This is a "Body-Laptop Interface." It was, honest as the day is long, invented to give the user privacy, concentration, and warmth (I would add "delusion thereof") when working on a laptop in public place. You may insert any and all jokes here. But this essay isn't about the integration of microchips, human flesh and [...]
Writing Archive
Sandsharks
I'm absolutely an avowed sports nut. Have been my whole life. As a kid, I'd memorize stats and create fictitious scoreboards with National Hockey League expansion teams that I'd one day own. I was actually the owner of the NHL team in Québec City over a decade before we had one. Except that I stole [...]
The New Art of Relaxation
Is it possible that relaxation has changed? I've always thought that relaxation was an entirely subjective thing, as unique as the individual seeking an escape from, well, anything from which one would want to escape. For me, traditional methods and modes of relaxation produce far more anxiety than they alleviate. Really. The idea of sitting [...]
Seasons
When I declare, in the middle of summer "Yeah, I'm pretty much a true Northerner - summer doesn't do it for me," I can clear a room pretty fast. I've lived all over the world and experienced life in places where one season was it. Sure, when I lived in Phoenix it wasn't always one-hundred-and-sixteen [...]
Frigidaire Kleenex
How important is your brand to your brand? When I was a kid, I lived in a world of brands. Everything around us was defined through brand affiliation. This was the early 1970s and it was the US of A. The grocery stores were doubling in size, well on their was to becoming today's hypermarkets. [...]
“I just want to say one word to you….”
Plastics. The famous line from The Graduate in which Mr. McGuire counsels our young graduate, Benjamin Braddock, to wrap himself (pun very much intended) in plastic. Prescient counsel for a young man graduating in the 1960s, as the boom in plastics was about to hit. I wonder how many Mr. McGuires counseled how many young [...]
North
Be forewarned: this entire piece is a love letter to Sweden. If you're not feeling very pro-Swedish (no idea why anyone would be anything but immensely pro-Swedish) you should go grab a coffee now and visit hampsterdance.com But if you're still here, I'll at least assume that you have a passing interest into why I [...]
to iPad or not to iPad
This is a long-overdue review of the iPad, in part because of what can only be described as a massive reluctance on my part to actually touch an iPad. I'm not a big fan of hype. I neither purvey nor consume hype, certainly not in the massive quantities that have surrounded the rounds of iPad [...]
Exile
Sunday afternoon. Hot. Sitting by a pool, listening to The Stones' "Exile on Main Street," and contemplating the term "exile." First, a digression: No matter what The Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums of All Time said, the greatest rock album in history is "Exile on Main Street." Nothing else is even close. Bank that. The [...]
Angel or Angle?
The breaking point for me was the last venture capitalist reality show I watched. I could bear only a half-hour and I honestly don't remember the name of the show. What I do remember is an entrepreneur who had devoted two years of his life's work and sold 50% of a potentially million-dollar idea for [...]
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