Your first job is a classroom
You spent years in school learning how to think, write, analyze, and perform. Then you landed a job, and discovered that none of that fully prepared you…
Author: Rick Good
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader's money, real estate, and business coverage.
The CIA’S 35-year-old puzzle was cracked by accident
In the courtyard of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, there’s a 12-foot-tall, S-shaped copper sculpture covered in 1,800 hand-cut characters of…
The Moon: Not just for romance.
Soon it’s for shipping Here is something that sounds impossible until you think about it: it may someday be cheaper to ship minerals from the moon to…
Hormuz: The world’s most important waterway
The Strait of Hormuz is, geologically speaking, an accident. It formed roughly five million years ago when tectonic shifts cracked open a narrow passage…
The American Opportunity Tax Credit
The American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC) is one of the most valuable tax breaks available to college families and one of the most misunderstood. The…
Does your teen (or college student) need to file taxes?
It is a question many parents do not think about until April, but sometimes the answer is not what they expect. For working teens, the federal filing…
Helping your teen land, and keep, that summer job
Summer is prime time for a teenager’s first job, and parents have more to do than just say “good luck.” A little preparation makes the difference between…
The ants are back and they mean business
Every spring, like clockwork, they appear. On the kitchen counter, along the windowsill, marching in a determined line toward whatever crumb you forgot…
Father’s Day was a tough sell
Mother’s Day became a national holiday in 1914. Father’s Day? Not until 1972. It wasn’t for lack of trying. When Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington,…
America 250: The Smithsonian comes to you
For most of its history, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival has meant one thing: a trip to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This year it means…