Author Archives: ken

Programming Uphill Both Ways

Those of us who believe that programming has gotten too easy with all these sissy icons and windows (yes, you know who you are) might be pleased at the release of Hercules, an emulator for IBM mainframes. For my first … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 8 Comments

Protected: No Blogger Left Behind

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Enter your password to view comments.

[Wolf Whistle]

Hope the opening, ahem, came off well. This was a sign on a storefront on the main street of Amherst, MA, where rednoodlealien and I saw Bob Dylan on Saturday night. It was a good show, although I much prefer … Continue reading

Posted in Music, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Madman On Mars

Ray Bradbury’s thoroughly loopy column for the Journal today didn’t exactly increase my ever-dwindling interest in manned spaceflight. But it does raise the question of whether Kim Jong Il is taking down all his pictures because he’s planning a trip … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Ooh, Pick Meme

My journal is called Riffs and Licks because it refers to both my musical and conversational styles, and because it’s somewhat suggestive. My subtitle is nonexistent because it seemed superfluous. My friends page is called Ken’s Friends because I never … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Evolution Helps Creationists

Evolutionary historian Edward Larson says that natural selection favors evangelicals and other religious extremists, who tend to have large families, over the rest of us, who don’t: But among white, middle-class Americans, religious people are having children at a much … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 7 Comments

The Time When Reason Triumphed Over Unreason

Having just finished Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, Confusion, and The System Of the World), I finally picked up James Gleick’s biography of Isaac Newton.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Bob Dylan: Still Legal

The Secret Service paid a visit to some high-school students who were planning to read aloud the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War,” the final verse of which was construed by some students and parents as a threat to … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

South Brunswick, Part II

Remember that pretty spot I photographed on my drive a few weeks ago? Guess what I saw there this morning? Seems that it’s going to suffer the same fate as all the nice spots where I grew up in Staten … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Magazine Covers We’ll Never See

Perhaps this is the new “Coastal Edition” of Time magazine?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment