Old-school news, just in time
by Douglas Bell Forbes Magazine Volvo proudly proclaims that: “few people have saved as many lives as Nils Bohlin.” And they are right. Nils Bohlin is the little-known Volvo engineer who invented the V-type three-point safety belt in 1959, and saw his innovation through to universal adoption across the motor industry. His new …
Continue reading “Volvo’s Unselfish Act Saved Millions Of Lives”
by Kevin Burton Technology is a problem solver. Technology is a problem. Am I right or wrong? “Tech-savvy” is a hyphenated adjective that shouldn’t be used to modify certain nouns, such as, for example, “Kevin Burton” Like it or not we all live in a sea of technology. It’s sink or …
by Kevin Burton Serving up quibbles and bits for Saturday breakfast on Page 7. Stray ideas, quick hitters, random asides. It’s food for thought, albeit maybe not real deep thought….. So, I spent the first 90 percent of my workday Friday with a washcloth stuffed inside my shirt. I put on a …
Continue reading “I Guess Static Cling Is A Thing After All”
by Kevin Burton The cell phone, or more specifically, the cell phone call, turned 50 recently. It’s a story I almost ignored. Here is part of a CNN Business story on the anniversary: “On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper stood on a sidewalk on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan with a device the …
I think I’m done writing about MTV and Clear Channel for the moment, but I have one more thought on that Buggles tune, “Video Killed The Radio Star.” I raised the question without answering it in my Friday story: “If you could get your favorite top 40 hits, with pictures, moving pictures, wouldn’t that …
by Kevin Burton In the old days we turned on our radios for music, for news, for sports and weather forecasts, and we got all those things. But what we really loved, and what kept us coming back for more, was the way those things were delivered, something that was woven throughout the …
Continue reading “Clear Channel (iHeart) Killed The Radio Star”
by Kevin Burton In J.G. Ballard’s short story “The Sound-Sweep,” the main character is a non-verbal boy who has the job of vacuuming up all the stray sounds in a world without music. He befriends an opera singer living in an abandoned recording studio. The opera singer is destitute, having been displaced from …
by Kevin Burton My songwriting is punctuated by bursts of creativity, drive and joy but it swims in a vast ocean of self-doubt. If confidence were gun powder, I couldn’t blow up an apple. My confidence is like that sorry little piece of fat they call pork, in a huge can of beans, …
by Kevin Burton Do you remember any of the gifts you received in fourth grade? Do you have any of them still? Are they in working order? I have one. In fourth grade our teachers at the Ohio State School for the Blind sat us down and introduced us to Mrs. Davidow. …
by Kevin Burton Last month a blind woman flew a small airplane across the country. That’s a story you want to read about, right? OK, here it is, short version: Kaiya Armstrong, a 22-year-old Arizona woman who can see only a few inches in front of her face, flew a two-seater Cessna …
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