Ah, the good old days! Beaver coats, pennants, bootleg hootch down at Mory’s, and the joyous singing of “Boola Boola” as the Yale football team crushed the pantywaists of Fair Harvard. Or got crushed. Who cared? Well, it’s a century later, but the old fight song still has an eerie resonance. However, that resonance only […]

“Dracula” was published in 1897 by Bram Stoker, whose day job was stage manager for the D’Oyly-Carte Opera Company, producers of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. I suppose that endless days of light-hearted drollery drove him around the bend. But “Dracula” really rehabilitated the vampire. Up until that time, the vampire was viewed essentially […]

That’s Latin for “Who guards the guardians themselves, ” a quaint Roman rhetorical question. In addition to its disquieting portent, it leads on to a series of equally disturbing questions, viz.: “Who guards the guardians who guard the guardians?” And “Who guards the guardians who guard the guardians who guard the guardians?” etc., ad nauseum, […]

The machines are in control. No, not like in Terminator. They are not planning to exterminate us; they are more subtle than that. No, they are making us obsolete. Take Roomba. The little monster scuttles about the room, sweeping up without human intervention. And it learns where everything is, so as not to bump into […]

Despite your mother/wife/children/psychiatrist’s advice, you purchase your organdonorcycle (that’s motorcycle to those of you who insist on burying your heads in the sand), spin out at 276 mph, bounce off a spreading chestnut tree, and are smeared all over the roadway. The ALS (Advanced Life Support) ambulance rolls up, sponges you off the tarmac, squeezes […]