The SSS Blog is moving to a new site, http://ssshupe.com. The advantages are more control (for me), no advertisements (for you), and my very own domain name. Readers shouldn’t notice any other big differences. The old site on WordPress.com will remain but won’t be updated regularly. I will probably play with the blog theme for awhile until I find one that suits me. Comments on what you like or dislike about […]
I turned sixty today. Not dealing with it particularly well, truth be told. I’m finally aware that my life is not just finite (something I knew intellectually but never felt inside), but extremely finite. All that time I had to do anything I wanted to do? Well, it’s mostly ticked away. There’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do, but never seemed to find the time to do, and that’s write. […]
A rhetorical question but, as you’ll see after a short techno-rant, one that opens a door into a basic truth about the world. For an older guy, I’m pretty tech savvy — early internet adopter (Usenet, anyone?), longtime Linux user (and reformed distro jumper), Python/machine learning dabbler. So the fact that the Windows operating system is still, after how many years now (well Windows 95 was a big thing, remember, […]
Less than four days from the election and the veil is already coming off. Repeal Obamacare? “President-elect Donald Trump is already signaling that he might backpedal on his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” according to many sources, including the Washington Post. “Drain the Swamp” by eliminating the corrupt establishment from government? Nevermind. “President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition […]
Through the process of raising our boys, Suzie and I were introduced to the concept of “magical thinking,” a phenomenon common in adolescents. In that context, magical thinking is an unconscious belief that merely thinking that an positive outcome will occur is enough, by itself, to make it happen. Magical thinking allows adolescents to dream, to picture themselves as succeeding, without having to engage in any hard work to make success […]
I woke up at 4:15 this morning, panicked, out of a vivid, realistic dream. It took place at a lake that looked much like Donner Lake near Truckee, but with gentler slopes all around it, and with an enormous dam at the east end where the state park is. There were houses all up and down the hills around the lake, a small city really, four or five thousand people, […]
Election day 1980. I was in my second year of law school in Ithaca, New York, and invited about 15 of my fellow classmates/friends over to the attic apartment on College Avenue that I shared with my Sue and Sue to watch the election returns. As the evening went on and it became clearer and clearer that Ronald Reagan was going to become the next President, the sense of disbelief […]
I have a former colleague whose daughter is an outstanding soccer player on one of the best high school teams in the area. The paper today reported that her team had lost in the quarterfinals of the playoffs by a 1-0 score. That made me start thinking of how unfair it is that athletic contests have a binary outcome, and then thinking about how we overvalue the results of arbitrary […]
It’s now almost a certainty that Russia is attempting to influence the U.S. Presidential election by leaking stolen/hacked emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager. And it’s evident who Russia wants to win the election: Donald Trump. Before pulling the lever, or filling in the bubble, or marking an “x” on the ballot for Trump, every Trump supporter ought to take a good long while to ask, “Why?” Why […]
Suzie’s Aunt Ellen is an Episcopal nun. Until I met Suzie and Ellen, I didn’t know there were Episcopal nuns, nor that there was any kind of monastic tradition left in American religious groups. But Ellen is living in a convent, called the Order of St. Helena, which recently relocated to a beautiful, calm piece of property in North Augusta, South Carolina, just across the river from the more famous […]