So, we had a serious blanket of smoke here, due to some fires (quite a few, actually) and a freak wind from the North East. I mean serious smoke. At 1:30 in the afternoon it was nearly pitch black outside, save for street lamps and such. Probably that meant it Read more…
Let’s face facts, folks: there is no science behind Star Trek. It’s Science Fantasy(1), not Science Fiction. Looking for the science behind it is like looking for the science behind Lord of the Rings. There isn’t any, but there doesn’t need to be any. It’s internally consistent (Star Trek sort of, Read more…
I think I was 12 years old the first time it dawned on me what “kills 99.9% of all germs means.” I was spraying a can of “disinfectant” around, per my mom’s instructions, because the basement had flooded, flood handled but now things might be growing in the damp cinder Read more…
“There’s nothing special about being old. It just takes a long time.” ~ Robert Heinlein (speaking as Lazarus Long) Our society worships youth to an absurd degree. Even when I was a “youth” (that is, enthusiastic and very dumb) I thought this was a pretty silly thing. I knew Read more…
Folks born since the end of the 1980’s have no idea (thank God!) what it was like living under the Cold War. Unfortunately, not too many who were there understood what was happening either, because they didn’t know any better, and because after a while it’s all just background noise. Read more…
I was one of those weird kids who was disappointed that Latin was no longer available when I got to high school. The forebear of all Western Languages (more or less, not a completely true statement) and it’s not being taught any more? Sheesh… Well, I have had lots of time Read more…
Quick thought: If *I* put out a product that worked as randomly, as poorly, as sporadically as your typical cell phone(1) or as, say, Microsoft Publisher(2)… I’d get into quite a lot of trouble. Question: why don’t they? Yes: my shortest post to date… (1) I have a fairly Read more…
Okay… another Windows 10 rant. Be warned! So I was upgrading a laptop to Windows 10. (Yes, there are plenty of machines out there running Windows 7; many folks who are still not anxious to embrace the Beast.) Unfortunately, it was Windows 7 Home not Pro, so it upgraded to Read more…
There’ve been some really bad marketing decisions made by really wealthy companies. For example: Pepsi, when they were doing their “taste of a new generation” campaign, had it translated into Chinese and it (according to article I read waaaaaay back then) came out as “brings your ancestors back from the Read more…
There was a very important book written some years ago, by a famous author (Michael Crichton) called Jurassic Park. It was very successful, widely loved, etc. Then it was turned into a kids dinosaur movie and that which was most important about the book was lost. Possibly forever. The point Read more…
I was watching an old movie (not that old, but “old” is truly a relative term) and they happened to include the oath for admission to the Florida State Bar (lawyer stuff). It seems like the kind of thing that surely at least 50% of lawyers (one might say “especially in Read more…
World’s getting a touch weird, yes? Strange people have been “elected” to power (in many nations). New but otherwise fairly ordinary diseases have caused radical fashion shifts. Already touch-deprived(1), now most of us can not touch each other at all, practically upon pain of Law. Some merchants no longer accept Read more…
So, I was about to write on another topic altogether, just to discover that an automatic update to one of the modules that make up this website had crashed the entire thing. All that would come up was an error message. This was not a small-time, off-brand add-on, either. It Read more…
How ridiculous can we get? So, I install an antivirus system on a Windows 10 laptop… it will be run once and then uninstalled, and then another one will be run, and then a third one. Then I’ll uninstall all of them except the built in antivirus Windows 10 comes Read more…
I like war movies. It’s disgusting, I know. However, watching myself over the years of my life and my reactions to war movies change has been interesting. A long time ago, I thought war movies were just plain cool. Then they were a disgusting adoration of the worst Humanity has Read more…
So… here we are in a strange moment in history. One year ago, going around with your face covered would have gotten you stared at, approached by cops, etc. Today, not covering your face in public gets you stared at, ostracized, refused service. Heck… according to some news reports, even Read more…
When you make a thing illegal you lose control of it. Let me explain by example. Prohibition in the US was made Law by a constitutional amendment that made alcohol beverages illegal from 1920 through 1933. During this time more alcoholics came into being than the nation had ever known Read more…
Medical Science gives me a headache sometimes. It appears any more that they rarely look for the cause of your symptoms nor have a true causative agent for almost anything. Not even the “common cold” (more on that below). For example: look up “dry eyes” on the internet. Better yet, Read more…
On my walk back from the Post Office this morning(1), I noticed one of those pseudo-health drinks(2) lying in the gutter by the street. Suggestive of someone swigging his “health drink” and then tossing it out the window. Contradiction! Now, a fast-food wrapper lying there, that I could understand. Fast-food Read more…
Back in the Cold War(1) days , a friend of mine in the Navy related a story to me about one of those “this never happened” encounters between American vessels and Soviet ones. The “enemy” vessel was being annoying at the American one, knowing that no one would actually shoot, Read more…