I decided to buy the latest iPhone. Mine was so old that Siri could no longer remember stuff. “Siri, where’s a good place to get a burger and fries.” “Hi Eddie. I’d suggest Howard Johnson’s.” “I think they went out of business.” “Whoa! Don’t tell President Nixon. He loves their sarsaparilla.” So, off I went […]
Centennial Junior High School. Boulder, Colorado. 1973? What happened was this. In PE we were playing soccer (what the rest of the planet calls “football”) and a stocky little guy named Tony kicked the ball out of bounds. Tony was in my German class (please don’t ask), wore his stick-straight hair in bangs and kept […]
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If anybody asks you, “What Is the Southernmost point of Africa?” you would probably say “The Cape of Good Hope.” And you probably identify that location with the City of Cape Town, South Africa. But you would be a little off. Cape Town is located at a point which the earliest Portuguese explorers called the […]
Have you heard the one about taxpayers funding a $3 million shrimp treadmill? It is a brain virus spreading through the MAGA world – to validate the utterly lawless vandalism of our government by Trump and his unconstitutionally appointed hit man Musk. MAGA people apparently never heard of “Google,” which when prompted yields the real […]
How do things end? I made a whole career out of writing very short “Thoughts.” But where does a thought end? For years, I’d been jotting down various ideas. They could be a new form of literature. But every such form must have some structure, and a crucial dimension would be its length. Looking through […]
Our glowering POTUS has wrecked all our excited rumormongering with the usual blunt force. Isn’t it in the interest of a benevolent despot to keep his cards close to the vest? Promulgate an air of mystery? I suppose after all these years of having been enslaved by the deep state we should be grateful for […]
In our society, the word “Rest,” and most of its connotations, have a generally positive resonance. Even when it comes to the matter of being dead, it has a somewhat soothing aura. But watch your Latin grammar and spelling here. The expression “Requiescat in Pace” means “may he – or she – rest in peace.” […]
“It Ain’t What You Don’t Know that Gets You into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure that Just Ain’t So.” Do you remember “learning” that the U.S. has three equal branches of government? Well, you may “know” that, but it is wrong. Under the collective alias “Publius,” Father of the Constitution James Madison – […]
Okay, my version probably won’t do well on the hip-hop music charts, but I think it will resonate with some readers on the hip-lumbar charts. It all started one morning at breakfast when my wife said: “My back is killing me.” Being a sympathetic guy, I suggested she call the police and report a sacroiliac […]
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Rounding up millions of longtime residents, placing them in detention, and deporting them. Where have we heard this before? If you are not outraged by Trump targeting long-time immigrants, then you are not paying attention. Jews lived “undocumented” in limbo in Germany for centuries. Until they were granted citizenship in 1871. And had it taken […]
“It wasn’t a mutiny. It was the bone-weary ship’s crew selecting – by voice vote – a new captain, one whose brusque nature and laudable transparency in speech gave them hope of precisely the rigorous captainhood the increasing stormy seas obliged. There were trifling misgivings. “The gentleman had been captain once before and had acquitted […]
As you probably know, the words in our language have a tendency to change over time; in spelling, in pronunciation, or even in meaning. But there is at least one case in which the word has come to mean the exact opposite of what it once did. To make matters even more confusing, both meanings […]
I do a lot of scanning for my work. My Microtek scanner of many years died and could not be repaired because Microtek went out of business. The only replacement option was an all-in-one printer and scanner. I chose Epson. The software that comes with these all-in-one devices is not usable for anyone doing serious […]
When I was in my teens and still living in England, both that country and the U.S. still had what was called a “Draft.” It applied only to men within a certain age range. But there were stiff legal penalties for failing to register. You might be exempted for medical reasons, but for healthy young […]
