Moto 360 Review

by Garrison Walters

I got a Fitbit for Christmas and found it really useful. Unfortunately, the band was hard to operate and challenging to keep attached. I bought a “guard” but eventually lost the band with the very small electronic part embedded in it.

The Fitbit was my first fitness assistant device, and it gave me the bug. I really liked the information it offered and wasn’t bothered at all by having it on my arm.

So, when I saw the Moto 360 on sale at Best Buy for half the price of the iWatch, I decided to go for it.

The Duke

The other day, driving down the freeway, I saw a billboard featuring John Wayne, quoted as saying something tough. It got me to thinking. The Duke was somewhat controversial during his lifetime, but whatever your opinion of his politics or lifestyle, you'd have to agree the man knew how to take a fake punch.     

Stories I Never Started Reading

Stories I Never Started Reading

• Should I tell my fiancée that I’m bisexual and had sex with her dad?
• Clandestinely control your smartphone by stroking your hair.
• Iron Throne toilet lets you rule the bathroom.
• Bruce Jenner’s ex-wives weigh In.
• Comcast vows to put customers first.
• Cutting a bugs' penis shorter found to reduce reproduction chances.
•  Quail breeding discoveries shed light on human sexuality.
• Le pole-dancing, discipline olympique?
• A Lively Comment Discussion About Dementia and Sex
• Twitter envisions drones controlled by your tweets
• Researchers establish the world's first mathematical theory of humor 
• VR porn lends a hand. Masturbation will never be the same

Republican Primaries: The Ottoman Solution

So many running for President, so hard to keep track. Every current and former Republican governor, a gaggle of Senators. Then there’s the pediatric neurosurgeon (retired) and the failed technology executive. Also The Donald, and continuing in that vein, I expect at least one professional wrestler.

Why so many Republican princes contending for the throne?

A simple answer:  there’s no downside and a big upside to running.

California Dreaming in Texas

Even during the worst budget years California’s citizens and leaders have always recognized the value of higher education. People across the state, including in both political parties, know that excellence in the flagship University of California system has been a key factor in the state’s comparatively prosperous and high tech economy.

The state has now restored fiscal stability and, though many problems remain, is looking toward a vibrant future.

Given better times, we should expect UC to amp up efforts to recruit outstanding researchers, especially in the sciences.

Play Opera!

Sometime last spring, I began to have trouble falling asleep at night. It was a real downer until I discovered baseball. What could be more soporific than a big screen filled with relaxed looking people standing around on a field of soft green? Zzzz.

Conservative Economics

Recently, I remarked to a conservative friend that I thought Paul Krugman’s writing was among the best I’d ever read. He replied that I should read the Wall Street Journal to get a more balanced perspective.

I let that pass, but if I’d been more assertive I’d have stated that I don’t want to pay a chunk of dollars every month to read people advocating antediluvian economic theories.

Cultural Dimensions

Decoding the Rules of Conversation

By Pamela Druckerman

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/opinion/decoding-the-rules-of-conversation.html

Ms. Druckerman’s essay resonates at two levels.

At the most basic, she is an unusually intelligent person, a gifted writer and, I would speculate, a very pleasant person to be around.

Me, The Great

Sylvia and I were discussing relatives during our beach walk the other day, and I realized that most of the people I called “aunt,” and “uncle,” were in fact “great” aunts and uncles.

And this led me to realize that, thanks to Alex and Kate Didion, I am also a Great Uncle.

Remembering that ambassadors and former ambassadors get to be called “ambassador” no matter where they are, I now wish to be addressed as “His Excellency, Garrison The Great Uncle.”

It Must Be Very Sad When Children Start School

“It must be very sad when your children start school.”

I stared blankly. A moment ago I’d been asleep on the couch, then the doorbell rang and here was this tall, blond man, blathering about school. Odd, but I had to respond…

Russia’s Ukrainian Disaster

Nearly everyone believes the best way to solve problems is careful discussion among reasonable, rational people. Unfortunately, political conflicts often produce emotional dimensions that have the ability to sweep away exchanges of this kind, and the long-term crisis in Ukraine is a case in point.

What if reasonable, rational people on each side were able to bypass the politicians and sit down to develop a solution?

No Child Left Behind is a Sideshow

The New York Times editorial of February 21, 2015 (“Don’t Give up the Gains in Education” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/opinion/sunday/dont-give-up-the-gains-in-education.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0 ) makes reasonable arguments if you are willing to accept its very traditional premise:  the school is the locus of educational improvement.

But recent research challenges that premise.

Martial Arts, Grit, and Education Reform

After decades of failing to change education by “fixing schools,” some in the U.S. are beginning to look beyond the closed loop of the classroom and consider the attitudes students bring both directly to school as well as to the whole concept of education and learning.

Flipped Out Over Flipping

I’ve finally had it. I can’t stand it any more. I just saw another serious academic article touting the benefits of the “flipped classroom.”

This last one was one too many. I flipped out.

Measuring The Inexpertise of Experts

A recent story quoted two professors at the University of Illinois as saying that many self-described education experts weren’t actually experts. The professors determined this by first looking at people quoted in the media on education reform, then looking to see how many had Ph.D.s and then running their names against databases containing research citations. It seems that lots of published and popularly cited experts were under-credentialed.

I’m not impressed with the study.

Martial Arts and the Italian Door

In another essay, I described how the support and encouragement of others made it possible for me to succeed in taekwondo. One interesting little vignette was left out of that story, for the excellent reason that it’s not relevant to the main message. But it is fun, so here it goes.

Playing with Languages

Everyone has plans for retirement, and a key goal for me was refreshing some of the foreign languages I’d studied.

I’ve dabbled in lots of languages, including exotics like Albanian and Hungarian, but wanted to be reasonable and focus on restoring ability in the languages I knew the best:  French, Romanian, and Bulgarian.