Cheerful Curmudgeon

A complete lack of ideas and the power to express them.

Art Zemon's Blog Posts

It’s a Boy!

Cindy and Geoff did a great job and produced Caedmon Geoffrey, a wonderful, healthy baby boy at 7:12pm on May 20. He’s 9 lbs 1 oz, 21 inches tall. His plumbing works so well that he peed on the doctor during delivery. I take that as a great omen!

We Got BUZZ!

On a gorgeous spring afternoon, Becky and Derek and Cindy and Geoff came over for dinner and entertainment. Unbeknownst to them, the entertainment was a new copy of BUZZ! Quiz TV for our PS3. The preview video looks hokey but the game is amazingly fun and goofy. Sony hit a wonderful balance between insulting and […]

MacGyver Goes into Space

Some videos just should not be made. But once they are, you just cannot get that darned theme music out of your head. Do you remember the MacGyver TV show? Watch this if you dare:

Programming Feeds the Mad Scientist

I have been writing a new program, having a ball doing it, and it has brought to consciousness something which I have not thought about for years: There is a bit of Dr. Henry Frankenstein in me. I love to create things which do stuff autonomously and, when I create these things, bigger is definitely […]

Swimming with Cripples

My friend, Dan Suffian, wrote Swimming with Cripples and it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s just a long paragraph, too short for me to paraphrase it here, and anyway, if I were to try all I’d do is rob you of the joy of discovering Dan’s story through his own words. Go read it and share it […]

Paper or Plastic?

Scorpio (Oct. 24 – Nov. 21) You will receive word today that you are eligible to win a million dollars in prizes. It will be from a magazine trying to get you to subscribe, and you’re just dumb enough to think you’ve got a chance to win. You’re a really slow learner. July 12, 1974 […]

Peanuts Books: Old Friends Move In

My stepfather is clearing out things he does not want any longer so about 25 of my old friends moved in last week, including these vintage Peanuts books: My Library at LibraryThing

Reduce Risk – Stay Alive – Live Well

I like to feel safe and I like to know that my family is safe. I would wager that you do, too. John Goekler has written a crystal clear piece in CounterPunch, The Most Dangerous Person in the World?, which highlights the risks to our lives. Some snippets: A significant majority of Americans… list terrorism […]

US Government Not Accountable for Warrentless Wiretapping

Candidate Barack Obama promised change and more government transparency. President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice is delivering change for the worse: continuation of the Bush administration’s assertions that the US government can conduct warrantless wiretapping coupled with a new assertion that the government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying under any federal statutes. […]

20 Things to Do with Matzoh

Passover is here again (starting tomorrow at sundown) which raises the age old questions: Did I buy enough matzoh to last a week? If I bought too much, what will I do with it? Fortunately, Michelle Citrin and William Levin have answers for us.

Newborn Feeding Patterns Correlated to Adult Sleep/Wake Patterns

Researchers have found a strong correlation between newborn feeding patterns and the seemingly immutable “night person” or “morning person”  patterns which govern our adult lives. Dr. Emily Erudita of the Hatch Institute of Mamalian Studies reports in today’s issue of Pan Generational Physiology, In a study of 1,063 adults, 97.2% of the “night people” had […]

Checking In, Avoiding Hidden Dependencies

I woke up in a good mood this morning and then… Sometimes one piece of technology makes another, seemingly unrelated, piece of technology misbehave. It happened this morning at 12:15am CDT when an automated program that I run in Amazon EC2 failed to do its thing. The EC2 instances (that’s geek speak for “virtual machines” […]

Play and Freeze: Roundabout Fun

My sister-in-law gave me about the goofiest gift I’ve ever received, a Play and Freeze ice cream maker. Now before I continue, I need to tell you a little bit about me and ice cream. Me and ice cream, we’re buddies. We’re together pretty much as often as we can be. I got down with […]

Sony eBook Library Runs Under VirtualBox

I am thrilled to report that the magic software which Sony requires me to use to download ebooks from their on-line bookstore finally runs under VirtualBox. For reasons which I understand, but do not agree with, Sony requires use of their special software to download anything from their eBook Store, even free ebooks. Since I […]

I am the Artist

I couldn’t resist this test from Blogthings: What’s Your Life’s Mission? You Are the Artist You are unique and inspired. You aren’t happy unless you are making art of some sort. Almost anything can be a catalyst for your creativity. You find the whole world stimulating. You have beautiful visions, and you’re good at expressing […]

Credit Crisis Explained

Here is a short, informative video which explains the credit crisis in terms which ordinary mortals (i.e., I) can understand. The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline pledges cheap medicine for world’s poor | Business | The Guardian

The Guardian write, Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline pledges cheap medicine for world’s poor The world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company is to radically shift its attitude to providing cheap drugs to millions of people in the developing world. In a major change of strategy, the new head of GlaxoSmithKline, Andrew Witty, has told the Guardian he will […]

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