I definitely won't be sad to see the end of 2016. But I might feel more optimistic about 2017 if we didn't have Bozo the Clown moving into the White House in less than three weeks.

I wonder if anyone even writes on Livejournal anymore . . .

If anyone's out there, Happy New Year!

It's less than an hour before the new year here on the west coast and I for one will be happy to send 2013 on its merry way. About the only good thing I can say about this year is that over the past couple of months, it's ended on a strongly positive note and 2014 promises to be much better. Hope everyone has a safe and happy new year.

I was lucky to find a great Black Friday deal that didn't even involve going to the store. I met a guy who was planning to start a business but it didn't work out and he ended up stuck with a lot of inventory he needed to get rid of. So I ended up getting a nearly brand new Lenovo laptop (by which I mean new enough that it's still under a ( Read more... )

After a not-quite-planned hiatus due to dealing with some offline personal matters, I'm going to start posting again. At least for a while. I still plan on transitioning away from Livejournal sometime in the near future, although my original plan of doing that over the summer is obviously shot. I've spent the last few months doing a lot of ( Read more... )

So I've written before about the startling number of mishaps that might have led to a nuclear war and a bomb that nearly detonated over North Carolina in the 1960's. Here are even more tales of just how close we've come over the years to catastrophic nuclear accidents, including the case of a repairman who dropped a socket from his wrench, which ( Read more... )

I think the Democrats have been handling the government shutdown the right way: No negotiations with blackmailers. Go ahead, bring on the shutdown ( Read more... )

The Russians, who have had ample opportunity to speak with Edward Snowden about his knowledge of what the NSA is up to, are so spooked by what they've learned that they've felt the need to go back to typewriters and paper documents. It's just one more item that should be a wake up call to the American people about how much we simply don't know ( Read more... )

Astrophotographer Mike Taylor has some fantastic images of the Milky Way, mostly taken on the coast of Maine. One of his photos recently appeared on Space.com.

One would think that such a monumental discovery as finding extraterrestrial life would at least warrant some mention in Science Friday. And yet, the media has been full of reports that scientists in the UK have been announcing such a discovery and I haven't said anything about it so far. Fair point ( Read more... )