Jamis’ Tall Tales

In 1993 Tony Perkins launched the Red Herring Magazine with Jaron Lanier on the first cover. It is particularly fitting that at the recent AlwaysOn conference at Stanford Jaron was a featured panelist with a host of other big thinkers. Much that transpires in The Valley is a result of the folks who regularly attend… Read more »

My new friend Betty Monroe came into Buck’s a little while back. She sat next to a photograph on the wall and there she saw her father looking back from a picture taken in 1918 when he was mule skinner (archaic term for a mule wagon driver) for the army. On Nov. 11th, 1918 he… Read more »

There has been a great deal written about, spoken about and screamed about with regard to saving the Earth. But what do you think the Earth feels about it. Let’s look at the situation from the Earth’s point of view for a mo. If you buy the theory that the planet is about 4.5 billion… Read more »

Thirty years ago, the NASA/Ames scientists launched a little spacecraft at Jupiter and they hoped it would last as long as 21 months. It worked as planned and in a flyby of the red giant it sent back dazzling pictures of Jupiter and then with the ol’ slingshot maneuver it accelerated past Jupiter and headed… Read more »

  Mario Pechetti Manetti and Stanford Steinbeck A fella came in to Buck’s one evening and I stopped by his table to say hello. He was a man “of an age’ and the first thing he said was, “Did you tie that tie?” I had on some comic tie hanging from my typically comic shirt…. Read more »

The war is over. “Hum, I hear that’s a beautiful country,” people would invariably say. Of course, the first thing that actually pops to mind is that we dropped quite a few bombs and some other really bad stuff from the stem to the stern of this country. Our government whipped up a paranoid fantasy… Read more »

Newsweek once called me the Zsa Zsa Gabor of Silicon Valley, a backhanded slap of a compliment which meant famous for no apparent reason. I have always loved the whole idea of Zsa Zsa Gabor. First, she was really a spectacular beauty in her day which lasted well in the evening. I’ll bet you can’t… Read more »

There has been entirely too much loose prattle in the popular press questioning whether irony has a future. For instance there was a four page story in Newsweek on January 1st. titled, “Will we ever get over irony?” This was about four times the space they devoted to collapse of the economy in Argentina, but… Read more »

This guy came in and told me that he was the former Mayor of Los Angeles. “Yeah, sure but what have you done lately.” “Well, I’m running for governor.” I instantly saw the possibilities and we hammered out a deal that if I throw my considerable support behind the campaign I’ll get an ambassadorship. This… Read more »

I left New York City on July 4th 1976 with my wife Margaret and our two cats. We cruised among the Tall Ships in New York City Harbor celebrating the Bicentennial from a boat off lower Manhattan. We could see President Ford on the deck of the aircraft carrier Nimitz. We sailed by the Statue… Read more »