Category: History

This Voice of America article providing on update on negotiations between the United States and the Taliban underscores the short-sightedness of Donald Trump’s foreign policy.  The Taliban have refused to negotiate with the government of Afghanistan because they (the Taliban) consider themselves the only legitimate government of Afghanistan.  The United States never formally recognized the Taliban as a sovereign government.  These negotiations have established a dangerous precedent that will come back to haunt U.S.…

I am not allowed to be biased in my opinions about Middle-earth.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions.  Of course I do.  It means that every time I say something about J.R.R. Tolkien or Middle-earth, someone comes out of the woodwork and challenges me.  During the Ages of the Great Debates everyone challenged me.  You have to defend everything you say in an environment like that. …

Everyone knows that nothing in movies happens the way things do in real life.  Life is boring and mundane and movies are magical.  The whole point of movies is to help us escape from the everyday doldrums.  Yada yada yada.

The other side of that coin is that movies often fail to represent what real life is like.  For example, suppose you make a movie about a 30-hour hike through enemy-held territory when the actors’ platoon or company engages in three short firefights.  …

If you have ever lived in Miami Beach you probably have heard of the Byron Carlyle twin cinemas.  The theatre I remember officially closed in 2002 according to some sources, or sometime in the 1990s according to others.  And I am not sure I remember just one theater or two theaters.  The good news for the people of the Beach is that the building is a cinema once again, showing a mix of independent, art, and first run pop films.…

I grew up on the road.  My family moved a lot when I was a kid so there is no town that I can really call my “home town”.  But there is one town where I lived more than once.  I was not always happy to live there.  In fact, I was probably never happy when I lived there.  I had friends and I had friends in other cities, other states.…

UPDATE: Miss Nancy passed away on July 28, 2015. Her obituary is here. My thoughts and best wishes go out to her friends and loved ones, who will surely miss her. Thank you for contacting me with the sad news.

I fell in love four or five times in the 1960s. My first, most passionate love was with an older woman, Leslie Boullion, who was in the second grade.…

Modern computing languages annoy me. They are poorly designed, inefficient, full of holes, and require you to go too far out of your way to do simple things with no real certainty that you can accomplish them. Many of these languages are influenced by the inherently flawed design of Linux. Linux came out of the world of UNIX. UNIX, developed at the original AT & T’s famous Bell Laboratories in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was once heralded as the supreme operating system.…

My mother passed away yesterday.  My brother and sister are both in shock and though we have been close through the years I am always the one who stands back, emotionally reserved.  It’s hard for me to share my feelings openly, although I seem to have no problem writing about them (in part) on this blog.  I feel numb and a deep loss, although my mother did not have a healthy life the past few years.  …