The Energy Elephant

According to a recent article [paywalled; excerpts in link] in the South China Morning Post, China is “at risk of missing its [climate] goals” unless it reins in its ambitious coal-fired power plant building program. This assumes, of course, that China was sincere when it promised to scale back it’s carbon output. Color me dubious. Its pledge to the Paris […]

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Back in the Saddle Again. Sort of.

I am back at the office after nearly a month of recovery, following major abdominal surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. This surgery was necessary to correct damage caused by earlier surgeries, and to quash a stubborn and injurious infection left over from those earlier interventions. Many thanks to Alicia for holding down the fort while I was out […]

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Hard Choices

Had an interesting week, punctuated by an extended back and forth with Dr. Cima at the Mayo Clinic, my surgeon, through the Mayo Patient Portal. I had been unclear about some of the details of the upcoming operation, so I asked some hard questions. The answers were unexpected and not what I wanted to hear. In brief: To eradicate the […]

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Less than Zero

Claudine Gay, President of Harvard, who appeared before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on December 5, drew harsh criticism, mostly from the right, mostly for her wishy-washy response to the question “Do calls for genocide against Jews violate Harvard rules of conduct?” Ultimately, she answered in the affirmative, but only after some serious waffling and squirming, in […]

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Good News, Bad News

A couple of days ago I returned from a scheduled visit to the Mayo Clinic for a consultation. Following the principle of lemons-lemonade, I had elected to drive there, rather than fly, because I greatly enjoy road trips, and because I had never seen that part of the country before from ground level. The journey began rather inauspiciously. Which should […]

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Yet Another Milestone

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Computer Medic as a brick-and-mortar business. By 2003, I had been working out of my house for several years. But you can only go so far with that arrangement. People don’t take you seriously unless and until you have a physical location. So I was looking to take it up a notch. A lady […]

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A Very Long Year Indeed

Today, February 21, marks the first anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. An eventful year, as you might imagine. It’s all better now, but for a while it very much wasn’t. For some folks, a cancer diagnosis is a bombshell, a bolt from the blue. Mine was more like the confirmation of a nagging suspicion, following years of minor but mostly […]

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Fun Times Ahead

Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, when Russia was the USSR, its government was a black box, and the country was run by old-guard communists not kleptocrats, there was a class of experts, called Kremlinologists, whose job it was to figure out what was really happening behind the scenes, using whatever cryptic clues were visible to […]

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Forward to the Past

Everything has an upside, even the decline that comes with aging. For example, thanks to slipping testosterone levels, I have developed an appreciation for musical theater. Well in fairness, it’s always been there to some degree, but I no longer bother to hide it. Anyway the girlfriend and I watched the recent remake of West Side Story over the long […]

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Recollections from a Former Life

Yesterday, May 3, marked 25 years since I left my former employment as an editor at Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Publishers. It was a warm, sunny, humid day, one of those days that finally banishes the last traces of spring. I remember standing in the parking lot for the last time, looking back at the dark green glass cube that […]

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The Path of Greater Resistance

Or: A Skeptic’s Journey We all have our favorite topics, and those of you who have read much of this blog undoubtedly know that one of mine is Climate Change, AKA Global Warming, AKA Global Weirding, AKA Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, AKA Climate Alarm. In this subject I have a minority viewpoint, but one that is, I think it fair […]

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In Memoriam

Solemn anniversary today. Is there anyone who doesn’t remember where they were and what they were doing that day, seventeen short years ago, when death descended without warning from a clear blue sky? The day began much like any other. Three hundred million Americans went about their morning routines, oblivious to the drama about to unfold. I was reading the […]

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The Power of Conditioning

It was a silly, negligible article on what has lately become a silly, negligible website. A wiser person would have let it slide. But it poked me in a tender place, and I am not the kind of person who can just let such a thing go. So instead of shrugging it off with a sigh I took the bait. […]

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A Grandiose Conceit

A few weeks ago, on March 24, we were treated to the spectacle of the First Annual Earth Hour, in which everyone on the planet turned off the lights for exactly sixty minutes, beginning 8:30 p.m. local time, as a gesture of solidarity with this beleaguered planet we call home. OK, so not exactly everyone. Well, truthfully hardly anyone. You […]

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Hang a Left at the Goat

Since childhood I have had the pleasure of living in The Republic of South Austin. South Austin is to Austin proper as Billy Carter was to Jimmy. It is the slightly seedy, sometimes embarrassing poor relation that’s always been a little off. Land of pawn shops and pink plastic flamingos, yard art, couches on the front porch, chain-link fences, and […]

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