A speculative mind

  I am making my selection for the best rock albums of each decade (in my opinion). You are going to disagree with me; of course you are. All art is subjective, but music is the artform that everybody has the strongest opinions on. Everybody is an expert on their own favorite music. And everyone is right!   Rock and roll was born in the 1950’s, but I am going to skip the 1950’s because I wasn’t there and it is not quite the same thing to listen retroactively to music as it is to be brought up with it. The 60’s and 70’s are going to be hardest to pick because this was the music of my formative years. Do you ever hear music the way you did when you were growing up? 1960’s Abbey Road -- The Beatles . If it is the 60’s, the best album has to be from The Beatles, and there are many to choose from, but I am going to give it to their swan song, an album that showed how far they had come from their beginnings. Honorable Mentions: Surrealistic Pillow -- Jefferson Airplane D...

  I have been reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and in the alternate world described in the book, there is the USS Enterprise. This Enterprise is the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but in this version of Earth, the carrier has been purchased by a rich tycoon as his personal yacht. This did get me thinking about Enterprises of yore. There have been a lot of them. The first US Naval vessel called Enterprise that made a name for itself was commissioned in 1799. There had been a couple of earlier ships by that name but this was the first one built for the navy.   This Enterprise fought in the first Barbary War and the War of 1812, a contemporary of the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides). Though the Constitution was a 44 gun frigate and the Enterprise was a 12 gun brig. Enterprise’s most notable action was the capture of the HMS Boxer in 1913. In 1831 The 197-ton schooner Enterprise was commissioned and decommissioned in 1844. In 1874 the 615-ton sloop Enterprise was com...

  When I was a kid (eons ago) there was a TV show that no one talks about today. It was called The 21 st Century and was hosted by TV news legend Walter Cronkite. Myself, being a science fiction fan, I watched it when I could. I was then like nine years old, I knew the big newscasters: Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, but I was not a fan of the news. It was boring – mostly about the war in Viet Nam, or some protests somewhere. I was more into sitcoms or cartoons. But when an important news man like Cronkite started doing a show that was tantamount to science fiction, I took notice. But it was not treated like science fiction. There were no woo-woo special effects or outlandish statements. It was treated more like a news show, which is not surprising since it was produced by CBS News.   It was actually a follow-up show to the documentary series The Twentieth Century and ran from 1967 to 1970. The show took current trends in design, engineering, and social architecture and p...