In 1950 the journal Mind featured a curious proposal for determining if a computer could think. Submitted by code-breaker and computing pioneer Alan Turing, the idea was that an examiner would pose questions to a…
Posts published in “Essays”
“You don’t have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.” — John Ciardi My last few trips to the village of Mendocino have coincided with the lunchtime release of the…
I never attended Kindergarten. I’ve had the audacity, over the years and decades, to claim that fact as the underlying reason for every life failure (or life lesson gone awry) that I’ve ever experienced since…
So if you're wondering where I went, I will just be honest and tell you I have a new project for school that is taking up a bit of my blogging juice. You can find…
Shouldn’t we all have the right to make informed decisions about the foods we may wish -- or, more significantly, not wish -- to consume? The US is one of the only industrialized nations that…
In 2011, bicycling champion Lance Armstrong demanded an apology from “60 Minutes” after the program alleged that he used banned drugs to ride faster. Then he shut up, and then the truth came out, and…
My brother, a successful Internet Technology person living in San Mateo, recently wrote, “I know the Bay Area is back because for about three years no one was going out to dinner and a concert,…
The three upcoming so-called presidential debates (actually parallel interviews) between Obama and Romney show the pathetic mainstream campaign press for what it is — a mass of dittoheads desperately awaiting gaffes or some visual irregularity…