Neal's Musings (Hardly Political)


THIS IS THE DEFAULT CATEGORY on this blog and was pre­vi­ously the Gen­eral Ob­ser­va­tions cat­e­gory. Here you’ll find ar­ti­cles about my wife and my cat, anec­dotes and jokes—basically any­thing that doesn’t fit into any of the other, more spec­i­fied categories.

Most of the pieces here are rea­son­ably gentle—those es­says or ar­ti­cles that con­tain any vit­riol will be found in the Neal’s Rants (Re­ally Po­lit­ical) category.

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yard sale find of old bowl worth half-a-million dollars!

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YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD ABOUT the yard sale find that is all over the in­ternet by now. A person paid the $35 asking price for a porce­lain bowl at a yard sale in Con­necticut. The buyer was an “an­tique en­thu­siast” who thought the old bowl could be some­thing spe­cial, meaning the buyer prob­ably had con­sid­er­able ex­pe­ri­ence in buying and selling such things. [Continue reading]

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quora moderation said my answer may need improvement

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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. [Continue reading]

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that’s what I’ve been telling people for fifty years!

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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. [Continue reading]

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to keep my magic true, you must do one thing

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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. [Continue reading]

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why I’ve been missing during the coronavirus pandemic

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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. [Continue reading]