Wanted: Acting Future Scapegoat—White House seeks driven power-monger for cameo in top-ranked drama. Lose your moral compass on this thrill-a-minute ride.
Quips: My Short Takes
How the Grump Stole July 4th!
Everybody in U-ville liked the Fourth quite a lot,
But the Grump in the White House, amused, he was not…
Every Day is the New April 1
I know it’s only April 1, but what a long, strange year it has been already. Every day, the real headlines look more and more like something from The Onion. Reality and farce have become so intertwined that Snopes.com recently …
The Finger: Typos Making Mischief
One slip of a finger at the keyboard can completely alter the meaning of a word. Caught during editing, typos cause laughs. Missed, they cause problems. On this last day of the month, when sellers send buyers a statement of…
Phone Sex
The movie Her raises interesting questions about the future of relationships between humans and artificial intelligence, as well as the direction of movies in the same genre. For example, many people must carry a separate employer-provided business phone in addition…
Tracking Baby Jesus
One of the oddest uses of GPS tracking I found while doing research for the book, GPS Declassified, was the case of a community center in Wellington, Florida, that used it to catch a thief who stole baby Jesus from…
Steppin’ on Toes?
In a new TV ad, N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory proclaims, “We’re steppin’ on the toes of the left and the right to make tough, necessary changes.” Funny, I haven’t heard anyone on the right squealing about his heavy foot, but…
Damn the homonyms!
English. What a language. Is there another tongue with such radically different meanings for the same words? Consider the phrase “sports bar.” One is a nutritional snack for health-conscious consumers; the other is a place to drink and sweat while…
Nonverbal communication
I just read this headline: “Scientists say our languages might preserve Neanderthal talk.” — My immediate reaction: “uh-huh.” Find this content useful? Share it with your friends!
What is Truth?
What is truth? Hard to say. Facts and fiction seldom appear in our universe as pure polar opposites. They arrive bound at the hip like hydrogen and oxygen, seeping into every crack in our lives, quenching our thirst for knowledge,…