Chatter
tfk | January 14, 2008Times Public Editor:
Hiring Kristol the worst idea ever? I can think of many worse. Hanging someone from a lamppost to be beaten by a mob because of his ideas? … [I]t is not the end of the world.
Is this what American journalism is reduced to? Not being as bad as a lynch mob or Armageddon? C'mon Gray Lady, aim a bit higher. The Times Op-Ed page is some of the most valuable intellectual real estate in the world. Surely the measure of a columnist is not how few things could be worse than him, but how few columnists could be better.
For what it's worth, if I were the Times, I'd have given…
j7uy5 | January 14, 2008In the great role-playing game of life, I did not get very many
audiophile points. I mean, fine machinery is something I can
appreciate, but I'm pretty indifferent to the sounds those machines
make.
So it strikes me as remarkable that anyone would make, much less buy, a
$300,000 turntable.
No, you can't go into a store and buy one. You can't even get
one on the Internet. If you want one, you have to make an
appointment.
They are made by a Swiss company,
href="http://www.goldmund.com/company/" rel="tag">Goldmund.
The turntable is called the Reference II. They've
only made 25…
j7uy5 | January 5, 2008Instantly! This product gives you an immediate
Save!
It's like getting a thousand gold coins in Super Mario
Brothers all at once!
Doubters say it works via the placebo effect, but why not
try it, if it could give you eternal life?
(source)
tfk | December 24, 2007The jazz great was 82. The Times obituary reveals that he played trumpet and piano as a youth, but that a bout with TB forced him to choose the piano. He excelled as a jazz pianist, and played with many of top jazz talent over the course of his seven decade career.
"Don Cha Go Way Mad" by Ella Fitzgerald from the album Ella Fitzgerald At The Opera House (1957, 2:31).
"Things ain't what they used to be" by Oscar Peterson from the album Night Train (1962, 4:38).
laelaps | December 23, 2007... I could always feign being "born again" and write a crummy evangelical "non-fiction" book. I stopped by Barnes & Noble today to pick up a last minute Christmas gift that led me into the depths of the religion section, a section that's about 3 times as large as that devoted to science and nature. I almost cried out in terror when I heard a woman say she was picking up Joel Osteen's You Best Life Now and had to suppress my own rage when I came across Creflo Dollar's cheesy grin on the cover of his latest hardcover bit of holy money-grubbing. Imagine my disgust as I rounded a corner and…
omnibrain | December 21, 2007I've been using google reader for a while now and I figured I'd explore its many options today. There is a neat little feature that allows me to share what I'm reading with other people. So if you'd like to keep up with what I'm reading on the feeds you can check it out on the sidebar right here on Omni Brain, or you can go here or subscribe to the feed here.
If you'd like you can add me as a friend and share what you're reading as well! My email address is j.stephen.higgins-at-gmail-dot-com
Enjoy and let me know what you think!
And don't forget to visit the Omni Brain City!
goodmath | December 18, 2007 Here at ScienceBlogs, we have a back-channel where the bloggers can get together and chat. In one of our threads, I was telling a story about work, and an interesting question came up. What's the collective noun for a bunch of geeks?
Collective nouns are cool and funny. Some of them are straightforward: a herd of cows, a pack of wolves. Some are goofy: a wake of vultures, a destruction of cats (that's north american wildcats), an ostentation of peacocks. And there are some fascinating ones: a parliament of ravens, an exaltation of larks.
I don't know of any good collective noun for a…
j7uy5 | December 13, 2007Yale
University is following the trend, putting entire college
courses on the Internet.
As a member of the vast left-wing conspiracy, I object.
I object, because now, conservatives will be able to see what methods
we use to brainwash college kids. They will see how we get
them to vote for Ralph Nader. They will see how we get them
to use those weird curly light bulbs. The will see how we get
them to eat tofu and tabouleh and tempeh.
They will find out about the
href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=7591">most
dangerous books we give them, such as Silent Spring,
Coming…
tfk | December 13, 2007I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm satisfied with the results of this online doohickey from the Golden Compass website:
HT: Grrrrrrrrrrl.
tfk | December 13, 2007The Newton of Info was meek;
permission to copy did seek.
The Crimson refused.
Animations, he used.
And Harvard cracked down on the geek.
With BONUS DOUBLE DACTYL below the fold.
Higgledy Piggledy
William Dembski at-
tempted to twist math so
God he could seek.
Booted from Baylor, the
free-lunching theorist
quickly descended to
flatulent pique.
tfk | December 10, 2007I'm sorry to hear you might be having ice storms tomorrow. If it's any consolation, I've stopped wearing sandals, and sometimes have to put on a long sleeved shirt in the evenings.
This is the sort of thing I will, in some sense of the term, miss:
goodmath | December 2, 2007 There's been some talk among the sciencebloggers about the idea of intellectual property, and
href="http://www.scienceblogs.com/clock/">Bora over at "A Blog Around the Clock" asked me to convert
my thoughts into a post. It's a serious topic, which is worth giving some deep consideration, and it's
something that I've given a lot of thought to. Back when I was at IBM, I worked on some projects that were
internal and confidential, and also spent several years working on open-source. I've got two software
patents to my name. I didn't do any of that lightly; I spent a lot of time thinking…
j7uy5 | December 2, 2007
A calendar celebrating the aesthetic qualities of marine
invertebrates is available now at
href="http://www.cafepress.com/dorid.196100014">Dorid Designs,
along with a full line of items relating to marine biology, evolution,
paleontology, and rationalism. She also has tons of
href="http://theradula.blogspot.com/2007/11/squidmas-q-and.html"
rel="tag">Squidmas
href="http://www.cafepress.com/dorid/4190352">merchandise.
Perhaps the whole Squidmas thing seems silly (it is...that's the
point!) but the calendar is just a nice, straightforward piece of
artistic work.
tfk | November 22, 2007While I'll be doling out particular thanks to individuals today, I want to take a moment while the turkey roasts to thank you, dear readers.
When I started this blog, it was basically a way to stop clogging the email boxes of family and friends with my frustration at political events in the world. Pretty soon, you all came along, and so did the peculiar focus and voice that TfK has today.
It's been a crazy 3 years, and I look forward to many more. Thanks to this blog, and to you readers, I was able to see and to follow a career path I never would have imagined. The free books and…
j7uy5 | November 21, 2007MTV is taking some heat for its refusal to broadcast an
advertisment for Buy
Nothing Day.
MTV, the channel that markets itself to
hip youth, has decreed that our Buy Nothing Day public service spot
"goes further than we are willing to accept on our channels". Gangsta
rap and sexualized, semi-naked school girls are okay, but apparently
not a burping pig talking about consumption.
The single best way to blunt the impact of climcate change is to get by
with less of everything. Mostly, what it takes is a
willingness to ignore peer pressure.
j7uy5 | November 21, 2007We found a recipe for pecan pie that does
not use corn syrup. I would not try to argue that this
confection is salubrious, mind you, but at least there is no corn syrup.
Most pecan pie is so sweet that it is annoying.
That is
unfortunate. We are hopeful that this will not have that
defect.
Here is a close-up.
The recipe?
Pecan Pie With
No Corn Syrup
INGREDIENTS:
* 1 cup light brown sugar
* 1/4 cup white sugar
* 1/2 cup butter
* 2 eggs
* 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
* 1 tablespoon milk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup choc chips
* 1 1/2 cup chopped pecans (toast in oven…
tfk | November 19, 2007I'm very fond of my cute little MacBook. It's faster than my desktop machine, it's light, I can watch movies on it without a problem, and I can use gestures with it.
Gestures rock.
Here's how it works. I've got a window open. It has a scroll bar on the side, and a bunch of things I want to click within it. I move my finger around on the trackpad, and the mouse moves around the screen. I tap the pad, and I click something on the screen. I can start moving the mouse around, realize I need something lower on the screen, and simply by touching another finger to the trackpad, instead of…
omnibrain | November 18, 2007I'm sure this comes as no surprise to my readers but this blog has been rated as having a Junior High Reading level. You know what though?! I'm proud of that. I'm happy that I'm not a scientist who can only write bland big worded journal articles and use words like affinage, nugatory, pukka, or bouleversement. Now that I've ruined the readability of the blog by using the previously mentioned words I have to admit that I would get angry if I were reading a journal article and found big words as well. In any case... here's the official rating (before I added the big words):
Get a Cash…