A life in words

  • Automated Merger of GEDCOM Files

    Have you ever had the misfortune of having to merge two GEDCOM files while doing family history research? I hope not. It’€™s dehumanizing. Dehumanizing? Yes, because doing a job that should be done 99% by a machine is most definitely de-human-izing. Here’€™s a typical example: Billy Bob Jones and Suzy Lee Jones are a brother…

  • Counterpoint

    This is my response to the email I received from “La Russophobe,” whose blog I commented on recently. I have to say that this is the most I ever want to become involved with “blog politics.” I’m not particularly interested in explaining and defending my viewpoints at great depth; I really just express them for…

  • Point

    I reproduce here an email I received in response to my previous post, “How to Tell Constructive Writing from Diatribe.” Dear Josh, After coming across your comments about our blog on yours, we thought you’d be interested in an update on the situation, namely that the author of Russia Blog has admitted that his post…

The Master said, ‘Yu, shall I tell you what it is to know[?] To say you know when you know, and to say you do not when you do not, that is knowledge.’Confucius, The Analects, II.17, trans. D. C. Lau, Penguin 1979