Day: November 30, 2015

The rock, the attendant and the vanishing soul: how fathers progress

When I first started off as a father, I was like a climbing rock: durable, constant,  capable of bearing heavy loads.

As my children mature, I find I am more the attendant. I watch their events, I monitor their behavior, I whisk away what is unwanted, be it spiders, dirty dishes, tears, anxiety.

In time they will be independent. I will hover around, like a ghost, a memory, reminding them of what is good in them and their past. I will be there but not there.

This is the life of fathers.
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Written on my BlackBerry Handheld to my old Posterous blog, October 12 2011, 7:34 PM

Why do Apple’s Macbook chargers cost so much?

Simple: they are a complex piece of technology. The photo above shows a Macbook charger from Apple on the left: the charger on the right is from another company. You can clearly see that the one from Apple has a lot more technology packed in there. And for good reasons. To understand what those reasons are, see this piece:  Macbook charger teardown: The surprising complexity inside Apple’s power adapter. It was surprisingly interesting, from an engineering and design perspective.

Thanks to Tom Plaskon for sharing this on Twitter!

That story during the Paris attacks recently about a man named Zouheir, a Muslim, who saved thousands of lives? It’s mostly false.

As Snopes.com says:

An uplifting social media rumor about the purportedly heroic actions of a security guard named Zouheir during the Paris attacks was largely inaccurate.

For the details, see Zouheir: The MUSLIM Who Saved Thousands of Lives? : snopes.com.

More and more, whenever I see something viral, I check Snopes.com.