“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) 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 Read more…
Amazon has a widely recognized symbol that is used on TV, on their boxes, on the internet… even used where Children can see it. They call it a “smile.” That is not a smile! The best spin I can put Read more…
Have you ever thanked your coffee pot for doing its job correctly? How about your house plant for being pretty? (You have house plants, right? You know, oxygen, color and life inside the house? Clean(er) air?) When did you last Read more…
Does it bother any body else that YouTube has a commercial for their commercial-free membership? That is, they offer a version of YouTube that has no commercials at start of or end of or even interrupting a video; albeit you Read more…