Apparently Kickstarter has decided I fit the profile of someone who wants the perfect bag. They may not be wrong. One reason why I love winter is I can justify wearing a coat. My favorite coat has a gallon in pocket space. I can carry ALL THE CRAP. Phone, novel, notebook, pens, change, receipts, camera, chargers, headphones,…
Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov My rating: 3 of 5 stars I enjoyed the Asimov’s essays about robots, computers, and cyborgs. They are well done. The short stories at the front of the book are the same stories published in other books. There are a few new ones. So, if you do not mind re-reading…
Saw something that looked clickbait-y and for once glad I clicked on it because I learned a new term I want to scream from the mountaintops: bullshit curation. Clickbait sounds almost respectable. One of my favorite recent terms I learned from Jon Stewart was “Bullshit Mountain.” It refers to the Orwellian spin of stories from political…
There is a Twitter thing running around where people post their first seven jobs. I do not think mine would fit in a tweet, so I put it here. This title should show up there as a hashtag and be my contribution. If you count by employers, then I have had 1-3. University System of…
Loving Day by Mat Johnson My rating: 4 of 5 stars A satirical jab at identity. Like so main character and many supporting ones, I am mixed. Am I black? According to One Drop laws, absolutely yes. According to some black people, yes. According to other black people, not enough. There are similar mixed messages…
Michelle Obama: I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. Bill O’Reilly: Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802. If he used a weasel word like “some” to say slaves had relatively decent treatment, then I…
My introversion is strong, so I feel the need to spend time alone to recharge my batteries. That does not mean I hate people. That is my elitism and narcissism. I do recognize the benefits of meeting new people, especially the complete stranger phenomenon described in Crossing Paths: Sometimes a complete stranger can answer our questions…
Motivated Reasoning aka soldier mindset: This phenomenon in which our unconscious motivations (our desires and fears) shape the way we interpret information. So some information and ideas feel like our allies and we want them to win. We want to defend them. And other information and ideas are the enemy. We want to shoot them…
Crash Go The Chariots: An Alternative To “Chariots Of The Gods”? by Clifford A. Wilson My rating: 2 of 5 stars Wilson challenges the evidence presented in Chariots of The Gods. As scary as Chariots was, Crash seems to fall on its face in similar ways. Ad hominems and non-sequiturs abound. At the end, it…