Past Articles

Sometimes you get jokes by email. Eric Jayne sent me a few… …I’ve sure gotten old. I’ve had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement,new knees. Fought prostate cancer and diabetes. I’m half blind, can’t hearanything quieter than a jet engine, take 40 different medications that makeme dizzy, winded, and subject […]

This month’s Wired brought a trove of interesting profiles, including a piece by Steven Levy about Tim O’Reilly, who became famous in computer circles by founding a company that publishes manuals and books about software. O’Reilly, who lives in Sebastopol, CA, is big on participation, and spots trends that lie […]

Carl Hoffman wrote a profile of Don Kirlin in this month’s issue of Wired. The opening photo showed Kirlin’s hangar, stocked with fighter jets from the former Soviet Union and Romania. “Kirlin’s collection began as a rich man’s game to buy the baddest toys money can buy. Then he realized […]

A Milwaukee-based petroleum company filed a defamation lawsuit against the parent company of Fond du Lac’s daily newspaper last week on claims an article published in July wrongly inferred a connection with Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists and damaged its business. “According to the civil complaint, a newspaper reporter attributed false […]

AMD says said it will partner with RadioShack to bring low-priced computers to the developing world. The device, called the Personal Internet Communicator, was originally developed for markets underserved by the computer industry and is widely available in Mexico, India, Brazil, and the Caribbean. BusinessWeek. The idea was to make […]

New York Magazine recently ran a piece on which types of dogs attract the most women.Here are some of their scientific results.“Roo, the Australian cattle-dog puppy: In the lobby of Animal Care and Control, Roo immediately pressed his front paws onto me and licked my face. On East 86th Street, […]

On the list of new Webster words this year: amuse-bouche (noun) 1984 : a small complimentary appetizer offered at some restaurants. battle dress uniform (noun) 1982 : a military uniform for field service. bikini wax (noun) 1985 : a procedure for removing pubic hair from the skin near the edge […]

These unGoogleables don’t post online, blog, publish or build web pages using their own names. They’re careful about revealing information to businesses, belong to few organizations that can leak personal data, and never submit online résumés — all common ways that Google captures your data. They spoke to Wired News […]

I visited with Duncan Ferguson today, he runs Ferguson Signs in a big garage on King St. in Northampton. I asked him what had happened to the Agway store down the street. He said that the new Honda dealership that has sprung up nearby had bought the land–and that it […]

Monster.com was once one of the best examples of how to make piles of money on the web. Founded by Jeff Taylor in 1994, he sold out to TMP Worldwide just a year later, and stayed on until now to run the job search listing company. Times are different now, […]

Egypt’s bureaucracy just took a blow. The building that symbolizes long waits, frustrating government, and rubber stamped permits is being torn down. Today’s Washington Post reported that downtown Cairo’s Mugamma–Arabic for ‘the complex,’ will be torn down in June, moving the minstry offices into scattered offices in the suburbs. “It […]

Today’s Boston Globe included a story by Colin Nickerson about the despair that is everywhere in the former East Germany, and the struggle there between the once prosperous west and their poor brothers in the East. “Today marks the 15th anniversary of the unification of the collapsed communist East and […]

Deep beneath the waves a weird fish has swallowed the grandson of the late Captain Jacques Cousteau, the ocean explorer. Fabien Cousteau, 36, is these days to be found inside the belly of a submersible built in the shape of a great white shark. Matthew Campbell wrote for Times on […]

Hillary August writes in the Yale Daily News about CNN’s Anderson Cooper and his passion for crew. “Instead of devoting extracurricular hours to honing his journalistic skills with one of the campus publications, Cooper devoted himself to the Yale crew team. After failing to keep up with his teammates and […]

Today’s NY Times style section includes this set of tales about weddings. “Her most vivid recollection involved a particularly brutish upstaging during a lavish wedding, just as the newlyweds began their first dance. As the number started, the groom’s college fraternity brothers, who were also on the wrestling team with […]

Last night after crunchy, spicy tuna rolls at our favorite Japanese restaurant Moshi Moshi in Northampton, we went to the little Pleasant St. theater to see “Grizzly Man.” Narrated by the filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his deep German accent, the film follows the travels and eventual demise of Tim Treadwell, […]

Driving back in the bright September sun, I passed a group of dark skinned men playing cricket in North Amherst. One man stood in front of a stake and the other pitched at him as he held his large bat. Amherst was a beehive of human activity, there was an […]

Today a man named Paul Schmidt came by the house. He wore a Red Sox baseball cap and held a clipboard. He works for Honeywell, and was there to inspect my new furnace. As gas and oil prices go up and up, I thought about how much more important people […]