The following is a message I sent to US Senator Pat Toomey this afternoon after trying to call his district office in Philadelphia and getting a busy signal… again. I am extremely disappointed with your statement on Trump’s immigration order. Donald Trump’s decision to immediately prohibit travelers from 7 countries from entering the United States, […]
Archive
Contacting my Senators to support the Affordable Care Act (and urge for a suitable replacement if it’s repealed)
Well this is new (for me). I just contacted Pennsylvania’s two Senators to let them know my thoughts on the Affordable Care Act and the Republican effort to repeal it, which is moving forward in the Senate. Healthcare.gov At this point it seems highly unlikely that the move to repeal the law that’s widely known as […]
Shada: the Douglas Adams script for Doctor Who finally feels complete
Before writing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams was a writer and script editor for Doctor Who. But he’s only credited with having written a few episodes — one of them was never broadcast. That’s because production of Shada was interrupted by a BBC strike and parts of the episode were never filmed. […]
The Casual Vacancy review: JK Rowling’s follow-up to Harry Potter isn’t magical, but it’s a page-turner
J. K. Rowling has a way of creating fictional worlds that feel reel and filling them with characters that seem to take on a life of their own. The plot is almost beside the point… but by the time The Casual Vacancy comes to a close, it’s hard not to feel something for the cast […]
Book review: The Day The World Discovered the Sun
The Day the World Discovered the Sun: An Extraordinary Story of Scientific Adventure and the Race to Track the Transit of Venus by Mark Anderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars In the early 18th century astronomer Edmond Halley determined that the Transit of Venus represented the best opportunity to calculate the distance from the […]
Pandora’s Seed Book review: It all started going horribly wrong about 10,000 years ago
Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization by T. Spencer Wells My rating: 3 of 5 stars Back in the dark ages I studied communication in college, but I also minored in anthropology. I was fascinated by the one class in archaeology I took, and even subscribed to Archaeology Magazine briefly before I realized that I never get around […]