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 […]
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 readingForward 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 […]
Continue readingRecollections 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 […]
Continue readingThe 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 […]
Continue readingIn 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 […]
Continue readingThe 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. […]
Continue readingA 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 […]
Continue readingHang 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 […]
Continue readingCritique Me, Critique You
A few weeks ago, I published an essay in this space critiquing the recent March for Science, which coincided with Earth Day 2017. The March had been represented as a non-political demonstration of grass-roots support for continued funding of basic scientific research. Fair enough. But in reality it was, of course, a highly political, highly public rejoinder to the Trump […]
Continue readingA Brief-ish, Modestly Revisionist History of the American Civil War
Today is Memorial Day, when all of us collectively honor the service and sacrifice of our nation’s veterans by firing up the ol’ grill, swilling a few cold ones, and then heading on over the Home Depot for that great Holiday Sale Extravaganza. Movie channels will run all the old favorites, and there will, of course, be the requisite tributes, […]
Continue readingGood News is No News
Two separate, unrelated items in the scientific press have recently come to my attention. Both are, it would not be a stretch to say, pleasantly surprising, at least to those of pessimistic bent. And with their emergence is raised the faint but tantalizing possibility that perhaps the end is not at hand after all. The first item, which relates recent […]
Continue readingAgents of Change
A few months back, a neighbor at my business park had a garage sale. Their space had been the warehouse for a well-known local boutique, but the business was about to change hands, so some housekeeping was in order. I dropped by an hour or so before the sale was to begin. You could see right away that it was […]
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