Regular readers may remember that, way back in kindergarten, I couldn’t follow what my teacher was demonstrating when she taught my class how to tie our shoes the classic way: “Tie a knot, then the bunny runs around the bush and jumps down into the hole.”

I clearly remember thinking “What are you talking about? I don’t see any bunny!”

So my kindergarten teacher came to my house after school — I lived across the street — and showed me [more...]

The 2012 Super Bowl will take place one week from tomorrow night.

Every year, millions of people watch it.

But I’m not one of those people.

I never watch the Super Bowl.

In fact, I never [more...]

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, when my wife and I made our living as musical performers, we saw most of the U.S.

The Smoky Mountains in the East.

The painted desert in Arizona.

Washington state’s apple country.

The Jersey shore. [more...]

Regular readers of this Journal may know that I have very little drawing ability.

In fact, my drawings of people are much closer to raw stick figures than to anything resembling real people.

But, many years ago, I was completely humbled and in awe when one of my two goddaughters showed that she was well on her way to becoming a great artist — at the ripe old age of two years.

And by the time she was ten years old, she could [more...]

If you knew that you were going to die soon, how would you spend your time?

Randy Pausch was a highly successful professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at prestigious Carnegie Mellon University.

But then he was told that that he was going to die of pancreatic cancer.

So he got his affairs in order.

Provided for his [more...]

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I’m willing to bet that everyone in the U.S. has heard Louie Armstong’s rendition of the song, “It’s a Wonderful World” many, many times over the years.

It’s been used in countless commercials.

And in some movies, too.

Your mind probably conjures up certain feelings or images when you hear it.

But I’ll bet that you’ll feel differently [more...]

It’s not a war against all computing.

But it’s definitely a war against general-purpose computing.

More and more people are buying smart phones, tablets and other special-purpose computers. Some of them have even written articles, bragging that they now do all of their computing work on those devices.

Instead of on relatively big, bulky general-purpose computers, like mine.

One result of the mobile computing movement is that [more...]

It’s a huge undertaking when humans build a dam to hold back a river.

Both from an engineering standpoint, as well as from an environmental one.

A dam can cause incalculable, permanent effects on wildlife, ecosystems and topology.

But, every once in awhile, humans change their [more...]