O.K. Why did this cause me such trouble, you ask? How hard could it be to convert Greenwich Mean Time +1 to Eastern Standard Time (which is GMT -4, unless it is during Daylight Savings Time, when it is GMT -5). If you’re focused on the wrong thing, then you add +1 and -4 and get -3. Which is what I did originally. So, I took all the justusboys time stamps and subtracted three hours, which provided times for the events somewhere out in the...

A 2.0 moment: a reader writes me directly last night to say that the justusboys time stamps are at GMT +1. “I was wondering if you took this into consideration?” Although I wrote about the problems with time stamps early on in this meditation, I didn’t think to check this. So, tip o’ the hat to Mike for this. Then, I thought I’d got it right, revised, and reposted. But Steve and Patrick wrote me to point out that I...

The following entry is the “SFW” (i.e., PG-13) version of: This Blog Entry Has Been Rated NSFW What is “age appropriate” viewing? Who determines when you can see what? Let’s begin with some representative vignettes. The first from the print-centric paradigm of my youth. When I was a teenager in the seventies, growing up in the South, there were visible, physical boundaries marking what was fit for consumption by...

What is “age appropriate” viewing? Who determines when you can see what? Let’s begin with some representative vignettes. The first from the print-centric paradigm of my youth. When I was a teenager in the seventies, growing up in the South, there were visible, physical boundaries marking what was fit for consumption by those who were “under aged.” At the back of the local used paperback bookstore, a curtain...

“As a fundraising piece, it is disappointing because it focuses on tools of delivery to the complete exclusion of disciplinary, departmentally-based content.” Nearly three years ago, I was invited to make a presentation to the Board of Governors about my proposal for the establishment of a Center for the New Humanities at Rutgers. The university was in the “quiet phase” of what is now its public Billion Dollar Capital...

When I was required to turn my attention to the sky as a sophomore in college, I was baffled by Ptolemy’s description of the “apparent motion” of the stars. Even though I grew up in central Florida prior to the night polluting boom set off by the Disney invasion, I didn’t spend much time with my eyes turned heavenward. The moon came and went and that was about the extent of my interest in the universe. I had my own angst...