Someone is Wrong on Television
I’ve been avoiding Twitter and its ilk, but dear Lord the people in mass media are even worse talking to themselves on the television. Of course, one of them ...
Category: rant
MacOS Storage Grumbles
I have nothing productive to add here, yet. But first, some precepts: A computer serves YOUR purposes, not the purposes of the vendor. The way an operating syst...
Chickens Coming Home to Roost
Not a few of us have said, over the years, that the PATRIOT Act was an over-reaction. Not a few of us have said, over the years, that the Department of Homeland...
This Land is My Land
1981, bouncing along in the back of a shag-carpeted Chevy van barreling down the highway, windows down, Neil Diamond on the 8-track, singing as loud as we can: ...
You Kiss Your Mama with that Mouth?
Many years ago, as a young man in my early teens, what convinced me of the falseness of Christianity was the behavior of the Church and people who called themse...
Provide for … the General welfare
I am livid. Those fine folks in Congress have an opportunity to help people weather the economic storm caused by COVID-19 and the responses to it, and so the Se...
Put the responsibility where it belongs: the manufacturer
Finally, someone bothering to talk about whose fault all this plastic crap is. It’s not the consumer’s. It’s the producer’s. Senator Tom...
Not One of Us
in which a majority is reduced to a minority through selective definition
Neighborhood Sports
I’ve been enamored of the Kingston Stockade since reading Dennis Crowley’s announcement of the team, but as time goes on, and as my nostalgia become...
The Annual Rant About Daylight Time
Imagine the ridiculous conceit that the sun would change its place in the heavens or the earth pause in its rotations because some men in Detroit were unable to...
The Browser History Fell Through a Memory Hole in my Pocket
If not careful, the brogrammers responsible for the attention deficit economy and big data collection will find their work has gone the way of interactive telev...
The Customer Perspective
There’s too much wrong with the FCC — in all its various political, technical, and regulatory aspects — to get into arguments on the line. How...
My Sons Build Better Box Forts
My love and I put together the IKEA Billy bookcases for my library last Thursday. They had been occupying the hall, and my books boxes, due to certain logistic...
Daylight Saving Time (Revised)
The initial idea for Daylight Saving Time was not, as is commonly thought, to save energy or to give farmers more time to do their work. (Dumbass. Farmers and a...
A Confederacy of Dunces
One style of fiction I most enjoy is what is known as alternate history or, if presented academically, counterfactual history. This genre asks what might have b...
Who Forged These Chains?
For someone who works with computers, I have very little respect for them. Perhaps that’s left over from a programming class where the teacher reminded us...
School, a Poem
Locks us inside 3 minute breaks in between 42 minutes “School,” a poem by Number Two Daughter (13) Number Two Daughter brought this poem home from s...
Math Hatred: A Systemic Problem
If you put a kid who’s teaching himself to read so he can play his favorite games, who can do simple sums, and who can count well past 200, in full-day Ki...
Against Full-Day Kindergarten
The Common Core State Standards website asks, Q: Why do we need educational standards? A: We need standards to ensure that all students, no matter where they li...
You’re Dead. Stop Kicking Me.
Interactive Television has always failed, and will always fail. A lesson from the early days of telephony is significant. Early on it was thought that telephony...