A lot of Internet tech talkers are preparing a coffin for electronic mail. Some are even shoveling dirt on it. And while it’s pretty obvious that email is not dead dead at age 41, it’s looking pretty pallid. Those of us who must swim through a daily email stream of spam, scams, advertising pitches and […]
Fantasy for Fun and Profit
It’s fantasy season in the United States. Now, of course, one can fantasize about being a princess or drift into reverie about winning the lottery, any time of year. I’m talking about a specialized kind of fantasy. An ongoing, all-consuming, often dead-serious one that’s geared to different seasons. An obsession, shared by an estimated 35 […]
Without Pierre
Out west, in the land of Black Hills and jackrabbits and a mountainside carving of four famous American presidents, is a little state capital. It’s Pierre, South Dakota. Pierre, like Pierre Cardin, the French fashion designer, you would think. Except that everybody in that rugged north-central state pronounces it PEER. This is curious, since the […]
Queen City of the Prairies
Sedalia is a little town of 400,000 — ok, that’s just in August, when it hosts the Missouri State Fair at the third-largest fairground in the country. Just 21,000 people live there the rest of the year. It’s a town that has overcome daunting obstacles to become one of the nation’s most unlikely tourist destinations. […]