So the other night we held a scotch tasting with our friend Sue Lampson.  (Fortunately her nondrinker husband Alan was available to drive her home.) The bottles I contributed are shown above, ranging from sweet/sherry/vanilla on the left to smoky and peaty on the right. Sue brought her own box of goodies, and so we […]

More boxes of books have arrived.  They’re coming faster than I can give them away! Be that as it may, this photo should tell you that the revised edition of The Praxis is finally in print!  (It’s been available as an ebook for some time.) It’s the “Author’s Definitive Edition.”  It says so right there on […]

Shoshana Zuboff takes aim at surveillance capitalism. . . . the digitization of everything was giving technology firms immense social power. From the modest beachheads inside our browsers, they conquered, Blitzkrieg-style, our homes, cars, toasters, and even mattresses. Toothbrushes, sneakers, vacuum cleaners: our formerly dumb household subordinates were becoming our “smart” bosses. Their business models […]

I’ve been trying to work hard and mostly failing, so I might as well listen to Pink Martini and surrender to the mood. The chorus is a riff off the French composer Poulenc, and translates as follows: I don’t want to work I don’t want to lunch All I want is to forget And I […]