Will Ferguson Happiness
I’m not quite sure how one can manage to walk past this novel without picking it up. The simple, yet humorous cover of Happiness evokes a smile, before you even flip it open! Continue reading
I remember the very night, in our first flush of excitement, when our name came into being. I should; it was my idea, mostly.
X-Files: 'The Truth is Out There.'
“What tool would you use to get at truth?” Michele asked. She answered herself, saying: “You’d need a shovel, to get through the crap. That’s what.”
Then I said: “A spade with a diamond blade.”
“Why diamond?” she asked.
“You need the hardest substance in the world to cut through root and rock, to find truth,” I replied.
“That’s kinda lame,” Michele remarked, always the truth teller. Continue reading
My UnderwoodBefore personal computers, word processors or even electric typewriters, virtually every office and home had a manual typewriter. Invented in the early 18th century, this machine rose to popularity in the 19th century, ruling the world of letters for more than a century. Yet how many people know how one works, much less the simple mechanisms that keep those keys slapping and the reels rolling?
No one knows what the earliest models looked like. The earliest extant machines, Hansen’s “writing ball” (1870), looked like a pincushion on a stand. Friedrich Nietzsche’s mother and sister gave him one for Christmas. According to typewriter historian Richard Polt, Nietzsche hated it. Continue reading
Both contract types, though each of a different order, are mutually dependent. An ‘employment contract’ is a document identifying the mutual duties of employer and employee in generalized form. A ‘psychological contract’ is an understanding, describing an implicit relationship, beyond the ‘employment contract’. This perspective of the workforce has become indispensable to modern management, especially during an economic down-turn, when more is expected of fewer employees. For instance, the concept was introduced in the 1960’s, by professors Agyris and Schein, but rose to prominence during the economic recession of the early 1990’s. Continue reading
He my Holmes
I came across an interesting article today concerning one of my favourite heroes, Sherlock Holmes. Though long aware of multi-media platforms for literature, such as mixing text and video, I was unaware that it had a name: vook, a video book. Cool, right? Or, if you’re a grumpy techno-phobe, maybe not so cool. But wait until you read this before you start casting stones. Continue reading
The Early Years
This morning as I woke the strands of an old song unaccountably floated through the sleepy mess of my mind: “Thank heaven, for little girls! For without them what would little boys do?” It’s not so odd for me to wake with a song in my head or to go about the flat belting out a raspy variation. Why this song, this morning? I wondered.
An artist carries on throughout his life a mysterious, uninterrupted conversation with his public.
Gil Underhill esq.
