A cloud comes to Tucson

The legendary dry heat of Tucson has been drier than normal this year. We’ve had half an inch of rain in six months, and today we got the first cloud I can remember. I mentioned in a recent post that my windshield cracked from the heat. My Facebook friends are lamenting the heat, and most [...]

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How I show my photo gallery on my phone

Imagine reading the title of this post 10 years ago. How times have changed. We ask a lot of our phones these days. Let’s say you want to show photos you took with your camera (hey, some people still use cameras—it can happen!) on your iPhone. What is a good way to do it? I’ve [...]

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The annual strawberry dipping gala

The ladies, both young and grown, assembled at our house last night for the annual strawberry dipping extravaganza. As the society pages used to say, “A good time was had by all.” The young lady prominent in the photo is 10-year-old Nicolette. She is modeling the de rigueur chocolate sauce on cheeks and nose. These [...]

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Minot, Joplin, and my friend Tina

There is a lot of pain and suffering in the world. It seems to me we ought to devote more resources to helping people who have suffered some kind of setback given how frequent and how devastating these events are. This fact is fresh in my mind as a result of receiving so much help [...]

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Religion and choosing presidential candidates

There is a debate during every presidential election (and elections stretch out seemingly forever) about candidates’ church membership and religious views, and to what extent voters ought to consider those things when deciding their vote. It was asked today by a host on NPR. This debate was originally cast at a time when “religion” and [...]

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Kendra to the rescue

One of the things my doctor said as I left the hospital after heart surgery was, “Don’t lift anything heavier than 8 pounds. That’s about equal to a gallon of milk.” My bag of cameras weighs several times that. I also wasn’t what you would call agile for the first several weeks, so even if [...]

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Bacteria will carry on without us

In the dark ages of the Cold War I read a report by a scientist who said that in the event of nuclear war we might eliminate all the higher life forms, but he speculated that bacteria would survive. He was especially optimistic for bacteria that lived in caves. I’ve remembered his remark for many [...]

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The ROI of smiles

The value of smiling is a controversial subject in business organizations in the United States. It has even broader significance in some other countries. In Japan, for example, excessive smiling is taken as evidence of being frivolous. What is the return on investment (ROI) of smiling? Is it positive or negative? Alfons Deeken, a sociologist [...]

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I’ll see your prediction, and raise you a forecast

We mortals are free to make all the predictions we want. Predictions don’t require any expertise. I can predict who will win the World Series in any given year once someone tells me which teams are playing. Forecasts are another matter. You have to be a weather man, or have similar qualifications, to issue a [...]

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An open-hearted conversation with Dan

By Michelle Yauger On April 18, my friend Dan Wilson was admitted to the emergency room with chest pain caused by a near total occlusion of one of his coronary arteries. He underwent bypass surgery the following day, and a second surgery a month later because the incision wasn’t healing properly. I’ve gotten to witness [...]

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