Saturday, December 25, 2004

The following is a collection of Christmas memories, as captured by my wee electronic photoreception recorder. The photos need no explanations or captions, so they are presented to you in their thumbnail form, open to your interpretation and free association pleasure as you click away on each.









There ya go, a complete rotogravure of Burningham Christmas merriment!

We hope today brings you peace and true joy, and that it continues well into the new year quickly coming.

Seriously.

Wednesday, December 8, 2004

On the heels of IBM's announcement that they will sell the controlling interest in their PC division to a Chinese company, here is an account of what happens to to that which falls within the domination of the Dragon of the East.

I don't reckon that it'll bother them too much, but I've bought my last ThinkPad. Though most of the componentry was made in China even when I bought mine, it just makes me feel even more powerless in the world marketplace to think of buying an IBM made and profited from, for the overwhelming majority, in China.

Only five years ago I made every effort to buy nothing made in China, and it was still very possible. I've pretty much given up on that now, it's getting pretty difficult to find anything that we can afford that's not.

What an age we live in...

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

An article about English, a favorite obsession of English teachers everywhere. Sometimes I really loath what the advances made in instant and near-instant communications have done to people's written intercourse.

Just look at the example of business email cited. Good grief. That's really not much better than what comes out of some of my first-year students here at the Academy, fer heaven's sake.