Notes From A Bear's Journey

      For some reason I've never delved into Shakespeare and his era of thees and thous.  But I do remember when farewell once meant (and was said as) fare-thee-well, just as goodbye once meant God-be-with-ye.  But all things contract, and change, and often vanish...even the internet, or at least the original version of it.  This issue came up in a piece in the New York Review on the web's early creation, all of which was pioneered by the visionary computer programmer, Tim Berners-Lee and written in his recent book, This Is for Everyone .  His breakthrough idea (bouncing off the computer "super-highway" idea of then vice-president Al Gore) was to tie everything together with links, spiderwebbed chains of more and more information...a web of world-wide proportions.  He envisioned a free and public inter-"net" whose idealistic origins, in his view, are rapidly disappearing.  Wrote a review in the  New York Review , Bergers-Lee felt t...

     It seems like simple advice, that of checking something out before diving in.  This can be anything from a home improvement to investing in something: how long will it take to break even, will you break even, is it even worth the trouble?  One example of this may be with those of you nearing the age of taking your Social Security benefits.  And when you dive into the topic of when to take them, pretty much 95% of sites will advise you to wait, all in order to maximize your payments.  So let's run the numbers (and here I use totally hypothetical numbers for ease of showing the figures).  Suppose at 62 you would receive $1000 monthly, but by waiting until the full age maximum of 67 or 68, you would increase that amount by 50%, or $1500 per month (again, these are hypothetical, and you can wait until 70 to get "even more").  Now, that $1000 per month at age 62 equals $12,000 per year, and multiply that figure by the 5 years you would wait ...

     We may be at a medical crossroads as political camps once again split...do we or don't we trust the medical world these days?  More specifically, the pharmaceutical companies?  It would appear that we have grown so used to taking a pill and poof, we've lost weight or our persistent rash has vanished.  And one has to admit that pharmaceutical ads are everywhere, from streaming between movies, to print & digital, so much so that most of us can't wait for these actor-portrayed ads (why can't they use actual patients?) to end so we can get back to our show (anyone else tired of Harold and his bow-tie?).  Okay, we know the possible side effects are many, so many that those side effects end up being most of the ad, sort of ignoring that most of those side effects were discovered through animal testing.  But hey, aren't my plump lips and mannequin-forehead worth it?  And if I actually do have a side effect, I can always see my doctor "right...

      We all seem to love surprises, well, as long as they're not the coming home early from work, type; or the FBI breaking down your front door type.  But that pleasant, unexpected gift or announcement (or promotion) is always --or at least if you're not too old and your ticker is still quite strong-- a welcoming bright spot to your day.  It's the same when you read something or are told something that you never knew, or didn't expect: Mabel did what??  My car will cost how much to fix??  You're pregnant??  But none of that here, although it is time for me to unload a bunch of miscellaneous tidbits from my readings or watchings.  And what better place to start than with a brothel...    Photo: Brotheler       Back in the day, the Mustang Ranch was the premier, or at least most known, legal brothel in Nevada.  We high school teenagers fantasized of telling our buddies that of course we'd been there and had had t...