Choose to be IRL
Will you be using some of that Christmas gift money to buy the Rolling Stones vinyl album Let It Bleed from an EBay seller? Do you wish that your sister will follow your request and…
Will This Get Me on The Professor Watchlist?
In the Age of Trump it should perhaps come as no surprise that a Professor Watchlist has emerged. We regularly get hints and sometimes direct statements from Trump and his retinue that enemies, both real…
Will Hacks Mellow Yellow Journalism?
In retrospect, perhaps it was naive to think that after arguably the most acerbic and bizarre presidential race in our nation’s history, controversies would cease and a peaceful, uncontested transfer of power would bring an…
Passwords on their death bed? Yahoo!
A billion user accounts have been hacked. Yahoo was the target of the attack. Sadly, it was only three months before When hackers stole 500 million more. Thieves took phone numbers and addresses And answers to your security questions.…
Prisoners of Masculinity
Two films vying for the best picture award at next Sunday’s Critic’s Choice Award are Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea. Each has garnered a number of distinctions already. Moonlight, Barry Jenkin’s character study…
Where There’s Life There’s Hope/And For Every Tree There’s a Rope
Even if you’re a casual student of American Civil Rights history, you know the story of Emmett Till, an emblematic story of deplorable race relationships in the ’50s captured on documentaries like Eyes on…
Listening to Sherry Turkle…Thinking about Online Education
MIT Professor Sherry Turkle is interested in the impact of new communication devices on human relationships. In her latest work, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age, she explores how the…
Trump versus Clinton Economics
When I got to fourteen pages writing this memo I figured I had better give you the short version without my usual story and the economic theory. I will simply summarize the four areas of…
Yes, You Can Examine 650,000 Emails in Eight Days
On the eve of the 2016 Presidential Election, the controversy that FBI Directory James Comey sparked when he revealed that a new batch of emails related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server…
Outing Security Exploits: Politics or Precaution?
On October 21, 2016, Google notified Microsoft and Adobe of a new vulnerability in Adobe Flash and Microsoft’s operating systems, including Windows 10. By exploiting the vulnerability, an attacker can achieve a privilege escalation, which…