When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on June 29, 2007, he couldn’t have anticipated the tidal wave he was about to unleash on the world. To be sure, Jobs was a technological visionary. He recognized the potential power of combining into one device, an internet-connected cell phone with a mini-computer capable of hosting email, playing music, surfing the web and a crude digital camera that meant people could share selfies the instant they heard the shutter click. Perfect for the generation of instant gratification. Jobs would have been hard-pressed to anticipate the raw power of something as compact as the smartphone and its long-term impact on society and human behavior.…
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I’ll Show You How It’s Done Once you hit 84, maybe there are certain things you should leave alone.
It’s been more than ten years since I lost my mom. Frankly, I’m glad she’s gone. Now, before you accuse me of being a shallow, selfless, ingrate, let me explain. I loved my mom. I really did. But technology made the decade beginning in 2008 brutal for old people. First there were self-driving cars. Then came the Amazon Kindle, followed by the Mars rover and the Hadron Collider. Even I felt overwhelmed. No sooner did my mom learn how to retrieve re-runs of Bonanza using her TV remote, someone went and moved all the controls to her cell phone. Her cell phone! “Let me get this straight,” she said. “I’m…
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My Sizzling Russian Bride Finding "Ms. Right" after Farmersonly, GothicMatch, STDFriends, CougarWomen, DirtyEncounters and Meet-an-Inmate.com
By the time I found Svetlana, my Russian bride, I knew I was in love. Having been tossed off all the run-of-the-mill American online dating sites like Farmersonly, GothicMatch, STDFriends, CougarWomen, DirtyEncounters and Meet-an-Inmate.com, I finally resorted to trolling for eastern European women on SizzlingRussianBrides.com. That’s where my troubles began. After combing through thousands of profiles of beautiful Russian women, I settled on someone I thought could be “the one.” Svetlana was a voluptuous 27-year-old dental hygienist from the small village of Trochenbrod. According to her profile, she was college educated, spoke “some English” and loved reading, cooking, photography and pole vaulting. Her carefully crafted message read, “Hi. I’m Svetlana.…
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Pardon Me, But You’re Stepping on My Boundaries They’re not much but they’re all we have
The first thing I noticed about the gleaming new Porsche was the way it was parked–strategically straddling a disabled space and the one next to it—my parking space. But, instead of throwing a hissy fit, I calmly took out my car keys and gouged a continuous line along the entire side of the car. That is, after I surgically removed both windshield wipers and liberated the air from all four tires. So much for social and personal boundaries. I suppose to some my reaction might have been a tad over the top for something as innocuous as stealing a parking space. But, it’s my space. It’s the one possession I…
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Blaschko Lines Blaschko's lines disease proves there's a little zebra in all of us
Nature has an interesting way of identifying animals in the wild. Lions have their manes, leopards have spots. Tigers and zebras have stripes. And apparently, so do people with Blaschko Lines. Blaschko Lines are common skin patterns that were first identified in 1901 by a German dermatologist named Alfred Blaschko. Over the course of years of examining thousands of patients, he often observed people who exhibited unusual patterns of dark stripes and swirls that encompassed their entire bodies. Some patterns were restricted to an arm or a leg. Other patients had stripes that ran from head to toe, beginning on their face, migrating to their chest and wrapping around their…