It’s amazing how some of the most prosaic of undertakings can stir the human mind into a gears-turning, smoke-pouring-out-of-the-ears, parallel-drawing frenzy, and maybe slightly less amazing, given the fact that it’s my gears that are doing the turning, how such heightened prefrontal cortex activity can manifest itself as a rant. Like the one that follows….

“Eastward ho!” The plaintive call rallies hundreds of intrepid settlers looking to leave behind (at least for a long weekend) the grimness and hardship plaguing their lives in greater Chicagoland. The caravans form as the pilgrims resolutely set forth with nothing but the clothes on their backs and in their Paravel luggage, protected from the…

It’s not a stretch to think that Alexander Graham Bell would have despised texting. After all, the man went to a hell of a lot of trouble to deliver the sound of the human voice from one person to another across the miles, and by way of a few wires. The telephone replaced the telegraph…