Category: Miscellaneous
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Commercial Holidays
One feature of American life during my half-century in it has been the annual complaints about commercialization of holidays. The primary subject is Christmas, of course. Christmas gift buying is such a key part of our economy that devout believers have given up trying to keep the focus of the holiday on its religious or…
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An Age of Wonders?
I grew up in the post-Apollo era of space exploration. Skylab launched when I was in elementary school, and the Shuttle made its debut when I was a freshman in high school. What this all means, among other things, is that I have spent most of my life hearing ambitious plans for space exploration which…
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Convention Report: Albacon 2017
(". . . Featuring ME!") I drove west through sleet, rain, and fog — but no snow, which was a huge relief as I was in a car without snow tires — to Albany, which looks as if someone decided to drop the 1960s capital city of a large post-colonial nation into the middle of…
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Albacon 2017, Featuring ME!
On Friday and Saturday, March 31-April 1 I'll be a guest at Albacon 2017, the long-running convention in New York's capital city. There's a really impressive lineup of people attending: Charles E. Gannon, Stephen Hickman, Lawrence M. Schoen, Ken Altabef, Ken Burnside, Debra Doyle, Jim MacDonald, Chuck Rothman, Ryk E. Spoor, Ian Randall Strock, and…
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Where’s My Flying Journalist?
This is slightly more serious-and-thoughtful than my usual posts, but it's something that has been bothering me more and more of late. It has become a rather tired joke, since 2000 came and went, to ask "Where's my flying car?" Or, more generally, to wonder why this or that gee-whiz prediction about Life In The…
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Future Creep
I recently spent an informative day sitting around a big table discussing medical robotics with a bunch of people who knew a lot more about medical robotics than I did. Since we were talking about modern cutting-edge technology or next-ten-years developments, the technical experts were all very clear that the "robots" in question will be…
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Some Bad News
It wasn't just 2016. It's not a "bad patch" we're going through. Your beloved childhood media icons are going to keep dying. FOREVER. Here's why. It's about television. Movies have been around for a century. Movie stars have been dying almost as long. But I submit that movie actors, even the biggest and most enduring…
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Most Disturbing Thing You’ll See Today
It's Carnival season again, which means it's King Cake season! Which means it's King Cake Baby season! I love my home town. Where else can one take pride in the "creepiest mascot" in pro sports? Here's a video made by the Pelicans which seems to glory in the unnerving nature of their mascot. Those eyes.…
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Random Historical Trivia
Anyone who complains that the Electoral College used by the United States of America is too complicated should take a gander at the method employed by the Republic of Venice to select its Doges. Step 1: The Grand Council (sort of a House of Representatives, except that membership was by invitation rather than election) would…
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It’s Not Christmas Without NORAD
Every year at this time I link to my favorite Christmas Web site: the Official NORAD Santa Tracker page. If you don't understand why this site is the sweetest, goofiest, and yet also the greatest embodiment of the Christmas spirit, you have the soul of a Krampus. And Krampus is not welcome in this airspace.…
The Cambias Digression 