While on my morning walk the other day, deep into a technical explanation in the Alan Turing biography I am listening to, I suddenly noticed a large dog off to my right. I don’t normally see dogs without owners, so I paused to look at him (or, perhaps, her). I realized at once it wasn’t…
This time of year I can often be heard saying, “You can’t appreciate spring until you’ve been through winter.” By “you” I mean me of course. I lived in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years and I missed spring there dreadfully because winter was nothing more than pages on a calendar. On my walk this…
I. The Desk Lately, I have been thinking about a desk. It is not a fancy desk, but in my imagination, it is a homemade desk. It is not a big desk. It doesn’t have any drawers, but it has a good sized surface. On the surface I imagine some blank paper, and a pen.…
Watching The Crown on Netflix recently, I noted that every episode has the following warning at the top-left of the screen when it begins: Sex, Nudity, Language, Smoking I find these kinds of warning silly. I imagine that there are people who, upon seeing such a warning, will stay away from the program. This is…
Today marks one hundred consecutive days of blog posts that I have written thus far in 2021. 109 posts in 100 days, totaling about 70,000 words. As I said in my post of January 1, I miss the days of just sitting at the keyboard and pounding out something that just occurred to me. And…
Certain Facebook posts try my patience more than others. In particular is a class of passive-aggressive posts that remind me of the now old-fashioned chain letters that used to sweep through email inboxes. If you are on Facebook at all, I’m sure you’ll recognize these. There are two types of these passive-aggressive posts. The first…
A good way to waste an afternoon is to look at all of the apps on your computer and wonder how it is you get anything done at all. Even better is spent the afternoon considering what it means to be productive in the first place. It occurred to me on my vacation that I…
Someone mentioned that we recently passed the 30 year anniversary of the release of R.E.M.’s Out of Time album. That was a watershed album for me. Indeed, R.E.M. turned out to be the soundtrack of my college years, and the years immediately after. I knew of R.E.M. before college. In high school, during the Los…
Forgive the short post but I am mentally drained. I spent 9 hours driving today, and have another 8 hours or so of driving tomorrow to go. While I drive, I listen to audio books and think thoughts. On the drive today I finished up George Dyson’s excellent book Turing’s Cathedral. I also got through…