The Sweet Spot

A Peek at Quest App "Star Wars - Tales From The Galaxy's Edge"  A quick " sales brochure " for the Quest is worth a look if you are totally new to the device. The next thing people want to know is - how much? In Canada, from Amazon , it's $399. $299 in US. My own feeling is that this is not a bad entry point if you want to see what it's all about, but it's "pong" compared to what's coming. I expect to replace my Oculus Quest I with the next one, not the Oculus Quest II, which is simply a polished version of I. I look for fundamental upgrades in capability. What else do you need? Just WIFI. No computer needed (most competing headsets are peripherals to a PC application, requiring a cable connection to the PC. Even then, you need a compatible PC graphics card). One thing that's easy to miss in all this is that the WIFI, Quest, the smart phone and Facebook (er "Meta") are kinda bound at the hip. In my view, this combination i...

  Is Clint Eastwood Really a Cowboy? For (almost) everyone, this is an easy question. No, but he played one in the movies. An almost identical question slips by millions of Americans. Is Donald Trump the President of the United States? Has he ever been? No, but he plays one on TV. Exactly like he played an entrepreneurial genius in the "Apprentice". It's hard to find a point where "the Donald" actually distinguished his TV act from reality. In his case, he managed to pull millions of Americans down the rabbit hole to pretend he is, even now, the President of the USA NBC Insiders Describe ‘Nightmare’ of Working with Donald Trump on ‘The Apprentice’

My good friend Garry Smit recommended John Suler 's online book to me. It's easy to find problems with Mr. Suler. I find it distracting that Suler frequently inserts Freudian psychology into his discussions. His whole approach is typical of the Freudians: wide-ranging psychological speculation and theoretical structures without much in the way of evidence.  I was immediately turned off by the howler in his biography: I'm a writer, researcher, photographer, and Professor of Psychology at Rider University. Internationally recognized as an expert in emerging fields of psychology, I have published widely on topics related to eastern philosophy, psychotherapy, creativity, cyberpsychology, and photographic psychology.  This kind of language is usually reserved to book jackets, written by somebody else. Written in the first person, it reminds me of a statement you would see in a resume - something that would send the resume to the round file. It is certainly plain that Mr. Sule...