A long time ago, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention put together a track entitled: “It Can’t Happen Here.”  Exactly what it was or is that can’t happen here is never particularly mentioned in the song, but ol’ Frank seems to be adamant that whatever “it” is, it ain’t coming down around here (wherever “here” is) ... or maybe it is.



It was a long but productive week I spent in Dallas.  Helping bring a system up, teaching a…

It was just one more article from the Huffington Post about Stephen Hawking, the Big Bang, and the fact that no god was necessary to make the whole business happen.  I’ve probably seen dozens of such articles over the past four or five years and watched him discuss the matter with people like Larry King.  Same stuff, different day,…

Pardon me if I keep this short and sweet.  Roger Ebert left an impression on me from the time I first saw Sneak Previews on WTTW-11, Chicago Public Television.  I found a near-instant affinity for his style and candor in how he reviewed movies.  I was not always in agreement with his point of view, notably on one of my faves: Gladiator, but I still wanted to know what he thought about a movie.  There was hardly a time when a review of his was disappointing or failed in…

It should be news to no one that North Korea has been upping the rhetoric in the past few weeks regarding its relationship (if you can call it that) with its neighbor to the south as well as with the United States.  Its new leader, Kim Jong Un, has been making increasingly belligerent war noises, starting with the launch of a three-stage rocket in December of 2012, followed by a test of a nuclear device in February of this year.  More recently North Korea severed all “hotline” communications…