Solstice
Winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is due to occur about seven hours from now. I'll be on a plane...
Torture apologism
In the wake of the US Senate report on the CIA's use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” plenty of prominent people...
Oakland encounter
Yesterday evening, after leaving Kam's place in Oakland and putting a bunch of stuff into my car in the dark,...
First-person plural, indeterminate
I've now encountered this interesting and unusual PoV in multiple works of fiction: The narration is in first-person plural. It...
iPhone 6 Plus thoughts so far
I bought an iPhone 6+, mainly because it's almost exactly the size that I've been wanting for an ebook reader...
Nifty squaring technique
I just encountered this nifty way to easily square numbers in your head: To calculate n2 for n between 40...
Techno-renewal and other life updates
Last week was fairly difficult for a variety of reasons, but it ended pretty well. After difficult-family-anniversary stress on Tuesday,...
More from my father’s FBI files
It was over a year ago that I received a copy of my father's FBI file, 272 pages of photocopied...
Harold and Maude
(I wrote this entry in July, but was reluctant to post it at the time. Now that I'm ready to...
The Changeling
Among my favorite books as a kid were a few by Zilpha Keatley Snyder: Black and Blue Magic; The Egypt...
Long ago, it must be
Today would have been my father's 75th birthday. It's also the 34th anniversary of my mother's death. I wasn't feeling...
State of the Jed
I meant to write a bunch of long-delayed blog entries while on vacation last week, but it somehow never happened,...