Essays: the Collection

10/18/2017 An Explanation of Madness By Kurt Joachim von Behrmann                 In ten minutes The Route 91 Music Festival became a killing field.   When the gun fire ceased, 58 were dead and 489 wounded.  The man responsible for one of the deadliest mass shootings committed by an individual in recent U.S. history was found dead from self-inflicted wounds.  Stephan Paddock, age 64, left no suicide note. He left no explanation.                 Las Vegas, a place built on easy money and relaxed morality, became a sullen city the day after the horrors of October first passed.   Streets normally filled with people were vacant.  It was as if the city had gone into instant mourning.  Even the lure of fast cash and good times, even commerce itself, had to stop and acknowledge that something horrific transpired.                  Sympathy, prayers and condolences were offered by the House and Senate as they do in a perfunctory manner, and yet curiously no legi

A reasonable take in unreasonable times The Face of American Complexity  W hile watching a politically based cable program, a woman made a remark that stuck in the air for me like the smell of something old and rotting.  She stated, with an odd distorted grin on her face, that everyone has a right to complain, except for White Males.  Said in a half mocking condescending smirk of smug self-importance, her stance underlined the ludicrous nature of the statement.  The studio audience created an uncomfortable silence. She was the only one laughing. The mood that followed was the kind that follows aggressive stances masquerading as wit that flop.  There is a “peculiar” victim based version of feminism that conceals a contempt for men and a underground envy of them.  In some incestuous hot house melting pots of sameness there are lazy so called academicians that see anything “Masculine” as the ultimate source of all subjugation.  The flawed and over worked narrative

Google’s Confusing Chat Clients This works well, but who knows if consumers will be able to use it at all soon. For some explicable reason Google, of all companies, is a confusing hot mess when it comes to chat clients.  They can produce solid online offerings, but messaging is an area of communication  they consistently get wrong.  One notable exception is  Hangouts.  It was so adept that at one point Google was  encouraging users to make it their default messaging client.  For reasons not known, they are now encouraging users to switch to Allo and Duo, or as I like to call them collectively  “Client Dumb and Client Dumber.”  The functionality that Hangouts posses has been separated into two.  Allo is a messaging application and Duo is a mobile video chat application.  The division of features makes no sense.  When people chat, message, video chat and the like, they prefer to be in one application not two, or three.  However, Google is not the only on

     I Do Not Want to Upgrade to a Smaller Phone, Google! Planned Obsolescence: A real F U you move to consumers The Proud and Might Nexus 6, or Shamoo as it is nicknamed. Obsolescence for the desktop computer has historically been two years.  Currently that cycle has come to a screeching halt.  Innovation is at a standstill. Smartphones are the center of computing for most.  They now have a two-year cycle.                 Google’s once  standard bearing phone, the Nexus 6, is at the end of the line for updates.  After two years on the market, no more operating system updates is the hard and fast rule.  From my vantage point, this is all about forcing you to shell out more cash for a phone you do not need, or may even want.  Has technology advanced so far so fast that two years is it for a handheld?  Is this necessary?  I am not convinced that it has this way, unless you want to perpetual live on the bleeding edge of technology.                 Over time,

The Washington Protests: the shape of things to come  A Limo on Fire, a wake up call, or A prelude of things to come? P rotests broke out in Washington D.C. during the inauguration of the controversial 45th President of the United States.  A distinguishing feature of this one was that it was not the product of spontaneous pandemonium.  This organized event brought together several groups unified in their shared beliefs.                 One statement made by this collective was so powerful that it explained succinctly the reasons for the discontent. It was a powerful message.                 Seeing a stretch limousine battered and flaming is an arresting image. What made this one potent were words spray-painted on the side “We The People.”  The connection between those words and the anger that compelled them to be written was visual, visceral and ultimately vitriolic.  Deeply seated resentments and frustrations were writing themselves on the American Psyche, one

An Essay on Political Dissonance  The American Dream of Upward Mobility, anyone can get rich, well not everyone. E tched into American etiquette is the belief  that political discussions are to be avoided, at all costs.  One can conduct conversations concerning the most private of matters. Highly personal topics are acceptable.  Ideology is not. The reluctance of Americans to define themselves politically is in sharp contrast to the way they define their religious views.  The divisions within Christianity points to the need for specificity regarding the precepts that define a faith.  Americans have little difficulty with taking a highly evangelical approach to religion.  Spreading the word is part of the faith. Sometimes it is a requirement. Just as Americans go to great pains to define their beliefs, such care is not  given to politics. Defining ones political identity in America leaves little room for nuance. The lines are stark.  The dialectal n