February 21 is International Mother Language Day. It was begun by UNESCO in 1999. UNESCO is the agency of the United Nations working toward worldwide cooperation in culture, art, and science. The day was adopted by the wider United Nations community in 2002. It’s not the kind of holiday where you receive greeting cards, and… Continue reading

Tired of the raging, highly contagious disease, a town passed an ordinance requiring adults over 21 to get vaccinated. The process was free, and there was a fine for noncompliance. A religious leader in the town, a pastor who had emigrated from abroad with his family, objected. He had seen forced vaccinations in his old… Continue reading

I enjoyed Annie Hall when it debuted back in 1977. I liked The Purple Rose of Cairo, too, and Midnight in Paris. These are Woodie Allen movies. I don’t watch much TV these days, but back in the 80s when The Cosby Show was on, I remember enjoying watching it. For that matter, Pulp Fiction… Continue reading

I didn’t expect to live this long. Nobody my age expected to. I grew up in the 1960s, when we practiced hiding under our school desks in case of a nuclear attack. Even in second grade, all us kids knew perfectly well that a desk wasn’t going to save us. I mean, those 1960s desks… Continue reading

Do you like modern art? Just because it’s “modern” doesn’t mean there’s anything new about it, of course. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite; most of the art produced in recent decades isn’t really “modern” — it’s more likely to be postmodern or contemporary. That doesn’t mean you can’t create modern art right now,… Continue reading

Imagine, if you will, that it’s 1923. We’re in northern Africa, in the unforgiving Sahara. We’ve joined the work party directed by Howard Carter in the Valley of Kings. There’s excitement in the air. Now that the Great War is over, Carter’s work is once again being underwritten by Lord Carnarvon.  Carnarvon is an enormously… Continue reading

February 15 is a date that’s not divisible by two or ten, which is slightly weird when you look into what’s happened on various February fifteenths. It was February 15 in 1945 that ENIAC was formally introduced as the world’s first programmable digital computer that functioned electronically. The name ENIAC stood for “Electronic Numerical Integrator… Continue reading

Today is the anniversary of a very important photo. It was taken February 14, 1990, and it’s a landscape. In fact it’s the landscape, in a way. It’s the the Pale Blue Dot photo, taken by Voyager 1 from nearly 4 billion miles away. It’s called the Pale Blue Dot because that’s all there is… Continue reading

I’ve always liked the word “eldritch.” Since I’m not writing fantasy stories including elves and ancient, magical, “eldritch” powers, I’ve never had an opportunity to use it. But I looked it up, and counter to what I expected, it doesn’t necessarily imply anything ancient or magical. You can just use it as a synonym for… Continue reading