December 2013 brought two important anniversaries for GPS, a technology that has changed the world, yet both milestones have gone unnoticed in the media. The Pentagon authorized GPS development 40 years ago on Dec. 17, 1973. If GPS were a…
Author: Eric F. Frazier
Eric F. Frazier is an independent writer, editor, book reviewer and co-author of GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones.
Power of Persuasion…
“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.” –Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
Tracking Baby Jesus
One of the oddest uses of GPS tracking I found while doing research for the book, GPS Declassified, was the case of a community center in Wellington, Florida, that used it to catch a thief who stole baby Jesus from…
Big(ger) Government
Conservative Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has found an issue on which he favors bigger government–or at least taller government. Issa, who chairs the House committee that oversees the District of Columbia, wants to relax the Height Act of 1910, which…
(noggled)
adj: dazed after long cyber shopping sessions, compounded by additives to your holiday beverage
Perspective
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” –John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, Friday, January 20, 1961
(clō-tur-ize)
v. to stall Senate deliberations until no one can bear to watch; see related: (ful-o-blust-er), (new-cu-ler op-shun)
(stu-por-vi-sor)
n: a boss who is asleep at the switch
Thanksgiving Day Shoppers Should Go Cold Turkey
Black Friday’s days are numbered. It had a nice run before having to share the spotlight with Cyber Monday. But surely we all saw this coming. For years, the “official kickoff of Christmas shopping,” “the busiest retail day of the…
Pregnant Pause
“If you have got nine women that doesn’t mean you can have a baby in a month.” — Frederick P. Brooks, a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, explaining to a New York Times reporter…