I am a techno-person. I love computers. I code as a hobby. I’m a far cry from being a Luddite. But there are many ways that digital technology is making us less than we used to be. Many have been widely discussed. But not this one. Search is making us narrower, less well-rounded, and less wise. “Search” encompasses lots of things, and some aspects of it are unobjectionable. The ability […]
A late-model SUV was parked this afternoon in the driveway of our neighbor two houses up the hill. On its rear end was a bumper sticker that said: Bernie Sanders 2020Because F**k this S**t And there you have it, a truth accidentally revealed. Supporting Sanders not because of any expectation that his campaign promises will come to pass if he’s elected (there being a near-zero chance they’d ever get through […]
If Bernie Sanders (or my preferred candidate, Pete Buttigieg) doesn’t win more than 50% of the Democratic Party’s delegates, it opens the door to an open convention, where delegates would be free to select a candidate other than the one to whom they were committed before. I read an opinion piece this morning claiming that an “open” convention would as a practical matter have to nominate one of the candidates […]
In response to my first quick reaction to the Nevada caucus results, this post was to be a screed about how, if the Democratic Party were the Titanic, its response to seeing an imminent iceberg would be to head straight for it with increasing speed. Maybe that will be the case eventually. But for now, despite the media’s always-present tendency to oversimplify (New York Times: “Sanders Takes Control” “Bernie Sanders […]
When we used to visit Berkeley in the late winter, I used to be amazed by what Suzie called “Tulip Trees,” which bloom very early in the season with gorgeous large white and pink flowers. Much to my surprise and delight, it turns out that the tree right in front of our new house in Kensington is one of those trees — and right now it is blooming crazily. A […]
I’ve promised myself that 2020 will be the year I force myself to sit down at the keyboard every day and write. Many people I respect have told me I should, and from time to time I have tried, only to find myself fiddling around with the theme or fonts on the blog site, or drafting something and then deleting it. I’ve written all my life as part of my […]
Most of my life, even when I was a young kid, I never cared much about my birthday. I attributed that in part to the fact that, falling close to Thanksgiving, my birthday was always second fiddle (even in my mind) to the bigger holiday. This year, though, my birthday feels more significant. Probably because, but for the miracles of modern medicine, I wouldn’t have had this birthday, and even […]
For most of the past two years, since the fire and my illness, Suzie and I have been unusually indecisive about our long-term housing situation. The house we were renting on Grizzly Peak in Kensington was good for us, it gave us a place that seemed more like home than our little condo in Larkfield (at least it seemed more like home to me, Suzie might disagree). But it wasn’t […]
Prelude We came to La Rochelle in large part because our two good friends, Alain and Isabel, live here. They are warm, welcoming, interesting, and funny. In turn they introduced us to another warm, welcoming, interesting, and funny couple, Daniel and Danielle. He was an urban planner for the city of La Rochelle, and she worked (effectively) for a non-profit. A lot like me and Suzie. One evening last week, […]
Today Suzie and I decided to rent bikes and ride around La Rochelle, which has an extensive network of bike lanes and dedicated bike-only pistes. In the end we rode about 13 miles, which doesn’t sound like much, but the bikes were clunky and heavy, and much of the time we had to weave and dodge to avoid ambling, inattentive tourists who didn’t understand that a bike lane is effectively […]