When I was growing up in the ‘50s men wore hats any time they left the house. My dad got me a kid hat, and I wore it all the time; I was adorable.

About 10 years ago I played World of Warcraft for a while. When I quit playing I left my level 100 Shadow Priest sitting in front of the fire in the Goldshire Inn outside of Stormwind City. I wonder what kind of bar tab he’s run up by now.

Reader’s guide for young people: the lead photo is of people operating card punch machines. From the earliest days of data processing until well into the 1970s paper punch cards were a principal means of data storage. Density was very low, as each card stored only 80 characters. My summer job in 1968 was running seven…

“That’s amazing that you made so much money with such stupid jokes.” -Two and a Half Man finale.

Cool. Sara Rue also appeared as Attorney General “Fun Bags” in Mike Judge’s 2006 Idiocracy.

My family used to go to the drive-in all the time back in the ‘50s. We’d roll in early, load up on hot dogs and pop, find a good spot, then my brother and I would hit the playground just under the screen until showtime. I remember it vividly.

Vitamin C stops a cold in its tracks. Yes, yes... I know that so-called “experts”, you know, like doctors and PhD researchers and people like that, say it isn’t so, but I know they’re wrong. At the first sign of a cold I drop about 2 grams of chewable C, and the next morning it’s like it never happened.

Vitamin C stops a cold in its tracks. Yes, yes... I know that so-called “experts”, you know, like doctors and PhD…

Bzzzzttt... thank you for playing. The correct answer is Gulden’s Spicy Brown Mustard, which is criminally absent from your fridge. It is the best mustard in existence. It’s official; please comport your attitudes, actions and sandwiches accordingly. 66 out.

Bzzzzttt... thank you for playing. The correct answer is Gulden’s Spicy Brown Mustard, which is criminally absent…

Lucy has had an on-again-off-again existence. Built in 1881 as a simple tourist attraction, she has served as a bar, office, hotel, restaurant and residence. I remember her well, visiting in the ‘50s. By the ‘60s she was in disrepair and scheduled for demolition, saved at the last minute, relocated and refurbished. In…

In 1974 physicist Frank Tipler published the paper “Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation”, in which he shows that a spacecraft accelerating along an infinitely long rotating cylinder would travel backward in time. Through frame dragging the cylinder would create a closed timelike curve.…

Umm... we know for sure that this doesn’t work. If at any time in the future anyone succeeds in building a time machine and sending information back to us, we would already have received warnings about Hitler, climate change and the Cats movie. We received no such messages, so no one ever builds a time machine. QED.

Fun fact: We live in Hilarie Burton’s home town, and our kids went to school with her. They were all in the drama club together, and our younger daughter was on the cheerleading squad with her. Hilarie was in our home many times; we knew her quite well. A lovely young woman.

Back in the days when smoking was still allowed in the back of the plane I always made a point of getting seat well forward in the non-smoking section, to stay away from all that smoke. One time I kept smelling especially strong smoke, but figured it was just the smokers in the back. A flight attendant came by and…

I’m not sure if this counts, but the from The Greatest American Hero is one of my favorites. Believe It Or Not sung by Joey Scarbury spent 18 weeks on the charts, peaking at #2.

This sort of brinksmanship at sea is illustrated in the 1965 movie The Bedford Incident. Sidney Poitier is a civilian reporter on board a US destroyer confronting a Russian submarine in remote US waters. Things don’t go well, a combination of recalcitrant Rooskies, a hard-headed US captain, and a US junior missile…

“...a strange and totally forced Zillow ad...”

Joan: I only say this because I care... there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.

“...stop and frisk...”

“... you might as well have copied them to an external hard drive (or flash drive).”