Small movies sometimes leave big impacts. Such a small movie was the 2002 Hugh Grant / Toni Collette movie, About a Boy. It was written by Nick Hornby, who wrote several other impactful small movies like Wild with Reese Witherspoon, Brooklyn with Saoirse Ronan and An Education with Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard. I really appreciate well-written scripts and compelling stories rather than all the big, bold action we tend to see mostly in the…
All things in the natural world age. We all grew up laying 20 Questions and we usually started with these categories – “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral” – come from the Linnaean taxonomy system that were historically used in the parlor game. This basic classification system was popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries and is sometimes called the “Three Kingdoms” classification, though it’s a simplified version of actual taxonomic classification systems. The three categories broadly…
It’s been raining now for over 36 hours, so I think it’s fair to say that the garden has had a good drink. I see that L.A. is already under threat of flash floods and mudslides, particularly in those areas that are dealing with severely scorched earth (literally). For the rest of us, this rain and these raindrops are still feeling like a good thing, especially because the rain looks to be scheduled to stop…
My technology configuration was, for many years, best characterized by bleeding edge. I was an early adopter with computers, cell phones and and PDAs. I’ve had several (no where near as many as some) digital cameras, and I have even had a few iPods even though I am less music-oriented than most. Because I was using computers in my workplace (even before they were formally provided my employer), I tended towards the more commercial Microsoft…
When we were kids, everybody liked playing board games to one degree or another. Let’s eliminate word games like Scrabble (or today’s variation known as Wordle) and party games like Trivial Pursuits and Pictionary, not to mention Charades. If you also ignore the generic and purely abstract games like Chess, Checkers, Mancala, Rummicube and Backgammon, the other most popular games that have more or less gone global to some degree are Monopoly, Clue, Life and…
As I have mentioned, I have been using the Anthropic AI engine called Claude for some time now. I use it literally on a daily basis for everything you can imagine. It has become my alter-ego in a sense because I find it so helpful and productive. My friend Steve continues to tell me that he prefer’s Perplexity AI to Claude. Perplexity itself defines the difference in these platforms as follows: “Perplexity AI and Claude…
I make a point of always trying to recognize and acknowledge the good things in my life. It’s why I write about my pleasures in the garden or my love for my fair Kim. This morning I’m in a funny sort of mood. It is the middle of January and I have not booked any hours in my expert witness practice despite having about ten cases on my docket and a host of cases on…
In 1995, at my 20th college reunion, I was nominated to be our Class of ‘75 Class President. I recall that I agreed to take on the role for the five year term from some combination of pressure from the outgoing president and the University development office. That’s not such a leverage point to be sure, but it seemed to me that the run-up to the 25th reunion might make it a more interesting moment…
In advance of our trip to Patagonia in 45 days, and at the request of my friend Faraj, who will be going with us, I have put together a series of 22 films about the region. These are movies about Chile, Patagonia, Argentina, Cape Horn and the Drake Passage as well as the Falkland Islands. I took the task seriously and tried to find an array of representative films that would capture what we were…
It is said that some of the greatest art comes from great pain. That may be so, but I guess I am lucky and simply don’t have so much pain in my life…at least not so far. I understand that this could change in a heartbeat, but unless and until it does, I create my art from whatever place of joy inhabits me at the moment. A few days ago, while down on the back…