“Salaam and good evening to you, worthy friends” (Aladdin).   I’d like to say that the last six months have been full of excitement and wonder.   Alas, it was not entirely so.   I got back “home” some time in the middle of October, and my “vacation” pretty much ended.   The business that allowed me to travel […]

          The other day, I heard a version of one of my favorite songs on what I could only guess was something like Muzak.    The person singing is had a nice enough voice, but something wasn’t right about what I was hearing.    I went home later and listened to the original.    They […]

          What drives a person, motivates them to complete something massive, like a book?   As I mentioned in a previous post, Stephen Crane wrote “The Red Badge of Courage” in seven days.   Woof.   He must have been possessed.   The man who ran the original marathon, Pheidippides, ran from a battle raging in the city of Marathon, […]

          This may come as a shock, but I play video games, occasionally.   I know. It’s unfathomable, isn’t it?   The games I play, though, aren’t the ones where you steal cars and run over hookers and drug dealers, or mindlessly shoot at other players for hours on end.   The stuff I play is what is called […]