a blog about ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere
RATIOCINATIONS OUT OF THIN AIR is the title that I wanted to give this blog. But it would have been confusing as most people don’t know what “ratiocination” means and few people would take the time to look it up, despite being on the internet! They would just move on without even skimming the content. READ MORE
I DID SOME SHOPPING YESTERDAY, mostly for food. I also hit the library along the way, using curbside pick-up for items I had ordered online. I picked up a few books (including Steven Pinker’s The Sense Of Style – The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century and Norman Spinrad’s Greenhouse Summer. READ MORE
EACH YEAR I HIKE MOUNT RANIER to a secret meeting. I use the Carbon Glacier trail and I don’t ascend the whole mountain—that takes days and a team of other hikers. And I have to go it alone. This is just a vigorous day-hike that gets me up to about 7,000 feet where I can look down into the massive glacier. READ MORE
I RECEIVED AN EMAIL FROM QUORA that read, “Quora Moderation collapsed your answer to ‘What irrefutable facts do Trump supporters need to know about Trump to change their mind?’ for violating a policy on Quora. Your answer may need improvement.” Receiving what could only be interpreted as a reprimand was a first for me—at least from Quora. READ MORE
NOAM CHOMSKY HAD AN INTERVIEW scheduled with Anand Giridharadas for The.Ink website. While each interview promises the potential of unique answers and even the possibility of new thoughts, depending on the interviewer, Chomsky prepared some notes to make certain he mentioned certain points. So, Noam called me and said, “Neal, here is what I am preparing to say in my interview with Anand Giridharadas: ‘The left position is you rarely support anyone. READ MORE
HAL HAD IT MADE! He was young, handsome, and smart with a very good job as an accountant with a successful local company. But he had one weak spot: He liked to gamble. A lot. Unfortunately, he usually lost. A lot. To catch up with his creditors, he embezzled $500,000 from his employer, all of which he lost gambling. READ MORE
WHERE HAVE ALL THE BLOG POSTS GONE, long time passing? The past few months have seen absolutely nothing posted on any of my blogs. This does not mean that I have not been busy. I just haven’t been busy publishing things I wrote. At a time when more people are probably reading things on the internet that they never had time to even find before, I have been silent. READ MORE
RAW STORY’S TOP STORIES newsletter arrived at 5:51 AM today. The headline that caught my attention was “Michael Cohen is writing a bombshell tell-all book on President Trump to be released before the election.” The story was attributed to Tom Boggioni (April 18, 2020), who acknowledged his source as the Daily Beast in his first paragraph. READ MORE
SEVERAL WORDS ARE MISUSED with great consistently—and often great dexterity—on the internet. “Moot” is one of them. Given that it can be used as a noun, a verb, and an adjective, it’s not surprising that users get things mixed up and become misusers and even abusers. While its use as an adjective is what I want to address here, I might as well give you the whole shebang. READ MORE
WHERE THE HECK IS “Q”?!!? Since the demise of 8chan in August 2019 due to its being linked to acts of violence (including the gunman who killed at least 49 people at mosques in New Zealand), the supderduper anonymous “Q” has been silent. While the loss of the notorious social media platform—effectively a virtual home for Q and his/her/their followers—has forced those followers to other sites, little has been heard from Q his/her/their self (selves?) READ MORE