Losing Face Book
So. The Facebook IPO was, at the most optimistic and FaceSaving estimate, a disappointment. Headlines read like notes for a PowerPoint presentation. Facebook Tumble Means Morgan Stanley Gets Blame For Flop Zuckerberg’s Fortune Down $2.1 Billion As Facebook Drops U.S. Stocks Waver as Facebook Declines Facebook’s Mobile Miscalculation Shares of Facebook continued to slide after [...]
Professor Mike: Euro Debt Crisis
Ireland Automotive innovation helped pull both Germany and Japan out of post-war economic hardship and into global financial security. So too, will cash-strapped Ireland try this proven formula. In July, Dublin startup, IPAC — Ireland People’s Auto Car — will roll out the Claddagh, a seven-seat, three-door touring sedan, with such daring innovations as a [...]
Sunday Sermon: CHOICE
I don’t wish to alienate many good and otherwise rational people who believe in such things, but predestination is a large and offensive delusion. To believe in predestination is to believe — however nuanced, however parsed, however sliced and diced the presentation — that we are creatures of a partisan Fate, that those of us [...]
Nukes, FB, and Pepsi on the skids?
Three stories in today’s New York Times — stories with little in common otherwise — leaped out at me because they seemed so, well, so improbable. Gen. James E. Cartwright… a former commander of the United States’ nuclear forces, is… calling for a drastic reduction in the number of nuclear warheads. It’s gratifying, of course, [...]
Soul searching
The Real Thing, the Tom Stoppard play at Schenectady Civic, closed yesterday, and with it, my photo show. No one bought anything, but I didn’t really expect to sell; a couple friends — people with experience in this sort of thing — suggested pricing the pictures, just to get into the habit. As well, probably, [...]
Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On
You probably remember Billy Graham. He’s the old-line revivalist preacher whose sanctimonious blather (hmm, that does sort of give away my own prejudices) was widely reported to have been a saving grace for Dubbya. That would be G W Bush, the dimwit frat boy who needed a stroll on the beach with ole Rev Billy [...]
Big Story!! (not)
Yesterday, President Obama came out… in support of gay marriage. It was a “stop the presses” moment for much of the media, which only shows how slender a hold media barons have on reality, or perhaps how slender a hold they think the rest of us have. Look. In 1996, Clinton signed the Defense of [...]
The Wednesday Rant (this one’s upbeat)
I have, a time or two, cited Scripture on these pages. One which springs to mind is Two Thousand Years Later, an inimical jab at the highly jabbable Bennie 16. Another Scriptural citation comes to mind today. It’s the one about the Lost Sheep. What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose [...]
Two more from the show
The last two I’ll post here for a while. There are/were altogether 13 in the show; these will be numbers six and seven. The first one is from New York City, shot just outside Bryant Park, behind the Public Library. The building on the right does actually curve near street level; the one on the [...]
The Last of the Wild Things
From a letter Harper & Row editor Ursula Nordstrom wrote to Mauice Sendak: You may not be Tolstoy, but Tolstoy wasn’t Sendak, either. You have a vast and beautiful genius. As lovely an epitaph as one could ask, just right for Maurice Sendak, who died this morning at the age of 83. That quote is [...]
Moving the books…
…off the internet, not off the shelves. The first of my mystery books, Door to Door, was on sale as an e-book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Now I’ve taken it off the market. Here’s why. First, it was on sale but not really selling. Second, it was an e-book rather than a real [...]
More pictures from the show
First night of the Stoppard play, coinciding with first night of the Sheehan show. I went to the theatre and sat around, before the show and during intermission, wanting to see which pictures drew most attention. This one got the most attention. Two others about which I heard nice comments were these. This was, literally [...]
Photograph show
Tonight, a regional theatre (Schenectady Civic, if you’re close enough to stop by) opens its performance of The Real Thing, by Tom Stoppard. Also — and coincident — the theatre will have on display in the social hall downstairs a selection of my photographs. First time I’ve shown them in public (with prices, no less), [...]
A blog’s OK, but FB isn’t?
Not what I said, nor what I wanted to convey. Facebook is good for socializing. Many relatives and friends are constantly active there, and for a time I joined them. And that is the crux of the matter: “joined.” It works for many people, but not for me. I’m not a joiner. Before long, though, [...]
Wednesday rant
I don’t generally admit it in public, but I read the comic pages of the local newspaper every day. Not every comic; some of them are lifeless, grim, or dull. One that I do like is Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich. Today’s strip — actually, it’s a strip condensed neatly into [...]
