I’ve been experiencing Deja Vu watching the rise of the Tea Party, the Coffee Klatchers, the so-called conservatives, and the much-vilified progressives. I could be living a hundred years ago without changing a single spot.

When the founding fathers penned our Constitution, they began simply but profoundly with “We the people.” This statement feels remarkably progressive. No one had seen anything like “we” associated with “the people.” Their aspiration seems clear. Slip over here for more ...

How e're it was he got his trunk entangled in the telephunk

Now we have cell phone stores. They combine the worst of Radio Shack with the very worst of automobile dealerships to produce perhaps the bleakest shopping experience anyone's ever devised. Shopping for a new kidney couldn't help but seem refreshing in comparison.

The modern cell phone 'provider' offers 'plans' comprised of various combinations of damned whatever you do choices, and an array of actual telephones which, by the way, sometimes even involve telephony, though they much more prominently feature MP3 player, camera, GPS, and web-accessing technologies. Even the lowliest offerings tout ring tones more than usability, and the highest-end feature a dizzying library of 'apps,' which seem to be little more than opportunities to turn the ...ahem... telephone into a terribly expensive video game unit. "Hello? I'd like to place a telephone call." Fergetaboutit! Slip over here for more ...

The wife's after me to get a new phone. My reticence has nothing to do with loving my current phone, but more to do with my history with Telephoney. Or maybe that's Telephoney's history with me.

My current phone is a bit more than two years old, a pocketknife-sized Samsung Jazz, so old now that Google can't find any evidence that it ever existed. Just as well. If I was Samsung, I'd deny any association to the damned thing, too.

I acquired it at the same time Amy got her first Blackberry, which is a machine so damned complicated that I still can't pick up an incoming call on it for her. She swims the breadth of the web on the little thing. For me, it has all the technological sophistication of an under-sized paperweight with a particularly crude and unusable user interface. Great for some but they forgot to provide access for the rest of us. Slip over here for more ...