The Village Voice ceased online operations last month, a year after ending its print edition. It was the end of the line for the laborious, gritty investigative reporting that was the heart and soul of the paper. The muckraking for which the Voice was known has become an endangered species. According to an article in the … Continue reading This Is Why We Need a Free Press
I think at this point the statute of limitations has expired. So it's time to come clean. When I was about 18 years old a friend and I went to Zern's Farmers Market in Gilbertsville, PA just for something to do one Saturday night. As we were walking past the record store, I caught a … Continue reading Returning to the Scene of My (One and Only) Crime
Here is one of the questions Dan Ariely was posed in this week's Wall Street Journal: Hi, Dan. My son Joey is turning one year old, and we’re throwing a birthday party for him. People usually give toys on such occasions, but I’d like to ask them to give him money instead. How can I … Continue reading I’m Not Sure How I Would Answer This Question
I've read a lot about Bitcoin over the past few years, and watched a few videos as well. I've even invested in it a bit, using Coinbase. But despite all this, I still don't really get it. Fortunately, a video was finally made that explains it perfectly. Now I just have to find a video … Continue reading I Don’t Get Bitcoin – but This Video Explains It Really Well
Today was our 37th wedding anniversary, and I knew it was going to be tough to top what I wrote last year, 36 F***ing Great Years, so I'm not even going to try. It was a pretty typical day; we both taught, got some takeout for dinner, and watched World News Tonight and the season premiere … Continue reading A Peaceful, Easy Anniversary
I'm not sure why, but last week a random thought about poetry popped into my head. It may have been triggered by hearing about a book that had been turned into a movie or was going to be turned into a movie. And I thought, 'I wonder if singers/composers/record companies ever buy the rights to poems with … Continue reading Some Thoughts about Poetry and Censorship
It's a question that artificial intelligence researchers are asking themselves with greater urgency. If one of the goals of AI is to allow humans to converse with computers in a way that is as natural, intuitive, and frictionless as conversing with people, then AI systems need to master irony, sarcasm, ambiguity, humor, and puns—aspects of conversation that … Continue reading Can Computers Be Funny?
We were driving to a family reunion yesterday, and along the way we passed the building (shown above) where I used to work 37 years ago, Prudential Insurance. It was my first "real" job, working as a dividend analyst in the group insurance division. I was part of a management development program that would have … Continue reading What If???
I wonder if it gets harder and harder each year for men's suits designers to top the previous year's designs. And if it does, if the only option left is to "jump the shark". While the definition of jumping the shark has its origins in the world of TV (the point in a TV series … Continue reading It’s That Time of the Year Again – Crazy Men’s Suits from the Wall Street Journal
I am once more grateful to the Twitter account of Marketing Birds for posting these entertaining clips. Enjoy. Here's an ad for an eyeglasses company featuring a soccer player. I guess when you are a soccer player, you think anything round is a soccer ball... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35JQxTe3yLA Here is a clever video from 2014 that looks … Continue reading A Few Short but Entertaining Videos/Ads
Borden's Blather 