Kent Pitman

Kent Pitman

Technologist, Author, Philosopher

Please read and share my poem A Christmas Peril,
a seasonal plea to take the Climate Crisis seriously.

The Climate Crisis

Climate should be humanity's number one priority.

Election 2024

Still too early to say, but ... I hope Biden does not run. For all he has done, we still aren't moving fast enough on Climate. We need a progressive.

Election 2020

[Kent with Elizabeth Warren]

Elizabeth Warren with me
Sep 25, 2019

I'd hoped for a Warren/Inslee ticket in the 2020 election.

With Warren's leadership and ability to explain hard concepts, and Inslee's detailed “Evergreen” plan, I thought we'd get the best possible outcome on the critical issue of the Climate Crisis.

Privacy & My Public Persona

What you'll find here is my public persona only: records of my publicly visible projects and achievements, and a substantial collection of my public writings....

Click here to show more about my public persona.

I've been privacy-conscious for many years, perhaps owing in part to a bad experience I had in the days of the early ARPANET, in which someone abused a piece of personal data I'd left online.

Later, when the web came online, I held back as many others rushed to place every detail about themselves, their homes, and their families into the public view. With identity theft and phishing so common these days, I’m glad I’ve been shy about details of possible marriage, of family, of birthdays, of places of residence, and so on. The people who need such information have ways of finding it.

Still, one can't live in the modern world without online connections. So I've tried to strike a balance. I think of my web site as revealing my “public persona.” When considering whether I might want to put something on the web, I ask myself if it is a proper part of my public persona, or whether they should be retained instead as part of my private persona. People differ in where they draw the line on this, but It's a thought exercise I think everyone should go through.

And so, if in my public persona you find something of me lacking, drop me a line privately and strike up a personal conversation.
  —Kent Pitman

Click here to show less about my public persona.

Blog Politics & things more poetic

netsettlement

My current blog, netsettlement, is hosted at Google's BlogSpot/Blogger site. It's mostly political, with some philosophy and humor and an occasional bit of tech history.

Click here to go to my blog page.
Click here to peek at my blog without leaving this page. Click here to hide my blog.

Click here to hide my blog.

Here's a selection of my articles that I personally like best:

To find more, click on a word or phrase in the word cloud to the right of any of those posts, or see my extended list of recommendations.

Technology

Technical Publications

I have authored, edited and/or collaborated on a couple dozen technical documents of note.

Here are some highlights:

Click here for a complete list of my technical publications.

Talks and Interviews

50th Anniversary of Lisp

In 2008, I gave an invited talk at the 50th Anniversary of Lisp conference. This is a webbed version of the paper that accompanied the talk:

Slashdot interview

In the Fall of 2001, I was interviewed in Slashdot about Lisp and Scheme.

Ask Kent M. Pitman About Lisp, Scheme And More

The call for questions (Oct 12, 2001)

Kent M. Pitman Answers On Lisp And Much More

Part 1 of the interview. (Nov 8, 2001)

Kent M. Pitman's Second Wind
Part 2 of the interview. (Nov 18, 2001)

Fiction, Poetry, Humor

A Turn at the Darkness

A tribute poem I wrote in memory of Maya Angelou, but really to honor the contribution of every poet.

A Christmas Peril

My seasonal poem A Christmas Peril, inspired by The Night Before Christmas and A Christmas Carol, offers a grim warning about Climate Change. My friend Mariela Riva and I collaborated to produce a Spanish version of this poem as well: Un Villancico Ominoso.

Another Way Out

Some years back, I regularly wrote parodies of the CBS daytime drama (“soap opera”) The Young and the Restless and published them to a web site that I created, anotherwayout.com. Alas, it was before google ads, and I had to stop because it was too much time and energy to continue without a way to monetize the effort. But I've kept the web site around.

Full Index of Literary Creations

Click here to visit a more complete list of my writings, arranged into categories of poems, short stories, etc.—even some comics.

Technical & Political Commentary

“Parenthetically Speaking”

A technical column I once wrote for the ACM magazine Lisp Pointers.

Open Salon (formerly open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman)

My first real blog was at the now-defunct Open Salon, a blog site hosted for a while by Salon.com. When it closed down, I moved many of my recommended posts to BlogSpot. (The rest are linked more clumsily via the WayBack Machine at Archive.org to a view of the past web when Open Salon still existed.)

“Thinking Aloud about Politics”

My second evolutionary attempt to move toward blogging was this set of self-published articles.

KMP’s PFAQ (my “Personal FAQ”)

Back before blogs were common, I perceived the need for them. My PFAQ idea operated as a kind of proto-blog, where I wrote about topics that seemed like others might want to read.

More Technical & Political Commentary

Click here to visit a more detailed index of my commentary on various topics, technical and non-technical, including interviews, columns, and blogs.

Sites

It costs me time and money to maintain my various sites. If you've received value from these pages and want to support the effort, please visit my donor page:

Donate

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Copyright © 2019 by Kent M. Pitman. All Rights Reserved.