Yesterday I talked briefly about the recent discovery that the Arctic ice was melting faster than had been thought, and that it was now likely that the ice in the Arctic would be totally gone in summer by the year 2012. That was bad enough, and I took the current administration to task for its unwillingness to be part of … Continue reading
It’s not really a secret, but the Kansas Curmudgeon was born in Nebraska. In Omaha, to be exact. The same Omaha that was the site of the shopping mall shooting earlier in the week. I had worked right across Dodge street from the Westroads Center for quit a while before I moved, at a tender age, to California. Incidents such … Continue reading
A blog post by Kouros reminds me that we all sometimes think that the current generation of children is taking us to hell. I believe that all older people may have thought that from time immemorial. As I wrote as a section header in one of my novels: All grandfathers, since the dawn of the human era, have looked … Continue reading
Just a couple of days after I wrote a column on the idiocy of Black Friday middle-of-the-night promotions and how much smarter it is to shop on line, I find out that on-line retailers are also jumping on the bandwagon. Because of the incredible mess that the little Bush has made of the economy, retailers are expecting their worst year … Continue reading
While you are sitting down at the table this Thanksgiving, I would like you to remember this column, just for a second. You may wish to thank a higher entity, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to spend a moment closer to the ground, as well. All of that food did not just magically appear on the table. For that matter, … Continue reading
I have gotten some family and friend reaction to my recent column on education and technology. Essentially, several people have said that they understood the idea, but that I was much too hard on education and much too easy on the students. There is more than a little bit of truth to that, I suppose, especially from some viewpoints and some … Continue reading
No, this is not a political question. This is much bigger, a man vs. nature question. I have a fair idea of my place in the universe, which is not much. I am tiny piece of protoplasm floating around in a remote part of one galaxy in a billion. If me and my entire planet were to vanish overnight, no … Continue reading
Oddly enough, I had to get this Kansas topic from a friend in Australia. Yvonne (her blog is here) emailed me about a great YouTube video exposing the archaic methods of education being used all over the world, and the way that young, internet-savvy students feel about that, which is mainly annoyed. I would paste the video in, but as I … Continue reading
I got tagged today by the West Virginia Blogger to go and collect my Be The Blog award from MeAndMyDrum. It is for bloggers that “make it their own, stay with it, are interactive with their readers, and just plain have fun.” Well, that’s me, I guess. At least I always try to interact with both my regular readers. I’m … Continue reading
Every night at five minutes until seven, I call my father in Nebraska. Often, he doesn’t answer the phone at other times because it is very frequently charities that he has never heard of asking for money. So 6:55 p.m. is our little code. He know that it is me and he picks it up. If you have been to … Continue reading