Well, as September draws to a close so too does summer.  Technically, the equinox marks the end of the season two thirds of the way through the month but most of us simple call it done after Labor Day.   That’s a shame really, as there are many more weeks of sun and warmth available in most places in the United States but the start of school seems to suck out all the fun.  We at Blog Wyrm were particularly sad to retire this past summer as it was far more enjoyable to at the beach with the pandemic mostly behind us.  Anyway, we thought we would leave a small trace of perpetual summer behind to bring our thoughts back to good times yet to be.

Last Gasp

Now onto the columns.

Many of us enjoy a good mystery but few of us stop and actually take the time to analyze just what makes a mystery good.  There are many reasons:  good characters, rich details, and so on.  But nothing is as good as a satisfying explanation of the solution where we look back and say that we could have solved it had we just put two and two together.  Every mystery writer must walk that fine line between making the crime too obvious that it loses the fun and making so obscure that the reader cries foul.  This month’s Aristotle2Digital explores a philosophical way to strike that balance.

Student loan forgiveness is a hot-button topic these days.  Should we or shouldn’t we forgive student debt.  Afterall, doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance?  Or maybe the correct way to argue is that forgiving student debt just rewards bad behavior.  CommonCents weighs the moral hazards of loan forgiveness by comparing student-held obligations to those held by small companies given COVID relief loans.

After over a year of analysis and discussion, UndertheHood draws to a close its exploration of thermodynamics by discussing a challenging heat engine process called the Sadly Cannot cycle (an obvious shout out to Sadi Carnot).  This deceptively simple two-stroke cycle is a teacher’s gem as it deeply tests one’s knowledge of the first and second laws while being completely mathematically tractable.

Enjoy!