Maybe I've gone soft in the head, but the other day I thought I found a bug in Zen. I still think I'm right, but feel free to correct me if you can refute this (slightly edited) note that I sent to a friend ( Read more... )

The hippies failed. Will the neo-hippies fail, too? One of my friends has become a neo-hippie (I hate to label him, but it keeps things concise :), so I've had several first-hand encounters with their bizarre lives. They are similar to the hippies in spirit, but much more practical. They are shrewd hippies, and they form local, regional, and ( Read more... )

I've been reading The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World, by Edward Hasbrouck, and it has been incredibly enlightening. Hasbrouck is an unbelievably knowledgeable and intelligent travel agent/author. He leaves no stone uncovered. His book tries to focus on general travel issues as much as possible; issues that are somewhat ( Read more... )

I keep reading articles about it and I keep seeing the horror on TV, but I'm still shocked every time I read a new article or switch to CNN Int'l. I was shocked by the death toll after the earthquake in Bam, Iran, last year, but this is far, far worse.

Unlike successful scientists, who often have impeccable biographies (e.g., started reading at 5 months, solved his first quadratic equation by 9 months, had read the [insert famous religious text] forward at 1 year and then backward at 2 years, was appointed Supreme Scientist of the Kingdom at age 20, etc.), many novelists have pitifully tragic ( Read more... )

On the dangers of being blindsided by nongeneralistism or laziness:

Sample Email from Ban Trans Fats"to whom it may concern ( Read more... )

Ban Trans Fats!

I haven't updated this blog for a while. I'll return to it soon, but until then, I'll continue reading others' blogs.

Btw, I recommend Dolmetsch Online. It has lots of free recorder teaching material (I just love the Scorch plug-in) and other stuff, including a free book on how to compose music and a free music theory course ( Read more... )

"Blood changes, including a steep decline in disease-fighting white cells, have been found in workers persistently exposed to low levels of benzene, a common industrial chemical known to pose a leukemia risk at high concentrations ( Read more... )

I took the trolley for part of the journey to the Houston Public Library today, and the driver, an African-American male, probably in his early 40s, said I had to pay 50 cents. The trolley service was free just a month or two ago. I asked him about the change, and he said that the city actually shut down the downtown trolleys for a week or so, ( Read more... )