WITHIN THE SPACE OF LESS than a year, I have gone from a smartphone disdainer to a smartphone … user? enthusiast? Dare I say addict? That last descriptor is perhaps a touch harsh. Let us say instead that I have…
Category: Crit
Examination, analysis, appreciation.
Why Am I Still Here?
BARRING ANY UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, I will celebrate my 62nd birthday tomorrow. Leading me to ask: “How did THAT happen?” As a child of the 1970s and very early ’80s, my gentle nihilism is understandable. It was a period marked by…
5 Thoughts: Lifechangers
0. YOU ARE ON A PATH. Suddenly, something knocks you onto another one. Here are five (of my many) “somethings.” 1. 2001: A space odyssey. At the tender age of six, my mind was blown, by what I could not…
“2001” in 2024
LET’S TAKE IT FROM THE top, shall we? – Earth-orbiting weapons: check. – Commercial spaceflight: check. – “Shirtsleeve” space environments: check. – Seatback videoscreens: check. (Legal pad-sized portable videoscreens: check.) – Spaceflight stewardesses: not to my knowledge. – Zero-G pens:…
Sales Experience Necessary
IT HAS LONG BEEN PROPOSED in some circles that, in order to build a better class of citizens, we need some sort of national-service program along the lines of an in-house Peace Corps or revamped Works Progress Administration. “Give people…
We’re all just raindrops on a windshield.”
— Jerry Seinfeld, to Michael Richards in “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”
A Weary Wariness
UNTIL OCTOBER 7 AND ITS AFTERMATH, I hadn’t understood just how pervasive and systemic Jew-hatred was. (Is.) I did know it was Out There, of course, but only intellectually. It’s something else to see it in its natural habitat. Case…
Word to Bring Back: “Fastuous”
– Definition: adj. 1. haughty, arrogant 2. ostentatious, showy – Used in a sentence: The fastuous have taken their first steps down the rabbit-hole of militant mediocrity. – Why: It sounds similar to “fatuous” — silly and pointless — and…
Life 2023 Style
ALWAYS ASSUME A CAMERA.
Word to Bring Back: “Privacy”
– Definition: n. the quality or state of being apart from company or observation – Used in a sentence: American culture’s “instant celebrity” fixation is playing hob with the basic concept of privacy. – Why: Duh.
Posse Commentatus (An Alpha-Nerd Manifesto)
(Originally posted 2007.06.28) IN THE BEGINNING was the Text. But not for long. The Text – definer and exemplar, authority and comfort, platform and trampoline – was no ordinary collection of words. It spoke of history and possibility, treated miracles…
Regarding ChatGPT (or, Cassandra’s Got Nothing On Me)
BE CAREFUL PLAYING WITH THE shiny new toy — the shiny new toy may decide to play with you.