There is this thing that has always bothered me about criminals – the real bad ones who get sent to prison for long periods of time for doing real bad things. What bothers me is the fact doing what they do isn’t just morally bad, it is stupid. Really, really stupid. I’m not talking about …
Category Archive: Culture and the Human Condition
Jan 05 2013
Potlatch 22 Programming Questionnaire
(I am leading the programming sub-committee for Potlatch 22 this year. What follows is the questionnaire we are sending out to all current and past members of the convention. Are you interested? If yes, buy a membership at the link above and fill out and return the questionnaire as soon as possible.) (Potlatch is a …
Aug 19 2012
Come on, baby don’t you want to go?
I had every intention of skipping the Science Fiction World Convention this year. Yeah, I have a membership, have had for a year. No, I don’t have anything against Chicago. At least not anything that would keep me from going there for a couple of days. The problem is time: I don’t have it. I …
Aug 08 2012
Welcome to the Group Mind
Today John Scalzi opined “. . . if I want to have a thought of mine preserved for eternity, I put it on my blog; if I don’t care if I ever see it again, I put it on Twitter.” I rarely comment on ‘Whatever’, but this time I did have something to say. In …
Jul 22 2012
Red Robin makes good
Last week I wrote an open letter to the CEO of Red Robin complaining about how they handled a bad situation I was involved with at their Seattle location. I’m tardy writing this update, but the general manager of that Red Robin location phoned me a few days later. She was pleasant, apologized without making …
Jul 11 2012
Open letter to Red Robin
[UPDATE: Red Robin makes good!] To: Steve Carley, CEO Red Robin From: Jack William Bell, an ex customer Subject: Your staff put me in danger
Apr 22 2012
Prometheus would be proud
From the Wikipedia article for ‘techné’: The term is often translated as craftsmanship, craft, or art. It is the rational method involved in producing an object or accomplishing a goal or objective. Yet another meta-mind convenience-concept of the Greeks (good for ‘thinking about thinking’), techné both describes a magnificently human behavior pattern and links it to similar patterns …
Feb 10 2012
It’s always nice to meet a young person who knows the classics
It’s been a long and very sucky day, with few bright spots to lift it out of the suckitude. Among other things I drove over a hundred and fifty miles to take care of various bits of business (some of it in places that moved completely across town, a fact I only discovered by going …
Nov 26 2011
Why Occupy Wall Street matters
Watch the TV news or read the newspaper coverage and you come away wondering just what it is those crazy protestors camping out downtown want. Sure, they want something done about bankers and financiers getting rich off of the misery of ‘the 99%’. Certainly they want social justice. Clearly there is a fairly standard leftist streak running …
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