Albert Einstein posited that space-time becomes warped around massive celestial objects. By building from Newtonian laws, Einstein crafted his famous theory of relativity and suggested that an object’s energy is directly proportional to its mass. Thus the equation E=MC² was born. Many scientists over the decades challenged…