Past Articles

Kelly and Quang publish a new blog we’ve added to the GoNOMAD blog network. here is a dispatch upon leaving Mexico. “The police are proud of their guns, and I’m not talking a handgun stuck in a holster and worn about the belt. I mean semi-automatics. I mean M-16s. I […]

Researching a column I am writing for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I came across this news from The Gadget Blog. “A waterless washing machine that removes stains from garments in a few minutes has been developed at the National University of Singapore, the facility said on Wednesday. The appliance uses […]

“I hate mornings,” Shawn Fanning said as he arrived one bright day last spring, dressed in torn black jeans, a black ribbed pullover and gray sneakers, looking much as he did five years ago on the cover of Time magazine. He was profiled in the NY Times on Sunday about […]

Sitting in the kitchen looking out the window watching wood ducks float on Cindy’s pond. That made me think about where their nests are. Found out some more about these ducks including this item from Google. Interesting notes: The female wood duck has the unusual habit of laying some of […]

Trolling the ‘Net on this cold New England Saturday morning, and voila, found this nugget on the very reliable boingboing.net. Edited by Cory Doctorow, this site always has blogworthy material. “Users sue Match.com for date fraud: Frustrated Match.com users are suing the online dating service over complaints that company employees […]

Computer geeks gathered recently and had the conversation below. Mike McDonald writes in his Webpronews column about this at a Las Vegas convention. “When our conversation steered towards blogs, and podcasts etc. she (internet expert) posed the following question: “A year or two from now; blogs up or down?” I […]

Reading the Republican newspaper and found this information in their science section.The source is Harvard College. “In September 1918, at Fort Devens, outside of Boston, the world’s worst pandemic flu got its start. The Camp hospital, built to house 1200 soldiers, was overflowing from the war injuries with more than […]

Sweden May Have the Answer says ABC news. A friend of mine is trying to quit, this might be helpful. “Sweden has developed a safer, less toxic kind of smokeless tobacco called “snus,” and sales are booming. “In two or three years, we’re going to sell as much in cigarettes […]

Michael Agger wrote in slate about what happens when student ratings for college professors are viewable on line…and what they want from their profs… “Don’t play favorites, yet don’t deny students extra credit or a second chance on a paper or test. Don’t “get sidetracked by boring crap.” Don’t refer […]

Mimi Hall writes in USA TODAY about a grand idea. “A once-radical idea to build a 2,000-mile steel-and-wire fence on the U.S.-Mexican border is gaining momentum amid warnings that terrorists can easily sneak into the country. In Congress, a powerful Republican lawmaker this week proposed building such a fence across […]

Helene Cooper wrote an op-ed piece in yesterday’s NY Times titled “Waiting for their Moment in the Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman.” She discussed the recent election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in her native Liberia, Africa’s first woman president, and she contrasted that country with another miserable place, […]

The AP today ran a story about how hard it is to get students to finish college. While for decades higher education leaders focused on getting more and more high schoolers to enroll in college, today, just 54% of them ever get a degree–six years later! The era of the […]

Steve stopped by Computer Cleaners yesterday. A shaggy haired fellow computer geek who owns a shop in Hadley, he was coming to visit his northern brethren, and he chatted for a while. He said that old style computer monitors use about 100 watts each, like a big lightbulb burning all […]

Pakistan’s leading human rights organisation, the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust, said jihadi groups fighting the Indian government were taking orphans off the streets and putting them in training camps. The Times on line and little green footballs had this story today. The organisation said it also had evidence that sympathetic […]

Woe to the shoemaker whose children have no shoes, or the baker who is without bread. I felt like this tonight when I stupidly clicked on an email claiming to be giving me a password and found my computer hijacked by the evil worm that turned out to be a […]

Bruce Wallace writes in the LA Times (thanks World Hum) about the trip of a lifetime–to North Korea–for a group of hard core world travelers, including Joe Walker, whose been nearly everywhere else on earch. “This is definitely the weirdest trip I’ve been on,” he said as the Ilyushin headed […]

Boy what a bad idea. I thought I’d save some money by switching my home internet to cheap Verizon DSL for $14.95. More than a few times I wondered if the $42.95 Comcast clipped me for each month was worth it…hey it’s all high speed, right? WRONG! Verizon suckers people […]