In “The Empire Strikes Back,” Yoda utters a line which is memorable, quotable, cool and weird: “Luminous beings are we not this crude matter.” He, and Lucas as the writer of that line, might have been onto something as it is being reported that the human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely […]
A few months back I read in a NYT Circuits (now called “Personal Tech”) article the eyeball’s equivalent to music to my ears: that the GSM Association (a cellphone-company trade group) said that its members have agreed to settle on a single, standard charger design for all cellphones – MicroUSB (what is currently used by […]
A friend sent me a link to a song by Perpetuum Jazzile that is up on YouTube. Who are they? Well, they are the only Slovenian jazz choir, are conducted by its artistic director Tomaž Kozlevčar and are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. Their repertoire consists of an ear-catching selection of vocal jazz and […]
40 years and about 5 minutes ago man first touched down on the moon and I got to listen to the way it happened. I actually got chills as they were landing. Seriously. “Houston (uh) Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.” “Roger Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. We got a bunch of […]
To honor the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar mission, during which mankind first stepped foot on a galactic body that was not our own (and where the United States claimed ownership over the Moon – ours is the only flag up there even today), the JFK Presidential Library has launched a simply gorgeous […]
If you think that your relationship can withstand the divisive power of the almighty Scrabble, good luck with that. “Sources said that since the vengeful, lovelorn [Hasbro CEO Mortimer Z.] Hassenfeld first began marketing Scrabble under the Hasbro brand, roughly 1,447,055 romantic couplings have been destroyed by the game’s devastating ability to turn otherwise felicitous […]
Last night I post about how I’m so grateful that I don’t live in a war zone without ever thinking about how rooted I was by the bangs and the booms in a Twentieth Century mindset. Because of the US’s global geographic location, the kinds of artillery battles that I felt like I was in […]
A few years ago, I remarked when listening to the cacophony of fireworks exploding in the same suburban neighborhood that I was in this past weekend that “this is what it must be like living in Iraq.” Well, this past July 4th made me feel like I was in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the unruly Chinese […]
Sometimes the title of a post says it all. In a true “Worlds Collide” type moment, two of my most beloved Sci-Fi universes meet as the Death Star destroys the USS Enterprise. “Military force was authorized yesterday after the alleged time travelers and their craft ignored an ultimatum to stop whale poaching.” Gotta love the […]
To help advertise the new book The Jewish Body by Melvin Konner, the publisher made a funny little video about a modern day Golem in Brooklyn. Of course, hilarity ensues and mission accomplished – I’m showing you the video thus advertising the book. Rabbi: Golem we have summoned you to protect us from invaders. Golem: […]