Crunching down the soggy North Beach alley 2 am Frisco fog overhead drunken old bum pissing on the grimy wall. I was going to walk on but the sound of his stream triggered my own…
Posts published in “Essays”
In the early 70s we all knew that cocaine was the “greediest” drug. Marin County was giving birth to the yuppie phenomenon, and young, hyper-ambitious squares with stock portfolios, who “wanted it all now,” were…
The musical terrain stretching between the entrenched aesthetic positions of parents and those of their teenage children is dotted with mines and ordnance laced with mustard gas. After enduring countless bombardments of Lady Gaga singing…
When I worked at Scientific American in the 1960s, mail addressed to Martin Gardner (no relation) sometimes wound up on my desk. The author of the widely read “Mathematical Games” column lived in Hastings-on-Hudson and…
High Times magazine sponsored the original “Cannabis Cup” in Amsterdam in 1987. The event inspired plant breeders and publicized their strains and their seed companies. It has been held annually ever since — a fine…
If you are planning to fly over the 4th of July holiday, be aware of your rights at airport security checkpoints. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has mandated that passengers can opt out of going…
I daresay creativity cannot be taught. Creativity can be engendered, encouraged, cultivated, and supported, but being creative is as natural as breathing, and so to purport to teach creativity is to lie. And the multi-billion…