Virgil

Just completed my stint as a judge. No not for a reality TV talent show. No I’m not the next Simon Cowell. This is the third year now (not successive, I had to miss one year in the past four years) I’ve participated as a virtual judge for a national science and engineering contest for sixth through ninth graders. That’s eleven through fourteen year olds.

I don’t judge everyone in the contest, so I don’t see all the entries. I judge about ten entries, and if they need more scored ...

There’s nothing new under the sun. You say that’s an old fogey speaking. Well, I came across this outstanding piece in the (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...EYWORDS=cicero) Wall Street Journal on politics. Not American politics, not the politics of a European nation, not even the politics of the 21st or 20th centuries. Here summarized by Philip Freeman, professor of Classics, is a little know political treatise by the brother of the great Roman ...

It’s been a while since my last Matthew blog. I have been very busy, but it’s time I do another. Matthew has become a talking machine. From being a quiet little child – so quiet we actually were worried about his language development – to now where you can’t get him to be quiet for a moment. His vocabulary keeps increasing by the day. Sometimes my wife and I wonder where the heck he picked up that word, nothing outrageous or scandalous, but just a word we don’t normally use. I wish I could ...

Greetings to all. I know I have been spotty in my appearances here lately. I have had to travel for work four of the last five weeks. Even worse than not visiting my friends on the internet is missing my beloved little Matthew and my wife. This past trip was for the entire week, which really puts a strain on my wife. What’s strange is that for the past couple of years, I haven’t had to travel much. I think the year before was four trips the entire year, and here I’ve done that many in a little ...

I came across this survey study in the newspaper tonight. First, let me preface to say that I live on Staten Island – been living here for over twenty years – and that Staten Island is not actually a city but a borough of New York City. We are the smallest borough and definitely less famous than say the boroughs of Manhattan or Brooklyn or even the Bronx. Still at a population of over 450,000 Staten Island is roughly the spread of a medium size city.

From today’s New York Post. ...