Television like nobody’s watching
Last week, CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” averaged about 38,000 viewers a night. In the whole country. That’s it. Just 38,000 people. Which in the scale of a national news network, is pretty much… nobody. Now, I’m not saying that to be mean to Piers Morgan. He seems like a reasonably decent guy, even if he [...]
24 years, and NOW foam is falling off?!?
OK, somebody explain this to me. We’ve been launching space shuttles since Columbia first went up in April 1981. For 22 years, with the exception of the tragic Challenger O-ring in 1986, there have been no problems. Now, all of a sudden, foam is falling off the external fuel tank every time we launch one. [...]
Supreme Court lets Jose Padilla rot
Let’s see, you live in America, and you’re an American citizen, so you think that things are ultimately fair. Oh, you’re not naive, you know that there are people who are not entirely fair, or maybe some that are corrupt, or maybe some that don’t have the public’s best interest at heart. Maybe there are [...]
Is intelligence sustainable?
My nephew, Jake, is four years old, and he’s so smart that the pediatrician can’t even measure his intelligence because the scale only goes up to age seven. He lives 1000 miles away from me, but I met him for the first time a couple of years ago during the big Northeast blackout, when I [...]
Don’t worry, it’s only “information extraction”
I can’t even comment on this analysis of the legal twisting and turning of reality with regard to the torture of Iraqi (and Afgani) prisoners. Consider the notion that: In order to prove ‘severe mental pain or suffering,’ the statute requires proof of ‘prolonged mental harm’ that was caused by or resulted from one of [...]
How green was the Gipper?
Oh, and I forgot about Reagan’s environmental record.
Um, this is Ronald Wilson Reagan, right?
I’ve been listening to the supposedly liberal press falling all over themselves to appear conservative for a whole week now, I have to ask: we are talking about Ronald Reagan, right? President of the United States between 1980 and 1988, right? That Reagan? ‘Cause you’d be hard pressed to know it watching the obsequeous coverage [...]
Disney blocks Fahrenheit 9/11 distribution
This is kind of a difficult one for me to take sides on. I don’t like Michael Moore, because I feel like he’s an opportunist who’ll stir up trouble wherever he can. On the other hand, I hate Bush more. Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, about the censorship that took place after the terrorist attacks, [...]
Cold Turkey
I guess that being in your 80s gives you the perspective to see what the rest of us would see if we ever slowed down enough to pay attention. And being a famous author gives you some license to say it out loud. Kurt Vonnegut is both, and proves it with Cold Turkey, a piece [...]
Vengeance is Mine, Penny Book Seller!
When we’re amongst ourselves, a frequent topic among computer book authors — and, I suspect, most other types of authors — is the fact that Amazon canabalizes sales of new books (for which we receive royalties) with prominent links to used books (for which we do not). One author recently found a way to make [...]