With Good Reason

To read about Mark Twain’s travels in, views of, and relationship with Russia, visit this section of the Twain Quotes website.

The Total Artificial Heart is one of the many wonders of modern medicine.  It is a mechanical device that replaces the human heart. Vigneshwar Kasirajan (Virginia Commonwealth University) has performed 60 operations implanting the Total Artificial Heart, saving the lives of patients who may have died while waiting for a transplant. Also Featured:  Researchers around [...]

Nine teams of step dancers from black Greek organizations wowed spectators recently at what has become the largest folk festival in the nation.  Dance historian Benita Brown (Virginia State University) says stepping routines at the sororities and fraternities are part of a tradition that goes back to African tribal rituals.  Folklorist Jon Lohman (Virginia Foundation [...]

Just shy of their 100th birthday, the Girl Scouts are working to shed their cookie and campfire image with new badges that focus on skills such as such as robotics, web design, and even “The Science of Happiness.”  Sandra DeLoatch (Norfolk State University) has just been given the highest Girl Scout award and a badge in her [...]

Halloween is just around the corner.  Haunted houses, graveyards, and ghost walks – paranormal tourism is more popular than ever.  Teresa O’Bannon (Radford University) is an expert on what she calls “dark side tourism.”  Then, With Good Reason will also do a little ghost-busting of its own. Also featured: The Shenandoah Valley is prehistoric home of mastodons and giant sloths, [...]

To read some of Dr. Kieran Lindsey’s answers to questions about “wildlife and your car,” visit Car Talk‘s wildlife section on its website.

When Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in 1890, it was a substantially altered version of Wilde’s original text. Material considered scandalous for its day had been cut out. Nicholas Frankel (Virginia Commonwealth University) is the editor of a new edition that restores Oscar Wilde’s famous novel to its original form – a [...]

When President Ronald Reagan traveled to Normandy in 1984 to mark the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, a young army officer, Casey Brower, was with him and deeply moved.  Casey is now Brigadier General Casey Brower (Virginia Military Institute) and takes cadets on tours of the American cemeteries for the fallen soldiers in France.  [...]

The United States gives out roughly 25 billion dollars a year in foreign aid projects. Is that money ending up in the right hands and what is it accomplishing? Michael Tierney (College of William and Mary) and his colleagues have created AidData to allow the public to follow the money. Also featured: Biologists have used game theory to [...]

Michael J. Tierney is also the co-author of Greening Aid?: Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance, which examines the environmental aid spending that took place in the last two decades of the 20th century.