Yesterday marked four months since my most recent surgery, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. No, not going to say “four-month anniversary,” a major pet peeve, because the “anni” in “anniversary” is Latin for “year.” I regard the misuse of this term as one of the many symptoms of our ongoing decline, if not an actual cause. So far […]
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Gone but not Forgotten
He was healthy, handsome, and would have made someone a good companion. But because he was somewhat older, nobody seemed to want the midsize chihuahua mix with the big brown eyes. So he was passed over, again and again, by folks who mostly wanted younger, sportier models. This was not his first rodeo. Twice before he had been surrendered by […]
Continue readingGlobal Boiling is Officially Cancelled
You may have noticed that a lot of folks seem to be in a panic about Climate Change. This concern rests on the assumption that increased atmospheric CO2, presumably from human activity, will cause increased heat retention in the atmosphere, leading to potentially dangerous over-heating of the planet. The principle is pretty straightforward. Incoming radiant energy from the sun, consisting […]
Continue readingTruth Hurts
The story made quite a splash when it dropped a week ago. A fellow named Uri Berliner wrote a piece for the Free Press, an online outlet, critical of his employer, National Public Radio, for having essentially become a Left-wing mouthpiece. Now a week might as well be a decade in the current age 0f 24/7, high-volume, light-speed, bleeds-leads, news […]
Continue readingThe 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. China’s pledge to the Paris […]
Continue readingAmerican Samizdat
Back in the bad old days of the Soviet Union, there were two principal state-owned publications, Pravda (“truth”) and Izvestia (“news.”) Russians, terminal cynics, would habitually joke “There is no pravda in Izvestia and no izvestia in Pravda.” But they read both anyway, hoping to glean whatever nuggets of truth might be found lurking between the lines. The Soviet Union […]
Continue readingA Case of Reckless Endangerment
I was headed southbound, homebound, on Mopac about 10 pm yesterday. Traffic was light, visibility unlimited. Defcon 5; put it on cruise and let the mind wander as the miles pass. I was a little past the 35th street exit, just south of Camp Mabry, doing a bit under under 70 in the middle lane, slowly passing another car in […]
Continue readingBack 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 […]
Continue readingHard 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 […]
Continue readingLess 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 […]
Continue readingCreative License
Not all that many years ago, when I still had energy and drive and my brain had not yet turned to mush, I wrote music on occasion. Not a lot, but enough to have compiled a modest repertoire. To date I have roughly fifty finished pieces; a bunch more are unfinished. A couple count as “professional,” works because I was […]
Continue readingOf Road Trips and Journeys
So there I was, hauling along about 80 or so, northbound on I35 a few miles south of Waxahachie, when suddenly there was a “bang,” followed by a sharp drop in speed and a loud, rhythmic popping sound at a rapid tempo, which dropped from prestissimo to andante as I decelerated. Instantly, multiple warning lights flashed red alert. My first […]
Continue readingYet 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 […]
Continue readingA 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 […]
Continue readingFun 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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