Monthly Archives: September 2014

Lives of the dead

A couple weekends ago I visited the graves of relatives and ancestors on my father’s side at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx. All of them died before I was born, but my Grandma Searls and her sisters often visited there, and … Continue reading

Posted in Family, Health, history, Life, Past, Photography, Places | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Cavalcade of Tabs

Playing with One-Tab, which works on Chrome and Firefox. Sorting them into just two sets, which may overlap: The World  ISIS Crisis – NYTimes.com   ISIL and western media: Accidental allies? – Opinion – Al Jazeera English  Inside the Islamic State … Continue reading

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Why we’ll miss #EricTheActor

What makes Howard Stern’s radio show so compelling, besides Howard himself, is that everybody who contributes to the show is a character. That goes for all the staff members who come on the air, and all the callers — especially the oddballs … Continue reading

Posted in Broadcasting, Obituary | Leave a comment

Remembering Uncle Chris

Yesterday was my Uncle Chris’s 100th birthday. When he passed fifteen years ago, I wrote the following, which I just unearthed from the Old Web. Now seems like a good time to expose it to the world. He was the embodiment of … Continue reading

Posted in Family, history, North Carolina, Obituary, Photography, Places | Leave a comment

Giving respect to brand advertising

I wrote the first half of the following two years ago for a name-brand Web magazine that decided not to run it. You can guess why. I later turned it into a shorter piece for Wharton‘s Future of Advertising collection. For … Continue reading

Posted in Internet, marketing, problems, Research, Technology | 3 Comments

Public radio explodes in Santa Barbara

When we moved to Santa Barbara in 2001, the public radio pickings were pretty slim: 88.3 KCLU, a faint signal from Thousand Oaks. 88.7 KQSC, a strong local station on Gibraltar Peak carrying the classical music programming of Los Angeles’ KUSC. … Continue reading

Posted in Broadcasting, Business, Culture, infrastructure, Santa Barbara, Technology, UCSB | 2 Comments

#10books that changed my life

There’s a challenge going around Facebook: to name ten books that have changed your life. So I’ve thought about my own, and kept a running list here in draft form. Now that it’s close enough to publish, methinks, here they … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Awesome, Books, Culture, Geology, history, Links | 1 Comment

Frontiers of Typicality

Dear Student Name, Your Remarkable Candidate Application for admission to Uncanny Valley University is already mostly done. Click here to see. We’ve pre-filled lots of stuff to make sure you get a personalized application experience. And, your Remarkable Candidate status also qualifies you to get these Remarkable … Continue reading

Posted in Culture, Family, School | 1 Comment