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Author Archives: me
Another Victory of Ideology over Rationality
Canada is a progressive nation, so they say. We have national health care. Or, rather, we have ten provincial and three territorial health care systems. The Federal Government provides the ground rules, a major part of the funding, and the … Continue reading
The ASUS Blues
I have a new computer, and I love it. It is an ASUS Zenbook UX31E. It is the notebook I always dreamed of. It is beautiful, light, capable,runs almost seven hours on one battery charge, and sings like a nightingale. … Continue reading
A low-guilt potato salad
The other day I attended a tribal pot-luck picnic. The culinary low was the potato salad – a medley of mashed potato and mayonnaise, yuk! My dream potato salad is creamy with thin slices of recognizeable potato that melt on … Continue reading
The Case of the Missing Tombstones
Together with a German friend my wife and I are just completing a book documenting the features and history of an old Jewish cemetery in rural Bavarian Swabia (see the picture above). During our work we becam increasingly aware of … Continue reading
Posted in Genealogy
Tagged Bavarian Swabia, Gatermann Films, Hürben, Jewish cemetery, Krumbach
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Digital Disabilities of the Elderly
I am a senior! No, you don’t have to commiserate with me. I am quite happy – and lucky too. After all, aging is the “in-thing”. Aging is chic. It is even a growth industry. There are lurking legions of … Continue reading
Squeezebox Woes
I bought a Squeezebox Radio from Logitech. It replaces my old bedside short wave radio. I still fondly remember the 70’s, before the airwaves had become so anemic. It was then still possible to receive New York and Boston talk shows in … Continue reading
Did Lazarus Morgenthau elope?
“Almost ninety years ago, on November 2, 1843, Lazarus Morgenthau married Babette Guggenheim of Hürben; whom he had known as a child and whom he had watched grow to womanhood.” Thus Louise Heidelberg begins a biographic sketch of her grandfather, Lazarus … Continue reading
Chomsky vs. Turing
Solving a computational problem in advanced statistics, I recently experienced an epiphany that led me from Alan Turing to Noam Chomsky. Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) is considered the father of modern computer science. Around 1936 he proposed a theoretical computing … Continue reading
Posted in Computing
Tagged Chomsky, generalisability theory, software design, syntactic transformation, Turing
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And Maytag Sucks Too
This blog is gradually turning into a serial drama. In the last installment, Sears wanted to sell me a C$ 249 assembly to repair a 5 cent broken part. I reported that I had subsequently found a subassembly for C$ 35 … Continue reading
Sears Sucks
Last Wednesday morning my beloved called in an accusatory voice: “the dishwasher is broken!” I swear by my honor, I didn’t break it. Although, I must admit, my dirty dishes contributed significantly to the collective weight of the basket that ultimately exceeded the … Continue reading
Posted in Corporate Greed
Tagged dishwasher, just-in-time, Repair Service, ripp-off, Sears
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