An absolute stunner of a classic guitar by Enrico Bottelli. I’ve never seen its equal. The “Black River” is the first instrument in a…

The unmitigated glory of the Internet has been precisely that *it is* free, uncontrolled, and as far as content goes, unregulated. Up to now, it has been the electronic wild west of the new millennium. And yes, this makes “fake news” from all sides of the political spectrum not only possible, but plentiful. However, it also makes a wide, wonderful web of creative content of *all* stripes available to us, and has opened the door to amazing new opportunities for commerce, creativity, self-education, and personal enlightenment. Unless we want some unaccountable government/corporate entity dictating what is “proper” for us to consume online, we must insist on taking responsibility for filtering our own surf, to think critically about the ideas we discover out there in the wilds, and separate for ourselves wheat from chaff. To do otherwise is to invite Orwellian manipulations of reality by Big Brother and its corporate coconspirators.

So wifey’s boss, who like me is a Star Trek fan, asked her to find out what my favorite series is, and why. I…

Alternative version: People don’t always join a union… but when they do, they get protection from union thugs who will physically attack them if they…