Kickass and Tech Disaster

Attribution: Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper and Phyllis temporarily capturing what could be considered a substitute grandchild as measured by the ability to help with tech problems. His name is Colin and he and his employees are actually in the business of rescuing the inept from the …
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Kickass and Hi-Tech

Attribution: Photo by phyo min on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, endorses the keeper’s New Year’s resolution that he will never again complain about the abuse continually bestowed on him, and Phyllis, by the ever-changing tech world.  With the subject of tech torture eliminated from the flow of the keeper’s communicating, expect more observations about …
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Kickass and Hi-Tech

Attribution: Grj23, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, observes how Phyllis struggles to maintain the keeper’s tentative grip on technology, showing him on a daily basis how to do the simplest things, like retrieve messages or save images. There has been discussion as to whether the keeper’s need to be …
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Kickass Rides the Elevator

Attribution: Photo by Derrick Treadwell on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in lamenting that among the annoying ups and downs foisted on a considerable portion of their “Independent Living” age group is the elevator.  Perhaps not as insidious as the so called “smart phone” that assumes a brain take-over for …
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The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: Review of “Kim’s Video”

Illustration by Michael DiMilo Digital Killed the Video Store: Review of Kim’s Video By Geoff Carter The documentary is one of the few cinematic genres that consistently defies expectations. It covers a huge range of content from the journalistic to the sublime, reconstructing history, muckraking corruption, exposing social ills, documenting human experience, or—as in the …
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Dialogues on Artificial Unintelligence: Surfing the Technology Spiral

Attribution: Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter Fellow pundits, You cannot call me any kind of expert on Artificial Intelligence (AI). But is that going to stop me from writing about it? Hell no! I just listened to an episode of …
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Kickass and Old Men with iPhones

Attribution: Japanexperterna.se, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, is supporting the keeper in his move to make it illegal for old men—and maybe some elderly women, to possess iPhones, after overwhelming anecdotal evidence shows that the phones do more harm than good in the shaky hands of those old …
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Kickass and Authentic Dumbness

Attribution: Dmitry Racer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, will do his best to assist the keeper in sorting through artificial intelligence—AI, and authentic dumbness—AD, based on the following circumstances:             *The keeper turns the engine off and listens on the car radio while waiting for Phyllis at a medical …
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