This in-depth, well-researched New York Times story about problems with public toilets in Seattle and other cities states everything but the obvious: You can have safe, clean, convenient public toilets in big cities if you have attendants working at them who are decently paid. Apparently nobody in Seattle is willing to work as […]

Now that the economy is really looking peaked, and we’re all supposed to have spent our stimulus checks on cool stuff already, I thought I’d take a quick look back at the select handful of electronic appliances/gadgets/doohickies that I once lovingly unwrapped, yet still find useful or cool. I am not a huge purchaser […]

The New York State Fair has a lot of competitions for kids, from dance to animal husbandry to even a spelling bee, but I wonder why they don’t hold a New York geography bee for kids at the fair. (Couldn’t be any more boring than some of the other stuff going on!) I […]

In Defense of Curiosity, by Eleanor Roosevelt, blogger.

It’s July — Tour de France time. My mother enjoys watching it on TV because it’s the closest she’s going to get to visiting France. The cyclists pass through tiny settlement after settlement. Each has a unique name, but all look alike: villages without industry, mere clusters of homes and farms, […]

This coming holiday weekend (or rather, the rest of this non-holiday week) will be another chance to observe if the trend I think I’ve been noticing is really happening: the American beehive is slowing down. Since last year, I haven’t been the only one who’s had the impression that activity (in the workplace, […]

Wild Bee Swarms Spur Hope of Rebound
What did I tell you? That’s where they all went — they’re in basic swarming at Fort Killer Bee in Merchantville, New Jersey. Wow, I totally called this.
As the late George Carlin predicted, “Everyone’s dead, and the trees are humming.”
Updated: Strike Force Alpha has already been […]

Dear IT Staff:
Why do you come around every summer and pull the rug out from under me? Suddenly, without warning, you appear and tell me my perfectly good computer has to be replaced, or that everyone’s got to “migrate” somewhere else. Last year, you took away the e-mail program I liked, and replaced […]

For some people, a signpost of time’s passage is the death of a politician or a movie star, perhaps because they grew up in a time when politicians and movie stars mattered. For my generation, the signposts may be the passing of TV and standup comedians. Recently we lost Harvey Korman, and now […]

Breaking news: American college graduates are discovering they have to work during the summer now that they’ve received their degrees and have entered the workforce. The New York Times is the first to report in-depth about this disturbing new trend.
“You always knew that after summer, you go back to classes. And after classes, […]